What Should Be Included in a Social Media Marketing Package?
A real package covers strategy, a monthly content shoot, short-form video editing, design, copywriting, scheduling, community management, reporting and usually some paid media. Comparing agencies on posts per month is the wrong comparison, because it treats twelve stock graphics and twelve originally shot videos as the same product when they cost and perform nothing alike.
What should a social media marketing package include?
At minimum: a documented strategy, a regular content shoot producing original photography and video, editing for short-form, design for static posts, copywriting, scheduling, community management, and monthly reporting that says what did not work as well as what did. Paid media and creator outreach are usually separate lines rather than assumed inclusions.
People search this before asking for quotes, which is exactly the right time, because the way most quotes are structured makes them very hard to compare.
Why post count is the wrong comparison
Almost every proposal leads with a number of posts. It is the easiest thing to put in a table and the least useful thing to compare.
Twelve posts a month can mean twelve stock images with a caption. It can also mean twelve pieces cut from a half-day shoot at your business, colour graded and edited for vertical. Those cost different amounts, take different skills, and perform nothing alike. On a spreadsheet they are the same row.
Post count also rewards the wrong behaviour. An agency held to twenty posts a month will produce twenty posts, and filling a quota is not the same as building an audience. Fewer, better pieces usually outperform more, thinner ones, but "fewer" looks worse in a proposal.
The better question is not how many, but **where does the content come from**. That single question separates most agencies immediately.
What a real package contains
Strategy, written down
Who it is for, what it says, which platforms, which formats, what success looks like. Reviewed rather than written once and filed.
If nobody can show you the strategy document, there probably isn't one.
A content shoot
The heart of it. Someone comes to your business regularly and produces original photography and video.
Ask how often, how long, who is there, and what you get. A half day monthly is a common shape. A shoot every quarter means three of every four months are running on old material.
Short-form video editing
Vertical video cut properly: paced, captioned for sound-off viewing, hooked in the first second, exported for each platform. Ask how many finished videos, not how many hours of footage.
Design
Static posts, carousels, stories, covers. Consistent with your actual brand rather than a template that vaguely matches.
Copywriting
Captions, hooks, bios, link pages. Written by someone rather than generated and left.
Scheduling and publishing
Calendar built, approved, queued, and checked. Table stakes, and it should not be the headline.
Community management
Comments and messages answered, in your voice, within a stated time. Get the response time in writing, because this is the piece most likely to quietly lapse and it is where enquiries actually arrive.
Reporting
Monthly, plain, and honest. What was published, what performed, what did not, and what changes next month as a result.
A report with only good numbers in it is marketing for the agency rather than information for you.
What is usually separate, and should be
**Paid advertising.** Almost always a separate scope, plus the ad spend itself, which goes to the platform rather than the agency. Make sure you know which number is which.
**Creator and influencer work.** Separate, because it involves paying third parties.
**Website work.** Separate discipline. Worth knowing that sending social traffic to a weak site wastes the social spend. That connection is worth understanding before you scale either one.
**Big production.** A full brand film is a project, not a line in a monthly retainer.
Questions that reveal the real shape
Ask these five and the differences between quotes stop being about price.
**Where does the content come from?** Original shoots, my phone, or stock? This is the most important question on the list.
**How often do you shoot, and for how long?**
**How many finished vertical videos per month?**
**Who replies to comments and DMs, and within what time?**
**What does the report include when a month goes badly?**
The fifth one is the most revealing, and the one most agencies have not prepared for.
Roughly how to think about budget
Without inventing numbers, the shape is predictable.
The cheapest packages are usually publishing services. Someone schedules content you supply. That is a real service and it is worth something, but it will not build anything on its own.
The middle covers production. Regular shoots, real editing, someone managing the account properly. This is where most independent businesses that are serious about social end up.
The top adds paid media management, creator programmes and larger production. It makes sense when there is enough revenue riding on the channel to justify it.
The mistake is buying the cheapest tier and expecting the middle tier's outcome. What a restaurant specifically should expect to spend is covered separately.
Before you sign
Get the deliverables written as counts, not adjectives. "Regular content" is not a deliverable. "One half-day shoot, eight vertical videos, six static posts, community management with same-business-day replies" is.
Ask who owns the footage. You should. Get it in writing, and make sure raw files are included rather than only the exports.
Ask what happens in month one, before a library exists.
And ask what the exit looks like. A good agency will answer that calmly.
We publish what our own work includes on the social media marketing page. What an agency actually does day to day is worth reading alongside this.
Questions people ask
How many posts per month should a social media package include?
Post count is the wrong measure. Twelve stock images with captions and twelve videos cut from a shoot at your business are the same row on a spreadsheet and nothing alike in cost or performance. Ask where the content comes from instead, because that single question separates most agencies immediately.
Should paid advertising be included in a social media package?
Usually it is a separate scope, and the ad spend itself is separate again since that money goes to the platform rather than the agency. Make sure you know which figure is management and which is spend, because quotes that blur the two are very hard to compare.
Who owns the photos and videos an agency produces for me?
You should, and it belongs in writing before you sign. Ask specifically for the raw files rather than only the finished exports, since a library you cannot access is a library you will pay to rebuild if you ever change agency.
What questions should I ask before signing a social media contract?
Where the content comes from, how often and how long they shoot, how many finished vertical videos you get per month, who answers comments and messages and within what time, and what the monthly report contains when a month goes badly. Also ask what happens in month one before a content library exists.