Social Media Agencies

Social Media Agencies near you

Social media agencies do several different jobs that get sold under one name: producing organic content, managing the community and inbox, buying paid social, and arranging influencer or creator partnerships. A business asking for help with social usually wants one or two of these and ends up paying for a bundle, so the first useful conversation is about which of them the agency is actually good at.

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The UK has the most developed influencer disclosure regime of any comparable market, and it is where social work most often goes wrong. CAP's position is that whenever a brand gives an influencer a payment or any other incentive, requested or unsolicited, any content featuring or referring to the brand needs to be obviously identifiable as advertising. The Code also covers a company's own social channels where the content is directly connected to supplying goods, services, opportunities or gifts.

Two regulators are in play at once. The ASA handles the advertising Code, while the CMA enforces consumer protection law, under which undisclosed paid promotion can be a misleading omission. Their joint guidance for influencers has been updated to reflect the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. The brand is not a bystander in either case.

What falls under social media management

Organic content production: planning, shooting, editing and scheduling posts across channels.
Community management, which is customer service in public and needs an escalation route to someone who can fix problems.
Paid social buying, a different discipline with its own account structure and budget.
Influencer and creator partnerships, including sourcing, briefing, contracting and checking disclosure.
Employee advocacy and founder-led content, where the personal account carries the brand message.
Listening and reporting, which is how you find out what is being said when nobody tags you.

Influencer disclosure: what the ASA requires

CAP's guidance is direct: where a brand gives an influencer a payment or any other incentive, requested or unsolicited, content featuring or referring to that brand must be obviously identifiable as advertising under Section 2 of the Code. Gifted products count as an incentive. Affiliate links count, because the influencer earns commission from the content.

The label has to do work. CAP treats Ad, Advert, Advertising, Advertisement and Advertisement Feature as acceptable. It does not accept sponsored, gifted or in association with as sufficient on their own, and it rejects abbreviations such as aff, sp and spon because consumers are unlikely to be familiar with them or to read them as meaning advertising.

Placement matters as much as wording. The content must be recognisable as advertising immediately, without the viewer having to click or otherwise interact with it. A disclosure hidden behind a see more link, or buried at the end of a hashtag block, does not meet the requirement. Where a brand pays for and controls the content, the brand is responsible too, not only the creator.

The CMA route, and reviews posted as social content

Undisclosed paid promotion can also be a misleading omission under consumer protection law, which the CMA enforces separately from the ASA.
Posting or commissioning fake reviews is explicitly banned by the unfair commercial practices rules that have applied since 6 April 2025.
Incentivised reviews that are not disclosed sit in the same banned list, which catches gifting campaigns that ask for a review as well as a post.
The CMA can now decide that consumer law has been infringed and act directly, with government stating maximum penalties of up to 10 per cent of global turnover.
The ASA can name influencers on a dedicated non-compliant social media influencer page for up to three months and run targeted ads about repeated non-disclosure.
Agency contracts should place the disclosure obligation on the agency and require evidence that each creator complied.

Direct messages, competitions and customer data

Marketing messages sent to individuals by electronic mail need consent under PECR, and direct messages carrying a promotion are not obviously outside that.
Competition entrants have consented to enter a competition, not to receive your newsletter, unless you asked separately and clearly.
Data collected from a social platform still needs a lawful basis and a privacy notice that describes what you will do with it.
Custom audiences built from customer lists involve sharing personal data with a platform, which the customer should be able to find out about.
Tracking pixels placed on your site to measure social ads are non-essential and need consent before they fire.
User-generated content reposted from customers needs permission, since the person who took the photograph owns the copyright in it.

Approvals, brand safety and crisis handling

A content calendar approved in advance, with a named person who can sign off claims and a route for urgent posts.
A written influencer brief that states the disclosure requirement and the exact label to be used, up front and visible.
A check after publication that each creator actually disclosed, with a record kept.
An escalation policy for complaints, product safety issues and anything involving a named individual.
Agreed pause criteria for scheduled content when something happens in the news.
A tone of voice document, so the person replying at nine in the evening does not have to improvise.

Account ownership and the password question

Social accounts are frequently created by whoever was around at the time, which means an agency employee, a former intern or a marketing manager who has since left. Recovery then depends on a personal email address and a phone number nobody has. This is the most common avoidable loss in social media work.

Fix it structurally. Company pages and profiles should be owned by a business account belonging to your organisation, with individuals granted roles within it. Use a shared company email address for recovery, keep two administrators who are employees, and add the agency as a manager rather than an owner.

The same applies to the content. Photography, video and graphics made for your channels stay in the creator's ownership by default under UK copyright law unless the contract assigns them to you, so an agreement that covers the assets as well as the access is worth having before the first shoot rather than after the last one.

What a social retainer includes, and what it does not

Content volume per channel, stated as a number, because a post and a produced video are not the same unit of work.
Whether production - photography, shoots, editing, design - is included or quoted separately.
Community management hours and the response times they are meant to support.
Paid media budget, always separate from the management fee, and who is billed by the platform.
Influencer fees and gifted product costs, which pass through and should be visible.
Out-of-hours cover, which is a real cost and should be priced rather than assumed.

Social Media Agencies: frequently asked questions

Does a gifted product have to be labelled as an ad?

If the brand gave it and has editorial control over the resulting content, yes. CAP's position is that where a brand gives an influencer a payment or any other incentive, requested or unsolicited, content featuring or referring to that brand must be obviously identifiable as advertising. A gift is an incentive. Labels such as gifted are not accepted as sufficient on their own - CAP looks for Ad, Advert, Advertising or Advertisement, placed up front.

Is putting #ad at the end of the caption enough?

Usually not. The requirement is that content is recognisable as advertising immediately, without the viewer having to click or interact with it. A label at the end of a caption that is truncated behind a see more link, or dropped into a block of hashtags, does not achieve that. Put the label at the start of the caption or clearly on the video itself, and check after publication that it displays as intended.

Who is responsible if an influencer fails to disclose - us or them?

Potentially both. The CAP Code applies to the influencer's content, and the ASA can add them to a dedicated non-compliant social media influencer page for up to three months. But where the brand paid for and controlled the content, the brand is an advertiser too. Separately, the CMA can treat undisclosed paid promotion as a misleading omission under consumer protection law. Brief disclosure in writing and check compliance afterwards.

Can we ask customers for a review in exchange for a discount?

Only if the incentive is disclosed. Incentivised reviews that are not disclosed are on the list of banned practices under the unfair commercial practices provisions applying from 6 April 2025, alongside fake reviews. If a gifting campaign asks creators to post and to leave a review, both the post and the review need to make the arrangement clear.

Should the agency hold the passwords to our accounts?

No. Set the pages up under a business account owned by your organisation, keep at least two administrators who are employees, use a shared company email for recovery, and add the agency with a manager-level role. That way access ends cleanly when the contract does. Also agree in writing that photography, video and design made for the channels is assigned to you, since the creator is otherwise the first owner.

Sources

Written by the LokalMatch editorial team. Last reviewed 22 September 2026. How we write and check our guides

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What affects the fees social media agencies charge

Fees depend on the work involved and how the professional bills. We only publish fee ranges when they’re backed by real LokalMatch data or reliable sources. Until then, here’s what usually changes the fee:

Scope and complexity of the work
How the firm bills: hourly, per project or on a monthly retainer
Experience of the team
Timeline and how urgent the work is
Ongoing support after the work is delivered

How to compare social media agencies before you hire

Ask for examples of similar work for clients like you.
Read reviews and ask for references you can contact.
Make sure the scope, deliverables and timeline are written down before work starts.
Ask who will do the work: an in-house team, freelancers or subcontractors.
Compare two or three proposals before you decide.

Questions to ask social media agencies before you hire

Have you done work like this before, and can I see examples?
Who will work on this, and who is my main contact?
How do you charge: hourly, per project or monthly?
What is included, and what costs extra?
How long is the contract, and how can either side end it?
How will you report on progress?
Who owns the work, files and accounts you set up for me?

Licences and registration

This kind of work is often limited to licensed or registered professionals, and the rules depend on where you are. Ask which body they’re registered with, and check their status on that body’s public register before you hire.

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