A social media management agency for the daily running of your accounts

Social media management is the ongoing running of a brand’s accounts: publishing, moderating, replying and reporting, week after week. Firewater is a social media management agency in Johannesburg that does that work daily for South African brands, and has been running client accounts as part of a 26-year practice.

Two of our pages sit close together, so here is the plain distinction. This page covers running the accounts you already have. Campaign concepts, paid budgets and audience growth sit with our social media marketing team. Most clients use both, and the two teams share the same calendar.

A social media management agency earns its retainer in the unglamorous hours. Someone has to answer a stockist question on a Sunday morning. Someone has to spot the complaint that is about to become a screenshot. That is the job, and we staff for it rather than automate it.

Ongoing management (this page)	Campaigns and growth (social media marketing)
Publishing calendar and scheduling	Campaign concepts and flighting
Comment, DM and review moderation	Paid budgets, bidding and creative testing
Complaint handling and escalation	Audience targeting and expansion
Always-on content production	Launches and new platform entries
Monthly account reporting	Campaign results and attribution

The audit that starts the retainer

Before Firewater publishes anything, we read back through roughly six months of your accounts. We look at what was posted, what was ignored, and what people said underneath. Unanswered comments are usually the most revealing thing on a profile.

The audit covers account settings, admin access, page roles, saved replies, linked catalogues and any automation already running. It also checks whether your library of assets can support a real publishing rhythm, which is where our content marketing team often gets involved. We finish with a short list of fixes, ordered by how quickly each one pays back.

The publishing plan we work to

The plan sets the channels, the cadence, the tone and who signs off. We set it per platform, because a LinkedIn page and a TikTok account are different jobs with different audiences. Platform owners publish their own guidance on this, and LinkedIn’s own Pages documentation is a fair starting point for B2B accounts.

Firewater plans quarters, not single posts. That gives room for retail seasons, public holidays and the quiet weeks where organic reach drops. A plan you can staff beats a plan that looks impressive in a deck.

When a post deserves money behind it, the plan says so and the work moves across. Budgeted promotion on Facebook and Instagram is handled by our Meta advertising team, and short-form paid work by our TikTok advertising team. Management keeps the account healthy. Advertising buys the reach.

Content creation

We know you don’t have time to fiddle around with social updates – we’ll take care of that. We also know what times are best to publish to get the most traction out of your posts. Need a boost to get that extra exposure? We can do that too.

Producing and publishing the content

Content is the part clients see, so it is the part most often rushed. Firewater produces to a calendar that is approved ahead of time, with a clear deadline for feedback. Nothing goes out unapproved, and nothing sits in a draft folder waiting for a decision.

What a management retainer produces

A standard month with us covers the following:

Monthly content calendar with copy, assets and scheduled publishing times
Original photography, static design and short-form video edits
Platform-native versions of each asset, sized per channel
Caption writing, hashtag sets and link management
Stories, reels and community posts between the main scheduled pieces
Approval rounds with a named client contact and a fixed cut-off
Asset library maintenance so nothing is produced twice

Where video fits

Short-form video carries most organic reach now, and it is the format clients find hardest to keep up with. Studio shoots and larger productions run through our video content team, and we cut those masters down into monthly social edits. One shoot day can feed a quarter of publishing. Consumer brands such as Cuddlers and Mister Sweet show how much everyday content a household name needs across a year.

Community management, moderation and escalation

This is the part of social media management that clients underestimate. Your audience does not treat a comment box as marketing. They treat it as a service desk, and they expect an answer the same day.

Moderation and response

Firewater works from an agreed response matrix. Common questions get approved answers. Anything sensitive follows a written escalation path to a named person on your side, with agreed timing. We hide or remove content only against the platform’s published rules, and the Meta Community Standards set out what is enforceable across Facebook and Instagram. We do not delete honest criticism.

Reputation and escalation

Some complaints stop being a social media problem. A product recall, a staff incident or a story picked up by a journalist needs a wider response, and our public relations team steps in on the same day. Ambassador and creator conversations that start in the comments are passed to our influencer marketing team. Day-to-day publishing and inbox handling run through Meta Business Suite, with your brand holding ownership of every account.

Reporting that says what the accounts did

Reporting should be short enough to read and honest enough to act on. We report response times, unanswered message counts, saves, shares, profile visits and outbound clicks. Follower growth is included, though it is the weakest number on the page.

Every report names what we would change next month and why. A report with no decision in it is a spreadsheet, not a recommendation. Where the numbers point to a paid or campaign problem rather than a publishing one, we say that plainly and hand it across.

Firewater is a social media management agency in Sandton, Johannesburg, working with brands across South Africa. Call +27 11 262 6056, email info@firewater.net, or send us the details of your accounts and we will tell you what a sensible month looks like.

Fill in this form to get in touch

Fill in this form
to get in touch

Explore Firewater