You Think You’re Ready to Hire a Social Media Manager

11 Mar You Think You’re Ready to Hire a Social Media Manager

You’ve grown your business, and you think you’re ready to hire some outside marketing help to make some even bigger things happen. Congratulations! Before you plan to hire a social media manager (SMM) or marketing agency to bring those big ideas to fruition, review the list below and see where you stand. The team at Stitchcraft Marketing has compiled a list of common roadblocks and bottlenecks we see with businesses that want to hire their first outside marketing team—be it a solo social media manager or a full-service agency. 

But first, ask yourself these questions:

1. What marketing do you already have in place? Do you have email marketing, a blog or other organic content, a CRM or lead capture strategy? Social media works best when it feeds into a broader marketing system. Read more about being an omnichannel presence here.
2. What channels do you want this person or team managing? Only looking for Instagram? Want full Meta plus TikTok? Or maybe YouTube too? The number of platforms affects the workload and skillset required. 
3. Is paid social part of the job? Managing paid media is a different skill set than organic content creation. If you expect ads, targeting, attribution, and reporting, you may need a performance marketer, not just a content manager. 
4. What business outcome are you expecting? “Grow our Instagram” is one goal. “Drive more product sales on our website” is a different goal. If those goals are conflated but not clearly articulated, you may get one and not the other… and end up frustrated with the hire. 
5. What should success look like in 9 months? This could be a larger audience, higher engagement, increased email subscribers, more ecommerce sales, or something else. 

Now that you have those questions to ponder, onto the team’s list of common roadblocks and bottlenecks when businesses are new to hiring marketing help.  

Have a defined brand guide…

…or prepare to pay to have one created. A brand guide is more than your logo and a few colors you tend to use. A brand guide is the collection of defining assets and boundaries that a business and its team (ahem, new SMM) follow to create cohesion across all channels and representations of a business. Without this, things get murky—not just for your SMM, but for your audience too, and that’s not the kind of mud you want to get in. 

At Stitchcraft Marketing, we’re reworking our brand guide and social media templates in Spring 2026, so we know how much work this is! Keep an eye on our Instagram feed the next few months to see our evolution. 

A strong brand guide, at minimum, includes:

• Your brand colors, plus accepted neutral colors, including hex codes
• Your brand logo in all of its forms (yes, there should be more than one size and stack, plus color and transparency options)
• Your brand emblem in all of its forms
• Your brand icon/s in all of their forms
• Any additional approved graphics to be used
• A selection of “this, not that” usage examples
• Your brand fonts and defined usage cases – when, where, and how to use each font
• Examples of brand copy, highlighting the brand voice
• Stock photos + videos to use—these can be photos + videos you took or paid for

Stitchcraft’s quick guide to logos, emblems, and icons:

Logos are the overall visual of a brand. It’s versatile with both image and text. 

Emblems are traditional, enclosed badges of text within a shape. This can be any shape, but circles can be handy with all of the round profile pictures out there!

Icons are symbolic, visual identifiers. Not only are these great for smaller spaces, like hangtags, a common digital use is also favicons: that little image you see on each browser tab you have open right now. 

Fun fact: favicon is short for favorite icon. 

Be ready to communicate digitally…

…or prepare for a fair amount of hands-on time sorting this out. Like it or not, we’re in the digital age, and that doesn’t just mean email and online checkout; it means digital safety too. Please have 2FA (two-factor authentication) set up, and know where those access points are. As much as we love to help you, we can’t help you figure out who on your team—past or present—has the phone number that ends in 1298. 

Most agencies and SMMs work heavily via email and project management systems. This means even more digital communication. When beginning your engagement with an agency or SMM, you should be discussing what a timely response time is for all parties. We get that not everyone is in their email every day, has the time to get through every email, or gets overwhelmed by their inbox, but to do our job well, we need to be on the same page. Defining a timely response, be it 24 hours or 2-3 days, allows us to know what to expect before we start nagging and escalating. It also allows us to plan project timelines to meet deadlines. We need to plan backward, with communication and asset collection timing included, plus a cushion, to ensure we’re sending information out to the World Wide Web on time. 

Be organized…

…and ready to share. To do effective and timely work, don’t make your SMM hunt through folders of unnamed files to find the correct photo. That’s not their job, and you’re paying them a high rate to do low-level administrative work rather than letting them focus on making your business shine. If you’re accustomed to dumping images into random folders, make an effort to start higher-level organization now. Create folders by month or special event, and name every file you’d like to be considered for use in marketing efforts. 

Keep a clear calendar of important events so we can keep on top of it together…and plan ahead accordingly. Having a 6-month lead time helps us promote the most strategically and effectively; however, even 3 months is helpful. This doesn’t have to be fancy. A simple calendar or a running document will work as long as it’s digital and can be shared. Post-it notes on a physical calendar in your office only work for those who can be in your office. 

Bonus action: Create a brand guide folder with subfolders organized according to the list above. 

Be clear about your goals…

…meaning going beyond what everyone wants: “more sales.” Yes, uptrending revenue is almost every business’s general goal, but it’s just that, general. To plan and take action strategically, SMART goals need to be in play. We’re here to help you strategize how to get those sales, but we also need to take sensible, measurable, and attainable action. We wrote an article and have a podcast about SMART goals, ready for you to dig in and get defining. 

Additionally, be ready to share your data. When a SMM or agency gets access to your data, we can identify gaps and opportunities, plus show you where your financial investments in marketing are making returns. 

Have an open mind–and follow-through–with photography requests…

…there’s a reason behind it! As social media and marketing professionals, we work with our hands in social media every day, picking up on trends before they peak, bookmarking content ideas and styles for clients—even in our personal time—and prioritizing the visual nature of your audience. 

Be prepared to use your cell phone to create baseline photo and video assets. Yes! Cell phone photography works well when you employ a few key practices. Being a craft business, you’re already in a visual medium, and clean photography and videography help your audience bridge the gap between the visual and tactile nature of craft. 

Your SMM or marketing agency will need photo and video assets to edit for posts, and you’ll need them to keep your website up to date and attractive. High-resolution images in clear lighting are your friend. No one wants to be able to count pixels when expanding an image to see details. 

Stitchcraft has a selection of articles on photography tips and why quality photography matters. 

Bonus action: keep your online shop clear of out-of-stock items. This reduces clutter—and frustration—for your SMM and your customers. 

Would you like to discuss if you’re ready for the next steps to hire a marketing team? Fill out our contact form or schedule a call today. Stitchcraft Marketing is a full-service digital marketing agency for craft-based businesses, fueled by marketing experts who are passionate about fiber and fabric crafts.