MANAGEMENT + MARKETING + MEDIA

Our approach to social media is to look at it in three parts: Management, Marketing, and Media.

Management is the handling of posts and replies. Organizing the content and planning posts, examining the flow of posts, and using analytics to determine nuances such as timing and performance of different post categories all fall under management. Often, your in-house team will choose to maintain control over replies and responses to customer inquiries, but will be relieved to hand off other aspects of management.

Marketing via social media falls into two categories: organic and paid. Interactions (likes and comments), hashtags, and the posts themselves are organic. Ad spend and boosted posts, of course, are paid. The size of your business will determine the amount of $$ you can put into your marketing, and the nature of your business will determine what forms of marketing are best for you. Regardless: you need marketing. Google ads, YouTube ads, FB and IG ads, etc. PLUS all of the more traditional forms of marketing that connect with your customer base (ie: billboards, radio ads, mailers). Our content-forward approach helps you optimize between all of your marketing channels with cohesive branding and emotive messaging.

Media is all of the communications avenues that are used to store your content. Content being the key: every aspect of your content communicates something. The quality of concept and materials (photography, videography, graphics, copy and messaging), from inception on, speaks volumes. If you watch a string of commercials on TV, you likely roll your eyes at about 95% of what you see - but every now and again, something grabs you. Whether it’s laughter, tears, or impressive cleverness: you noticed a good commercial.

Why do you have social media?

Generally, you want to build trust, widen your community, document your history, build brand awareness, and yes - make sales. Social platforms are “free” tools, yet companies spend millions on content creation, management, and ad spend. Identifying your goals and taking a purpose-driven approach, keeping your target audience in mind, and consistently releasing quality content is pivotal: your social media will inherently either aid or hinder brand trust and loyalty.

Every business is unique. When we have our initial consultation, we will have gone through your website and socials, Google, looked at your direct competitors, and will have a pretty good idea of how to take you to the next level. After looking “from the outside in,” we will prepare a list of questions for you, aimed at zeroing in on “from the inside out.”

What makes your social media particularly challenging? What aspects would you like to keep in-house, and what are you ready to relinquish? Perhaps you need to communicate day-to-day options, like menu specials. Maybe your next move is to amp-up your ad spend for a wider reach. Does the level of your content stand up to the level of products or services that your business provides? Ask the right questions, get the right answers.

In this industry, we are told to NEVER DO ANYTHING FOR FREE. We disagree. Our initial consultation is free - we want you to get to know you, and we want you to get to know us. Charging for this step feels… wrong, so we don’t do it.

Let’s talk about In-House social management

It’s very common to handle socials in-house. Often, there is room for growth. We care A LOT about the delicacies of working with your team. To be clear, WE WANT TO EMPOWER AND ENGAGE YOUR TEAM, and will rack our brains figuring out the right solution for your unique situation.

From our perspective, insulting or discouraging you or your wife/ nephew/ manager/ employee/ etc is counterintuitive. Suggesting that you/ they could benefit from INCLUDING US in the process is our preferred starting point. We want so badly to move your brand beyond stock image holiday posts, washed out iPhone pics, mediocre audio, and sporadic posting - without stepping on toes. We want our involvement to be an obvious boon for you. IT CAN BE DONE!

It’s all about results. Out of respect for our clients, we don’t publicly post a ton of these metrics for one main reason: it takes a village. Who are we to take credit for your massive increase in website traffic, or significant increase orders directly from IG, when YOU are who is investing your hard-earned dollars into these efforts and YOU made a great business to begin with?

We’ve had clients triple their revenues, see over 1000% increases in impressions, and fill their spaces with customers who are ready to spend.

With results at the forefront, your in-house team is more likely to have a positive response. We also HIGHLY ENCOURAGE THAT YOUR IN-HOUSE TEAM GETS INVOLVED WITH OUR SHOOTS. They can film behind-the-scenes and have fun experiencing the process. They can pick up tips and tricks to integrate in their own work. At the end of the day, we will make it a great experience and a worthwhile venture. It’s okay to start small and gauge how your team responds to something like to us coming in to film a couple elevated videos/ reels/ ads. You may even be surprised by how ready they are to hand over the whole thing, and never look back.

PRICING

We offer social media content and management services starting at $2,500/ month

Scour the internet for “How much should I pay for social media management?” and you’ll find all kinds of answers. Some say $4,000-$7,000. Some say $17,000+. Some say it can be done for $500-$5,000. With that, are you getting content? Ads management? Interactions? Are the teams beginners? Are they corporations with tons of clients and very little individual attention?

Our packages are flexible based off your needs - it doesn’t behoove either of us for you to pay for something you don’t need. You also may need to be putting more of you budget in this direction.

At $2,500 per month, you could expect 15 monthly page posts, shared between FB and IG. That includes custom images and/or graphics, copywriting, planning, curation, and posting as well as monthly consultations (generally about two hours total each month).

At $3,500 per month, we include two reels in addition to everything listed above. These are filmed during the photography shoots, and typically lengthen the shoot by several hours.

At $5,000 per month, we up the monthly posts to 20 and include a weekly reel (4 short videos/ reels per month).

For $10,000 per month, you will have a tailored-to-you plan, with weekly short videos, daily posts and stories. Videos would go on TikTok, IG, and FB. Daily interactions, which include liking imagery from accounts that fit within your target market, will be integrated during high activity times.

It’s your social and your budget - to some degree, you call the shots. We make all of our agreements flexible to accommodate your unique situation.

AD SPEND:

We charge 20% of your ad spend to manage all of your ads and analytics. The content can either be commissioned through us, or provided to us.

A-LA-CARTE:

Looking to test the waters with a few reels or a one-off photoshoot? Great! Check out our PRICING PAGE for more info on a-la-carte options. Monthly retainers and packages are the most cost-effective, but not always the right solution for you.

why CHOOSE Smiley Face Media?

We are a small team with big experience.

Our backgrounds include decades in the Los Angeles matrix of visual and audio arts, sales, and marketing. While the LA life was both fun and rewarding, we chose to bring that hustle and artistic competitiveness with us and to leave the city behind. Thankfully, we all live in a world of technological advancements such that you no longer have to choose a lifestyle that doesn’t suite you, for career based on location alone. We are (still) connected to LA, and Chicago. Heck, our siblings and friends live there! We just really enjoy living in the woods, growing veggies, having 4 full seasons, and woodland night sounds instead of honks and helicopters. Shirking the time spent getting gussied up, sitting in traffic, searching for parking, and leaving an hour early for every move, saves us hours out of every single day. Those hours get redirected into making it all happen!

Our 25,000 square foot building is a boon for you, too. When we relocated to our lovely little Midwestern hometown, we took advantage of the affordability of certain things and purchased the historic newspaper building. In other words, a studio space with a wide variety of options. Half of the building was built in the 1890s, the second half in the 1990s. There is always a time and place for on-location efforts and travel, but this space allows us to save time and money by mitigating the runaround.

As a family owned and operated business, we take a real and relatable approach to everything we do, whether it’s in a town you’ve never heard of or one of the biggest cities in the world.

We get to know your brand inside and out before we take our first photo or make our first post. By the time we touch a camera or open an Adobe session, our focus has been on familiarization and pre-production. Adding copy to images in your voice becomes a fluid motion. Implementing calls-to-action, ads, interactions, and responses evolves into a natural rhythm in our creative flow with you.

We have solid systems with built-in flexibilities for effective and efficient collaboration. We understand that relinquishing control can be nerve-wracking, and encourage working together to find that sweet spot for your and your team’s involvement.

We use a variety of tech

In order to optimize your social media efforts, tech is essential. Tech doesn’t scare us - we love it.

Automating posts between platforms, integrating AI with video (in which cases, you still need to understand After Effects and coding), and learning new systems is all part of the gig.

Something we are unfamiliar with becomes an opportunity to learn, and with new tech coming out all of the time, we are always learning.

What about iPhones? A valid question.

They are great for eye-witness moments, reality as it unfolds, family moments, and yes - you can get quality content with an iPhone.

There are a ton of trendy apps and ways to work from a phone. Choosing the right equipment for your content comes down to your branding and brand goals!

We have a variety of cameras, lenses, lights, sets, props, audio recording capabilities, programs, plug-ins, and computers in order to produce and manage content. Yet there are still those moments we find ourselves editing your phone footage, taking pics, and making recordings. It will never, however, render as good as a cinema camera or an A7 series.

Peep our Photo and Video pages linked to the GIFs below to see why we love our gear (and treat it like gold):

ALL ABOUT ANALYTICS

Numbers are an art form - applying your data and analytics is fun for us. Challenge accepted. Bring it on.

Applying insights and analytics allows us to evolve in real-time. Social media exemplifies a streamlined process of using data, art, and marketing to craft what is often your most visible platform.

Trends are relevant, and so is repetition and variety. It is all about being authentic, including the awareness that not all trends align with you. We get to know your brand inside and out so you stay genuine and consistently apply what the numbers tell us.

CUSTOM OR BUST

Custom templates crafted in house. How can you really stand out if you’re the same?

Custom templates save just as much time (if not more). Upfront, this involves a little more strategy and higher-level design skills - which we feel is a good thing. In the long run, Editing a custom template from our own organized, duplicated, securely stored files with our own built-in variations is A more streamlines process than using the same templates from an app that 1,500 other brands are using.

Check out our short article on the blog about using templates.