Notes for owners · Digital marketing
Who should run your social media: the owner, a junior, or an agency
How to decide whether the owner, a junior hire or an agency should run your social media, where each one fails, and which jobs should always stay with someone inside the business.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 6 min read
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Choose by what your account is for and who can keep the routine going. The owner should run it if the voice matters most and the volume is small. A junior suits regular production when someone senior reads every post before it goes out. An agency suits a business that needs strategy, paid work or several channels, and has someone inside to give it facts and approve. Whoever you pick, replies and approvals stay with you.
Where does each option fail?
Each has its own way of failing, and knowing it tells you what to guard against.
| Who | Works when | Fails when |
|---|---|---|
| The owner | The voice is the product: a chef, a designer, a clinic head with a point of view | The shop gets busy, posts stop, and nobody notices for weeks |
| A junior hire | There is a brief, a reviewer and a fixed set of things to post | Nobody reviews the work, and a claim goes up that you would not make |
| An agency | You need planning, paid campaigns or several platforms handled together | You send nothing for it to work with, and it fills the gaps with stock images and generic captions |
None of these is the right answer in itself. The question is which failure you can prevent.
What should stay in the business whatever you choose?
Three jobs do not travel well.
- Replies. A customer who messages the page wants an answer from someone who knows the shop. Delegate the drafting if you must, but a person inside answers questions about price, stock, timings or a complaint. Agree a time of day by which every message is seen.
- Approvals. Anything that states a price, an offer, a result, a qualification or a promise is checked by someone with authority before it goes up. In health, education, finance and food, claims follow rules that differ by state and body and change, so check with your own adviser.
- Facts. Dates of events, what is in stock, who is on duty. The person running the account asks, and the business answers the same day.
Everything else can be handed over: photographs, captions, scheduling, ad setup, a look at what worked. Keep the list of what is handed over in writing.
How do you choose in practice?
Answer four questions honestly.
- Who will still be doing this when the shop is at its busiest? If the honest answer is "I will, in the evenings", expect the owner route to lapse in your busiest weeks.
- Is there anyone to review a junior's work? Without a reviewer, a junior hire is a risk, not a saving.
- Do you have anything for an agency to work with? Photographs, price lists, customer stories, a person who answers questions. If not, start with an hour of collecting.
- Is paid advertising part of the plan? Setting up and reading paid campaigns is a separate skill from posting.
Whoever you pick, give them a one-page sheet of what the business may say and what it may not, such as discounts you do not offer and claims your adviser has ruled out. It costs an hour to write and saves a post being taken down.
A mix is possible. The owner posts a few times a month about work they care about, a junior handles the rest, and an agency or consultant looks at the whole account now and then.
An invented example: a boutique in Patna
Imagine a boutique in Patna selling ethnic wear to families. Its Instagram is run by the owner's niece, who is in college. Posts are pretty but irregular. Customers message to ask whether a particular outfit is available, and the messages sit unanswered for a day or two, because the niece sees them only at weekends.
The owner considers an agency. Instead, the niece keeps the page and prepares the posts, and the counter manager gets a new job: check messages twice during shop hours and reply with a saved answer covering availability, the day the piece can be tried, and the shop's address. The owner reads every caption that mentions price or an offer before it goes out.
Messages now get an answer during shop hours, and the niece's weekends stop being a bottleneck. The counter manager grumbles about the extra task, and two of the saved answers have to be rewritten after customers ask questions they did not cover.
The trouble was never the posting. No one inside the shop owned the replies. An agency would have posted more and left that unchanged.
What should you do if you hire an agency?
Brief them in writing: who you want to reach, what the account must produce, what they can and cannot say, and who answers messages. Ask what they will show you and how they will measure it in enquiries and bookings, not just reach. Agree who owns the account logins and the content, and keep administrator access yourself.
When should you change who runs it?
Change when messages go unanswered, when posts say things you would not say, or when the account produces nothing you can trace to an enquiry after a fair run. The change need not be dramatic. Moving one job, replies or approvals, to the right person may be enough.
What to do this week
List every social media task, put a name next to each, and mark the three that stay inside the business. Show the page to whoever runs the account. If the account needs production help, see social community management, and the marketing hub lists the other options. If you would like a second look at your current setup, tell us what you need.
