Community management is the part of social media that happens after publishing: answering comments and messages, moderating, spotting a complaint before it becomes a thread, and being present when something goes wrong at nine on a Sunday evening. Outsourcing it means handing strangers the right to speak as your business in public. That is a reasonable thing to do, and it requires a level of specification that most contracts for this service do not have.
Cover hours are the specification that costs money
Nine to five on weekdays is cheap and leaves you silent at exactly the times consumer audiences are active. Extended and weekend cover costs more because it needs more people. Decide the hours you actually need based on when your audience posts, put the response window in the contract, and report performance against it every month.
Write the escalation rules before anything goes wrong
What the agency may answer directly, what requires your approval, what must be escalated within minutes, and to whom. Include the categories that matter: safety, legal threats, allegations about staff, press enquiries arriving as comments. Agree this on paper and rehearse one scenario, because the first serious incident is not the moment to discover nobody knows who decides.
The tone document is the real deliverable
A good agency will build a living document of how you sound: worked examples of real replies, the words you use and avoid, how you apologize, how much humour is appropriate, and what a refusal looks like. That document is what makes a team of several people sound like one business, and it should belong to you and survive a change of supplier.
Moderation is a duty of care, not just brand safety
Your own pages carry comments from the public, including harassment and misinformation directed at other users and at your staff. Agree a moderation policy covering what is hidden or removed and why, how repeat offenders are handled, and how the people doing this work are supported. Both the legal and the human dimensions here are frequently ignored until they are urgent.
Questions people ask about community management agency
How is community management priced?
Largely by cover hours and expected volume, since it is a staffed service. Ask how many accounts each person covers simultaneously and what happens during a spike, because the answer determines whether your response window survives a busy day.
Should community management sit with the social agency?
It is convenient and it creates a conflict, since the same supplier publishes the content and reports on the reaction. Some organizations separate them deliberately. Whichever you choose, make response times and escalation compliance reported facts rather than assurances.
Can the agency respond to complaints about service?
Within an agreed framework, and only as a first response that acknowledges and routes the person to a resolution path. The substantive answer belongs with whoever can actually fix it, and the handover between the two is where these arrangements most often fail.
What should be reported?
Response times against the agreed window, volumes by type, escalations and how they resolved, recurring themes in what people ask, and sentiment with a stated method. The recurring themes are the most valuable output and the one most often left out of the report.