We are living in a world of smoke and mirrors where people show certain things when the curtains open yet behind the scenes they’re absolutely clueless, attempting to exude an aura of success, and pulling everything from the book of snake oil tricks to get there. And looking at the social media marketing world, that = failures and companies always searching for something better because things didn’t work out before.

At the same time, similar to bad relationships we’ve all had in the past whether personal or professional, you still remember them and behaviorally it affects you whether that’s 1% or 90% of your future decision-making process and those memories will always come into play.

Now think about dealing with previous social media agencies that talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk, which is no different than the old school saying: “Don’t tell me what you’re going to do, show me what you’ve done.” And every company looking for a top social media agency today needs to be asking that question. Where’s the proof in the pudding?

To help you on that path of cutting through the smoke and mirrors in the social media industry today, we’ve spent almost 20 years guiding the biggest companies in the world, fun startups and many others in the social media space, and below are questions we commonly get related to evaluating then eventually hiring new social media agencies:

How do you choose the best social media marketing agency?
Choosing “the best” social media agency is important though also subjective in many ways based on individual goals, and what we’ve found is that the best is often related to knowledge in the specific field/industry the client is in as well as internal experience in the past. For example, guiding 50 similar companies in the past versus trying to figure things out now.

How to evaluate a social media agency?
Similar to what we mentioned above, the best way to evaluate a social media agency is to review their performance in the past along with their overall knowledge of your particular industry/products/services along with other factors that can impact your business, which become very important at a large scale (Fortune 500s, etc.).

For example, does the agency have a legal background and understand the potential implications of what they’re posting on social media then subsequent issues and how to address them? If not, that can lead to major issues and recently our team has appeared as social media expert witnesses in a variety of cases around exactly this.

Is it worth hiring a social media agency?
For many small to medium sized businesses hiring a social media agency just doesn’t make sense and the goal is to have internal teams perform at the highest level, though sometimes those same teams inherently operate with blinders and need outside feedback to both help them and the company as a whole. And that’s where hiring an outside social media agency whether it’s to be hands-on or simply consult and guide the future is helpful.

The moral of the story: Hopefully the above insights are helpful for companies that have found themselves in a pickle and if you have questions we’re here to help whether you want to run ideas by us, geek out on tech or find ways to work together.