A good done-for-you social service should deliver six things: a written strategy tied to your buyers, drafts in your voice, finished design, an approval step where nothing posts without your yes, scheduling and publishing, and a monthly report that goes past likes. Vet it with a scorecard, clear contract terms and a two-week trial before you commit.
The category is easy to find and hard to judge. Many providers promise the same thing on their homepage: we write it, we design it, we post it, you approve it. The differences show up later, in whether the posts sound like you, whether approval is real or a formality, and whether anyone can tell you what the posts did.
This note sets out what the deliverable should include, the questions to ask before you sign, a scorecard for comparing providers side by side, the contract terms worth reading twice, and a two-week trial plan that tells you more than any sales call.
What should a done-for-you social service actually deliver?
Six parts. Most providers are strong on two or three and quiet about the rest.
Whatever the package is called, a complete service covers these six parts.
- A strategy you can read. A short written document: who the posts are for, which channels and why, the three or four themes the posts will return to, how often, and what a good month looks like. If the only strategy is a posting frequency, there is no strategy.
- Drafts in your voice. Captions and post copy written from a brief about your business, your buyers and how you talk. The first month should include a way for you to correct the voice, and the second month should need fewer corrections.
- Finished design. Images, carousels, and short video if it is in scope, made to your brand guidelines, with the stock or licensed assets accounted for.
- An approval step. Every finished post, the final version with its image and caption, reaches a named person on your side before it is scheduled. You can approve, edit or reject it.
- Scheduling and publishing. The provider schedules approved posts and publishes them on your accounts, at times it can explain.
- Reporting that goes past likes. What was posted, what people did with it, and, where your tools can show it, whether any of it led to visits, replies, sign-ups or conversations.
Some services also reply to comments and messages on your behalf. Treat that as a seventh part with its own rules, because a reply goes out in your name as surely as a post does. If it is included, it needs the same approval thinking, or at least clear written limits on what the provider may say without asking.
Notice what is not on the list: promised follower growth. A provider can control what it posts and when. It cannot control what an audience does, and a promise about follower numbers tends to push toward posts designed for reach rather than for your buyers.
When does done-for-you social make sense, and when does it not?
It fits when the gap is hours. It struggles when the gap is knowing what to say.
Done-for-you social is a sensible buy when you know what your business stands for, you know who buys from you, and the problem is that nobody has the hours to turn that into a steady run of posts. The service supplies the hours and the craft of design. You supply the substance and the yes.
It is a harder buy when the posts need expertise that lives only in your team. A B2B company selling to engineers, clinicians or finance teams needs posts that a specialist would not wince at. A generalist writer working from your website will produce something that reads well and says little. That is not a failing of the writer. It is a missing input, and the vetting below is mostly about finding out whether a provider has a way to get it from you.
The market has several shapes. Services such as Feedbird, 99 Dollar Social and SocialBee’s concierge service are examples of packaged, approve-before-posting social management. Freelancers, found directly or through marketplaces, offer the same work with more flexibility and less process. Scheduling tools such as Buffer or Hootsuite do none of the writing but give you the calendar and approval mechanics to run it yourself. These are examples of the options, not recommendations. The same scorecard applies to all of them.
One more question to settle before you shop: is social the gap, or is it the most visible symptom of a wider one? If you are also short of email, website and reporting help, a social-only service may be the wrong purchase. The note What is an AI growth agency, and how do you tell a real one from a relabelled agency? covers the broader option.
What should you ask a provider before you sign?
Ten questions. The answers matter less than whether they come quickly and specifically.
Put these to every provider on your shortlist, in writing, so you can compare the answers.
- What do you need from us each month, and how many hours of our time does a typical client spend?
- How will you learn what only our team knows? An onboarding call, a recorded interview each month, access to sales calls, something else?
- Show us the approval step. What do we see, where, and is it the final version with the image?
- Does anything ever post without our explicit approval? What happens if we do not respond by a deadline?
- If we edit a post after approving it, or you change it after we approve it, does it come back for a new sign-off?
- Who writes our posts, who designs them, and will those people stay the same from month to month?
- How many rounds of revisions are included per post, and what counts as a revision?
- Which assets are licensed, from where, and can we keep using them if we leave?
- What will the monthly report contain? Show us a real one, with the client’s name removed.
- How do we leave, what notice do you need, and what do we get back when we do?
A provider that answers the approval questions vaguely is telling you how approval works in practice. A provider that says your team will need no time at all is telling you where the posts’ substance will come from, which is nowhere.
How do you score providers side by side?
Score each line 0, 1 or 2. The total matters less than any zero on the lines you care about.
Use this scorecard after the sales call and again after the trial. A 2 means the provider showed you, not told you. A 1 means a credible answer you have not seen in action. A 0 means a vague answer, or none.
| Criterion | What a 2 looks like | Red flag (score 0) |
|---|---|---|
| Strategy | A written plan with audience, themes, channels and a definition of a good month | A posting frequency and a list of channels, nothing else |
| Voice capture | A named method for learning your expertise, such as a monthly interview or call review | “We will study your website” |
| Draft quality | Sample posts in your field that a specialist would not wince at | Portfolio of generic quotes and holiday posts |
| Design | Work to your brand guidelines, with editable source files handed over | Templates with your logo swapped in; no source files |
| Approval | Final version with image, named approver, nothing posts without a yes | Approval by deadline, or “we post if we don’t hear back” |
| Account access | A role on each account; you stay the owner | Asks for your passwords |
| Reporting | Activity plus what people did next, with the source of each number | Likes and follower counts only |
| Team continuity | Named writer and designer, with a handover plan if they change | Nobody can say who will do the work |
| Exit | Short notice, assets and files returned, access removed on a date | Long minimum term, assets withheld or unclear |
A provider scoring 2 on approval and account access and 1 elsewhere is often a better start than one scoring 2 on design and 0 on approval. You can improve drafts together over a few months. You cannot easily undo a post that went out in your name without your yes.
You cannot easily undo a post that went out in your name without your yes.
Which contract terms should you check?
The sales call describes the service. The contract decides it.
Read for these terms, and ask for them to be added where they are missing.
- Approval. A clause saying no post, reply, ad or profile change goes live without written approval of the final version by a named person on your side; silence is never approval; changes after approval need a new sign-off.
- Ownership. You own the accounts, the published posts, and the source files for the designs you paid for. Licensed stock and fonts are listed, with the licence terms.
- Access. The provider works through roles or permissions you grant, and those are removed on a stated date when the engagement ends.
- Scope. Posts per month, channels, formats, whether video is included, revision rounds, and what happens to unused posts in a month.
- Term and notice. The minimum term, the notice period, and whether the fee changes after an introductory period.
- Confidentiality. What the provider may do with the product details, customer names and unreleased news you share in briefs.
- Portfolio use. Whether the provider may show your work to other prospects, and whether you can say no.
- Handover. What you receive when you leave: files, the content calendar, captions, and any performance data the provider holds.
None of these is an unusual request. A provider that resists the approval clause or the ownership clause is telling you something about how the relationship will run when there is a disagreement.
What does a two-week trial look like?
A trial with a real brief shows you the voice, the approval step and the working rhythm, which a portfolio cannot.
Ask for a short paid trial, or the first two weeks of a monthly plan with a clear exit, and run it like a test rather than a honeymoon.
A plan for the fortnight.
- Day 1: send the brief. Your buyers, three things you want them to believe, two recent customer conversations in your own words, brand guidelines, and three posts you admire from anyone.
- Days 2 to 4: the provider sends a one-page strategy and a first batch of drafts. Score the voice before you edit anything.
- Day 5: return edits with reasons, not just changes. “Too salesy” helps less than “our buyers are engineers; cut the adjectives and show the number.”
- Days 6 to 8: the second batch arrives. Count how many of your first-round corrections carried over without being repeated.
- Days 9 to 12: approve and publish a small set. Check that what went live is exactly what you approved, image and caption both.
- Day 13: ask for a trial report in the format you will get monthly.
- Day 14: fill in the scorecard again, and compare it with the one you filled in after the sales call.
Track one number during the trial: the minutes your team spent reviewing and correcting. If it falls between the first batch and the second, the provider is learning. If it does not, the service is shifting the writing work to you rather than taking it away.
Buy the approval step before you buy the posts. A provider that makes your yes the only way anything goes live has already shown you how it will treat your name.
Questions people ask next
Is there a service that writes, designs and posts social content that we just approve?
Yes. Done-for-you social media management services write captions, design posts, send them for approval, and schedule and publish what you approve. Check that the contract says nothing posts without your explicit approval of the final version, and that silence never counts as approval.
How much of our time does a done-for-you social service need?
Less than doing it yourself, but not none. Plan for a monthly briefing, a review of every draft, and edits in the first month. If the time you spend reviewing does not fall after the first month or two, the provider is not learning your voice.
Should we give a social media agency our passwords?
No. Give the provider a role or permission on each account and keep ownership yourself, so you can remove access on the day the engagement ends.
How do we stop done-for-you posts sounding generic?
Give the provider something only your team knows: customer conversations, product details, opinions. Ask how it will collect that each month, and score its drafts on whether a specialist in your field would find them credible.
Can Throughline be our done-for-you social provider?
For the drafting and design, yes. It drafts posts and carousels in your brand from your own data, and a named person approves each one. Approved posts come back ready to post; publishing stays with your team.