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Hey!

Welcome to Social Files—your no-BS guide to building a B2B social media presence.

Hope you had a great weekend. Mine was a much-needed recharge. Last week was insane, with the launch of Clark Media’s rebrand to Compound Content Studio, rolling out content for 2 new clients, and starting to hire more writers.

I think my sleep schedule is back on track. We’ll see how that holds up.

Today I want to walk you through my framework for answering a simple, but important question:

Should you hire a social content agency or should you build out your social media team in-house?

There are pros and cons to each. By the end of this piece, you’ll have a clear view of what’s best for you.

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🔎 DEEP DIVE

Should you hire your social team in-house or work with an agency?

The ultimate guide for B2B companies planning their 2024 budget.

I need to start this piece off by acknowledging something important.

I run an agency. So, you could say there is some bias in this piece.

(1) We are booked out, and likely will be for the foreseeable future.

(2) Hiring an agency is a dumb move for many companies. I’m not incentivized to work with those companies because it’s a pain in the ass to do so.

I’ve also spent lots of time on both sides of the fence—running social in-house and now running a social agency.

So, I hope you’ll trust me.

This won’t be like one of those SEO-optimized ‘Best [Niche] Tools of 2024’ where the author of the listicle conveniently happens to be a content marketer at the software that’s sitting in the #1 spot.

There are specific pros and cons to each method. I’ll run you through them all.

But, before that, we need to talk about whether you need someone running your social strategy in the first place. The answer isn’t always an obvious ‘yes.’

Do you need to hire for social at all?

This section is simple. There are 2 factors to consider here.

(1) Do you have product market fit, or signs of it?

(2) Do you have the budget to pay someone (whether it be in-house or an agency) to run your social content engine for long enough?

Criteria number 2 is a function of criteria number 1. Your product must have momentum.

Building a social media presence that generates demand is a Herculean task when you don’t have happy customers who want to pay you.

If you’re in this stage, I don’t think you need a social presence as part of your GTM motion. But, if you wanted to start posting, I would recommend your founder just post what he or she can.

I always tell prospective clients:

I want to pour gas on the flames.

I don’t want to rub sticks together.

Also, worth mentioning, you can pour money into social if you’re pre-PMF but have a lot of conviction in your product and have a boatload of VC cash to burn. Would I recommend it? Depends. Can you do it? That’s up to you, lol.

We typically don’t work with startups that lack happy customers and case studies.

✅ The upsides of hiring in-house

Focus.

This person is giving your company their full time and attention.

Marketing, especially social, is one of those jobs where your brain never really shuts off. When you have someone in-house, all of that ideating is going toward your company—whereas an agency marketer may be on 3-4 accounts (hopefully not more).

Context switching is a constant battle in agency land. Is it a deal breaker when you have the right systems and capacity management? No. But it is something to consider.

Also, an in-house hire’s incentive is to crush it for your company, not to add more clients.

However, most smart agency operators know that crushing it for their clients will lead to more clients. That’s a rant for a different article.

Speed and reactiveness.

Because this person is on your account full-time, they can easily hop into conversations that are happening on social.

If there is a trending format to jump in on, or a post that makes sense to engage with, it happens instantly.

A+ agencies allow themselves to be nimble, but to expect an agency to ideate and publish a content idea within 1 hour of a request is not realistic.

Another example. If a customer asks a question on Twitter about a new feature that just launched, your SMM can hop in in minutes.

You don’t usually have this ability with a content agency. We’ve tried rolling reactive commenting out to some clients, but the logistics are a nightmare. Agencies are best used to produce content. In-house hires are best for community management and reactive social.

❌ The downsides of hiring in-house

Uncertainty.

In-house hires are a major dice roll.

Sure, you can have your interview process dialed in. But you never now what you’re getting until your new Social Media Manager starts their first day.

Scratch that. You never really know what you’re getting until your new Social Media Manager has been posting for ~1-2 months.

If your company is hitting its stride—maybe you just got a round of funding or are seeing traction pick up with your product—you want to strike when the iron is hot and strike well.

You don’t have the time to roll the dice 3-4 times before landing on the right hire. When pro bodybuilder and 5X Mr. Olympia Classic Physique champion Chris Bumstead selects his coach for Olympia prep, he’s going with Hany Rambod (who’s coached athletes to Olympia wins 24x), not some coach who just got their personal trainer certification.

Not to mention, playing hiring roulette gets expensive.

Hiring in-house also comes with ‘key man risk.’ At some point, the employee is going to leave. And when they do, you’re hung out to dry.

This isn’t as much of an issue if you are a larger company with a larger social team, but if this is the sole person running your social accounts, it’s tough to document their entire philosophy and translate that to another new hire after marketer #1 is already gone.

Even at larger startups, the pace of social moves so quickly that there isn’t time to sit down and document everything. Companies tend to optimize for the short term (getting posts up and seeing metrics increase) over the long term (documenting systems and ideology around social).

An agency will have a bench of talent, so one of their writers or designers leaving should be unnoticeable in your account, besides seeing a new face on a biweekly standup.

Learning curves.

Even the most talented social media hires will require 2-3 months to get up to speed with your product and the industry.

Social media skills transfer, but specific industry knowledge does not.

If you get lucky enough to hire an in-house social media manager with a strong track record in your exact industry, jump on it.

One of the reasons why I was able to hit the ground running with little supervision at Triple Whale was because I had spent 4-5 months freelancing for DTC Newsletter, another company that was marketing to the exact same audience.

Most SMMs are going to require time to ramp up though. So you’ll want to account for this when hiring. Do you have the time to wait for that learning curve? Or do you need to sprint now.

There isn’t a ‘correct’ answer to this question, but you need to be intentional about which direction you choose to go.

Narrow point of view.

The only social media data your new hire has access to is your own company’s.

It’s difficult to understand what’s happening in your industry, outside of anecdotes from other marketers or generic trend reports.

When something’s ‘not working,’ the fix isn’t always obvious. You end up throwing darts blindfolded.

This isn’t a ‘dealbreaker,’ as a talented social professional will figure it out. It’s just a quirk to be aware of.

✅ The upsides of hiring an agency

Time-to-ROI.

The best agencies work with a specific niche.

For example, Compound Content Studio only works with B2B tech. A lot of the tech startups we work with are in an even more specific niche—ecommerce infrastructure.

We have a far above-average level of knowledge of the social media ecosystem in that space. We understand the language. We know the key players. We know what pain points these people deal with.

This deep, industry-specific knowledge allows us to start shipping compelling content for clients we work with in 1-2 weeks, not 1-2 months.

If you are going to partner with a content agency, I would recommend vetting them for industry-specific knowledge beyond ‘social media best practices.’

Larger data set to work with.

Earlier I mentioned how in-house marketers are limited to their own data. Agencies have visibility into 5-10+ accounts at a time (larger ones may have 20-30+).

While the number of accounts can be a detriment when systems are not up to par, the number of accounts can also be a major advantage because of the data agencies have access to.

When something is working on another client account, the agency can easily test it on yours.

This accelerates the pace of progress because you can iterate faster.

When your account growth slows down, the agency can check if the trend is platform-wide, or unique to your account.

This is especially helpful when you pair this point with the one I just mentioned. An agency that has a large pool of industry-specific data can make better decisions for your accounts than an early-career in-house marketer.

I see this looking back at my time at Triple Whale. We were crushing. But I also held onto some beliefs and biases because of my myopic view of marketing. Now that I’ve been on 10-15+ accounts, I have a much more robust opinion on social strategy and nuances across companies.

You get a team on your account.

A startup hiring in-house for social likely isn’t going to hire a full social team.

The sole social media manager (or whoever on your marketing team is tasked with running social) is going to be responsible for the entire thing.

With most (good) agencies, your will have a team of professionals on it. For example, with our agency our clients have a content strategist, copywriter, designer, etc. on their account.

Hiring an A+ social media professional is expensive. Hiring an A+ social media team is even more expensive.

Hiring an agency is not cheap (especially us), but it does tend to be more cost-effective than hiring a full social media team in-house. I hesitate to use the cost angle here because it attracts cheap clients. But it is true.

When you’re an early- or growth-stage company, you should be conscious of where you funnel your budget.

❌ The downsides of hiring an agency

Reactive social.

It’s hard for agencies to be truly reactive on social.

There’s always some degree of lag time, whereas an in-house hire can jump in right away.

I’ve tried to fight this. But the logistics are horrendous. Maybe there are some agencies out there that do this, but I think agencies are better served to create evergreen content, not scouring the timeline for comments.

If this type of reactive social is something you value, you may want to hire in-house.

Overly templated garbage.

There are lots of great agencies out there. I like to think mine is one of them.

There are also loads of borderline scam artists out there who will cash in on a retainer and then do the bare minimum after promising the world.

It happens. I don’t think this is a flaw of ‘agencies’ as a whole, but rather working with the wrong agency.

I’ll write a post on vetting content agencies for B2B companies at some point (let me know if that would be helpful).

Bait and switch.

I’ve heard so many horror stories about agency owners who promise the world on sales calls, only to pass the newly won client off to a junior marketer.

It happens. Not at Compound. But it happens.

This is something you should be aware of, and vet for, as you assess your agency suitors.

That said, please don’t take this to mean that the agency owner should be the one hands-on in your account. This isn’t good either.

In an ideal setup, your account should be staffed with a highly trained team of marketers who aren’t spread insanely thin across accounts.

⚖️ My verdict?

I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna hit you with the classic:

It depends.

Whether or not to hire an agency or opt for in-house is up to your preferences as a company. What matters most to you as a founder, CMO, or Head of Marketing?

If you want predictable upside, I’d recommend going with an agency with a proven track record with clients in your niche.

If you’re okay with taking a gamble, and value the marketer on your account giving your company their complete focus, I’d go in-house.

Honestly, I think a stellar in-house social media marketer for companies who can 1) afford one 2) find a marketer with the specific industry knowledge they are looking for is the ideal set-up.

It’s kind of like the argument for founders writing their own content versus hiring an agency to produce it. If your founder has a passion for content creation and has the bandwidth to consistently produce content—that’s ideal. But 90% of the founders I speak to either hate content creation or are just swamped with other tasks in their business. So they hire.

So, while the unicorn in-house marketer may be the dream scenario, the odds of finding them are lower than you think. That said, an agency tailored for your specific type of company is the most predictable way to see success.

I also think the size of the agency you go with is something to consider. From my experience, and the anecdotes of others, larger content agencies tend to be more of a ‘content mill.’ They rack up loads of clients and produce templated material.

Quality is hard to scale. David Ogilvy once said, “The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying.”

It’s probably more satisfying because the agency can focus on doing great work—not churning and burning through their client roster.

This is especially true in social content, where it’s a bit more difficult to systemize outcomes than it is in fields like email marketing or outbound lead gen.

Content requires creativity. Scale requires standardization. The two are at odds with either other.

I am biased here, but I prefer more boutique agencies with a leaner team. I’m not saying all big agencies are bad—but an A+ content agency managing 30+ clients is the exception, not the rule.

TL;DR

Don’t hire for social media until you have signs of product-market fit—or are okay with organic social being unprofitable as a channel until you find it.

When you do hire:

• Go with an in-house hire if you value the employee having a sole focus on your account, and speed is an attribute you’re looking for in your social strategy. Agencies should be nimble and quick, but no matter how good they are, they won’t be as quick as an in-house hire.

• Go with an agency if you are trying to maximize predictable results in a relatively short amount of time. Finding talent that fits the criteria of an A+ in-house hire is a difficult mission. You likely don’t have time to figure that out as a fast-growing company, nor do you have time to handhold the new hire.

• If you hire an agency, it makes sense to go with one that is industry-specific—not a super general marketing agency. Deep, industry-specific knowledge is what leads to the best content. Find that, whether it’s with an agency or an in-house marketer.

If you have any questions about this, let me know. I’m happy to point you in the right direction.

Compound is booked out until ~February 2024 as of now. If you want to get on our waitlist (for B2B tech companies), I’ll leave that here.

And as always, if this piece was helpful, show it some love by sharing this in your marketing team’s Slack channel. I appreciate you reading.

🗃 FILE CABINET

Here’s my favorite marketing and business content I bookmarked this week.

• Confessions of an Advertising Man by David Ogilvy

• Wanting by Luke Burgis

• How I'd ramp up a B2B company's social content engine going into 2024 by Tommy Clark

Check these out.

BEFORE YOU GO…

I’m curious. If you’re a founder or marketer at a startup, which direction do you lean?

In-house or agency?

(I won’t be offended if you say in-house).

Reply to this and let me know.

Thanks for reading, as always.

Talk soon,

Tommy Clark