Social media can be a really powerful way to connect with and build deeper relationships with your audience – but it can be extremely time consuming. So, we asked some folks we admire to share how they manage their social profiles and whether they’ve hired professionals to help.

Kori Jones

I’ve been managing my own social media presence, and it’s been an interesting journey. While it’s undoubtedly a fun way to stay authentic to my brand and connect with people, I’ve also come to realize that social media is essentially another job in itself and can become all-consuming if it’s not managed carefully. Using social media as a platform to inspire and share aspects of my lifestyle and business has been my approach. I firmly believe that there’s no one-size-fits-all magic formula for success in this realm, and I’m continually learning and evolving. Posting consistently helps, and growth can be incremental. It doesn’t happen overnight for most of us. Read more>>

Kayla Givens

Great question! When I first started focusing more on social media for my business, I hired a skilled social media manager. The main goal was to expand my reach in the Denver area, stay top of mind, and of course, generate more leads! The experience was incredibly valuable. My social media manager set me on the right path and made a noticeable difference in my online presence. She’s since moved on to a full-time role elsewhere but left me with a solid plan to keep things going. Read more>>

Jaida Henderson

I am currently managed by Muse The Agency and it has been a game-changer in my content creator journey. I am able to pitch and higher rates when working with brands that my agency may have had previous connections with, I am invited to fun and insightful events, and even asked to do things like social media takeovers for brands. My biggest insight to getting connected with management is to remain consistent and let your work speak for you. I really think that my agency chose me because they knew that I had potential for growth, and I was consistently posting the type of content that brands are looking for. Read more>>

Kate Howard

I managed my own in the beginning of my career and when I had additional marketing funds, I hired a company to manage it for me. I knew I would learn a lot about what my content should look like, the results have been great and most importantly freed up a lot of my time. Consider a social media manager. Read more>>

Tony Massey

I currently manage my own social media platform but I’m currently looking for a team. I cook and I’m very good at cooking. My goal is to put all my energy into what I’m good at and outsource everything else. My initial thought was that I could do it all, you know, be a jack of all trades and master of none. The problem with that thinking, I’m learning, is that mastery breeds success. I would encourage anyone to master their craft and seek opportunities to collaborate with masters of other crafts. Read more>>

Jom Galinato

Social media, I do it all myself on all platforms. Doing it myself is working. I create content on a regular basis and some posts will get thousands of views and some maybe 500. I will never pay someone to do it for me and especially I’ll never pay for followers / subscribers. I rather have 100 real followers than 1,000 fake followers. When i was in a band playing shows, it was funny because on our Instagram page we didn’t even have 1,ooo followers and we would play with bands that had like 50-60K followers. Our draw would be around 75-100 people and these bands maybe drew 25, that shows you they paid for their followers. Read more>>

Sarah Gleason

Social media is the number one driving force for profitability for TheGleasonCo. When I created the 52 Week Meal Planner, I really believed that it could help others but I didn’t know how to reach them. Insert social media. Not knowing what I was doing, I created social media accounts for TheGleasonCo to show people not only how to use the meal planner itself, but also kid and budget friendly meals to fill it with. TheGleasonCo is still a very small business and am lucky enough to continue to manage my own social media accounts. I think people can feel that through my socials. It’s just me, a busy, working mom of four that struggles to figure out what to feed the tiny humans every day. Once that relationship is established through socials, the profit aspect naturally follows. Read more>>

Litzy Rivera

I manage my own social media accounts as I do my own graphic designs and have an idea of how I want my social media accounts to look like. I have hired a team of graphic designers to create my biggest projects , so I can have more time to do other things.. Running a business all by myself can be pretty exciting yet a bit of a hassle at times , but I make it work. Read more>>

asha bailey

Navigating social media as an entrepreneur with multiple businesses has been one of my biggest learning curves. When I started my wedding photography business back in 2016, I went from having 1 Instagram account (which I used to share personal photos and videos with my family and friends) to having that one, plus a business account strictly for sharing my photography work and reaching potential new clients. Jumping from one account to two was more exciting than daunting for me—the transition wasn’t hard because there could still be some overlap when it came to the content I shared (behind the scenes, showing my personality, etc). Read more>>

Hallie Dantzler

I manage all of my own social media! I prefer to do it this way as it shows authenticity, in my opinion, and the passion behind my shop. I feel that if I hired out my social media managing I would lack a connection with our customers, be behind on trends in coffee shops, and never advance to the same level that larger shops are at. Results so far have been great! Being the owner and the social media manager becomes very busy on some days and I often have to sacrifice a couple tasks from one or the other until a following day. But I keep it real with our audience and they know 100% of the efforts and love out into my work every single day. My best advice for anyone that is considering being their own social media manager is: quantity over quality. 99% of the time we say that quality is best, but put that effort into your craft, you wouldn’t open a shop not having perfected your craft. Think of social media as practice, overtime the quality will be there. It is your best form of advertising so just start. Read more>>

Mary Giacomini

I run my own Facebook (Mary M Giacomini’s Artwork) page and Instagram (@marygiacominifineart) I’ve done research and experiments on how to grow my audience and have been fairly successful at it. I find by keeping my audience engaged, changing styles of posts, adding videos and works in progress keeps people interested. I answer and ‘like’ every comment but have learned to do only one or two per day. Each time a post gets attention it will go back on the ‘loop’ of what people see. I also invite folks who like a post to like my page (FB) I share to different groups to get more attention from those who don’t know me. I’ve recently discovered that my Nextdoor page posts get even more responses than the others do. Read more>>

Lia Davidson

I manage my own social media platforms. In the past, I worked as a content creator. I’m super creative, therefore, I loved working with clients creating content for their business. Now, I do it for myself and through that job I learnt so much on branding and how to engage with followers. Whats fun is I got to do it for other peoples vision but now I get to come up with my own branding and produce content under my own vision. The best advise I could give to creating content for social media is to find your niche. Once you’ve established your branding, content will come naturally and feel like second nature! Read more>>

Michelle Felder, LCSW, MA

I manage my own social media and have created all of my content. It’s really important to me that what I post is not only unique and engaging, but that it also accurately expresses the information that I want to share and is an authentic reflection of me and my brand – I’ve found that the best way for me to ensure that all of these things happen is to create my content myself. I bring a unique voice and perspective to the information that’s found on my social media, so managing my pages allows me to be confident that it’s that voice that’s shared with the world. Read more>>

Judaea Wilbon

I currently manage my own social media platforms, I made this choice because I know exactly what it is that I want and that I’m looking for. Also with me managing my own social media platforms I’m able grow in my content creation skills. It’s almost as if we’re growing together and I’m learning from myself while doing so. I would tell others to do what’s best for them and weigh out the options of what’s most important. If your interested in the DIY of things then train yourself and learn along the way, if not I would say hire a team, but also don’t think you need a team right out the gate. Read more>>