How to price social media retainers

Include briefing, drafting, design, internal review, client changes, scheduling, and a slice of replies. If community management is "as needed," it will eat the fee. Price a normal month, not a heroic one you can survive once.

Separate production from media spend. Ad budget is their money. Your fee is your time. Mixing them makes every invoice a fight.

Two rounds on the batch is a different product from unlimited tweaks. Extra rounds are a change order or a higher fee. They should be written before you are tired.

Channels are not free. Each extra network is another crop, another caption, and another place comments arrive. List them.

A client who answers in two days is cheaper to serve than a client who answers in fragments for two weeks. You can say that out loud. Waiting is scope.

Reporting is scope too. A monthly note with a few numbers you both trust is one product. A custom deck every Monday is another job.

Track time for a quarter before you believe the price. If the hours do not fit the fee, the fee is wrong or the scope is. Do not copy another agency's public price and call it a strategy. Their city and their promise are not yours.

Write the retainer so a new account manager can run it without calling you. The calendar, the approval rule, and the invoice should describe the same month.