How to choose who runs your company's social media

On January 31, 2013, the official Twitter account of HMV, the British chain of record stores, began live-tweeting the layoffs at its head office. The posts were written by head office staff who were being let go that day, under the hashtag #hmvXFactorFiring. One message spoke of more than 60 people fired at once, another of a “mass execution.” The posts stayed online for about 20 minutes. In total there were 190 layoffs, across the head office and the distribution network.

The reports from that day don't say who had access to the account or how it was set up. But the case brings to mind the first question to ask when you choose who will handle your social media: who holds the keys to the account, and who can take them back quickly? It is usually the last one people ask.

Agency, freelancer or someone in-house: what really changes?

The three options answer different needs, and price is only one of the criteria. It helps to start from three questions.

How much material needs to be produced? If the company already has photos and videos, or needs only a few, one person who writes, posts and replies may be enough. If every month calls for new footage, editing and graphics, one person on their own ends up either doing everything in a rush or recycling the same images over and over. In that case an agency that also has people to shoot and edit makes sense.

Who answers the messages? Comments and direct messages arrive on Saturdays too. According to the Sprout Social Index 2025, a survey of 4,044 consumers in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, 73% say they will buy from a competitor if a brand doesn't respond on social media. The figure isn't Italian, but the question applies everywhere: who covers the days when the person in charge is on vacation?

Who decides what the company says? Someone in-house knows the product, the customers and the everyday problems, but is often also the person who answers the phone and prepares the shipments, and social media becomes the last task of the day. An outsider has more time and more craft, but needs someone at the company who approves, provides information and says no. Without that person, any agency is working blind.

Who owns the company's social media accounts?

The company, always. Said like that it sounds obvious, but it often happens that a page was opened by the owner's nephew or by the first employee, with their personal email, and years later nobody knows how to get it back.

The practical rules are few. The accounts and the Meta business portfolio, the space that brings together the Facebook page, the Instagram account and the ad accounts, should be created in the company's name, with a company email. Whoever runs the social media gets partner access, a Meta feature designed specifically for agencies: whoever has full control of the portfolio chooses which pages and accounts to share and at what level of access, and can remove the partner in the settings. The same goes for the material: the contract should state that photos, videos and copy produced for the company remain usable even if the collaboration ends.

The HMV case doesn't tell us how access to that account was managed. It is still a good reminder: who can revoke access, and how, is worth knowing before the day you need it.

How can you tell if the person pitching to you is any good?

In Italy there is no official register of social media managers. Law 4 of 2013, on professions not organized into orders or associations, says so explicitly: “the practice of the profession is free.” There is a technical standard, UNI 11483, updated in 2021 for professional communicators, with three levels (Junior, Expert and Senior). Like all UNI standards it is voluntary: having it is a signal, not having it doesn't say much.

Three things to ask at the first meeting count for more:

• Two projects done for companies similar to yours, with real accounts you can open, not just slides.
• Who does the work every day. At many agencies, the person who presents the project isn't the one who then posts and replies. That's fine, but you need to know it and meet them.
• A proposal on a real problem of yours. Half an hour is enough: you can tell who has understood the company from what they suggest not doing.

Which numbers should you ask for in the reports?

Followers are the easiest number to inflate and the least useful to watch. In the United States, a Federal Trade Commission rule announced on August 14, 2024, bans buying or selling followers and views generated by bots or hijacked accounts, when the buyer knows or should know they are fake and uses them to appear, for commercial purposes, more influential than they are. An agency that promises to “grow your followers” without saying how is a first warning sign.

On Instagram, the platform's head, Adam Mosseri, said in January 2025 which signals carry the most weight in deciding who gets shown a piece of content: watch time, likes and sends, meaning how many people pass the content on to someone in a private message. His advice, in his own words, was to look at “average watch time, likes per reach, and sends per reach.” Those are the numbers to ask for every month, along with response times to messages.

And then there is a number no tool measures: how many of the things posted a competitor could have posted just by swapping the logo.

What does the category have to do with social media?

This is where our reading comes in, that of a Category Design agency. Whoever runs your social media makes dozens of small decisions every week: which photo, which word, what to reply to, which trend to follow. If nobody has told them which category the company wants to be remembered in, they make those decisions by looking at competitors, and the account ends up looking like everyone else's in the industry.

That is why the right question to ask a candidate isn't “how many posts a month?” but “what would you say about us that our competitors can't say?”. If the answer is vague, the company's position probably is too, and it is worth clarifying that first. That is what we explain in the guide to Category Design; if you suspect you are competing on the wrong ground, there are five signs to check.

Trends of the moment should be read the same way. In the same Sprout Social survey, a third of consumers find it embarrassing when a brand jumps on viral trends. People who run social media well know when not to follow them.

What are the signs that you chose wrong?

Some show up in the quote itself: a package of posts per month that is the same for every client, no questions about the company's customers, a request for passwords instead of partner access. Others arrive after a few months: reports made only of followers and likes, messages left unanswered for days, posts that could sit on anyone's account.

None of these signs depends on whether your social media is run by a large agency, a freelancer or the youngest person in the office. It depends on who, at the company, has decided what it wants people to remember, and who holds the keys.

At HMV, while the posts about the layoffs were circulating on the official account, one of them quoted a line that, according to the person writing, the marketing director had just said in the office: “How do I shut down the Twitter?”