How to Start your Own Social Media Marketing Agency
In this blog post, I introduce you to Iza Erskine, the founder and strategist behind Keeping It Social. Keeping It Social (or “KIS” for short) is a social media marketing agency based in Frisco, TX. Iza started the agency herself after working as a social media manager for a local business and has grown the agency to five full-time employees.
I met Iza in a shared Lyft while at Social Media Marketing World last month and learned about her entrepreneurial career in social media marketing. In this article, I interview Iza about starting a social media agency, and she shares some of her best practices and learnings from the journey. From creator to lady CEO, Iza’s story is inspiring for any creative professional with entrepreneurial ambitions!
Thanks, Iza, for offering to do this interview! So excited to feature your story with Kapwing’s digital media followers. Tell us a little bit about your agency, Keeping it Social. What do you do? How long has the company existed?
I am the CEO and Founder of Keeping it Social. We are just celebrating our second birthday!
How did you get interested in social media marketing to begin with?
I attended one of the first universities that Facebook opened its platform to. I’ve been hooked on social media ever since.
How did you decide to start a social media marketing agency? Could you tell me a bit about the early days and how you found your first clients?
I started my company KIS about a year and a half ago after responding to a job post on a networking Facebook group for local moms that I have been part of for three years. The client needed help with social media marketing for her local radio show and, after six years of social marketing experience with a jewelry company, I felt like I could help and reached out. It was a small job, but it was a great starting point!
Shortly after her review of my work, referrals started pouring in. Two years later, my agency now has five employees who are able to help small and medium-size businesses throughout the Dallas area reach their marketing goals and grow their business. We pride ourselves on honest feedback and up-to-date social strategies and information. Most of our clients still come through referrals.
What is the hardest part about running a social media agency?
Managing time expectations with clients. They want it all, and we want to give them everything, but there are only so many hours in the day! It is a fun challenge to work on. Our team regularly discusses creative solutions for addressing this issue in weekly meetings.
Could you share what your favorite short-form video campaign has been? Who was the client?
We really enjoy creating flashback videos for our clients. We highlight the top performing images and videos on their social platforms in one single video. We usually create our videos in Adobe Spark or Rocketieum, and we are just getting started trying out Kapwing!
Could you share some tactical advice for other people planning to start their own social media agency?
Create a business plan that is able to grow with your goals and know how to sell social media ROI for any type of business.
What was a mistake you made in the course of starting and running Keeping it Social that other agency founders should avoid or beware of?
I think time management has been the hardest piece for us. We have grown very quickly in a small period of time and we never outsource work overseas. Finding all the working pieces while keeping to our businesses core values with other businesses time expectations has been a definite balancing act.
You can read the entire article HERE.