Social media agencies, reviewed and ranked

Organic social, community and short-form video. Scored on whether they can actually produce native video, and whether they measure anything beyond followers.

27 evaluated, of which we would put 24 in front of a client and cut 3.

Short-form video is the capability that separates them

The heaviest weight in this rubric is platform and format depth, and in practice that means one question: can they produce native short-form video at a real cadence, or do they schedule graphics? Most agencies in this category are competent at the second and describe themselves as capable of the first. Ask for the last month of video they made, not a showreel.

Followers are the metric agencies pick when the others are bad

Follower counts and likes are reported precisely because they always go up. This rubric rewards engagement quality, community growth and any connection to demand or pipeline. A social agency that cannot describe how its work reaches revenue is not necessarily doing bad work, but it is asking you to take the whole thing on faith.

Creator and UGC capability is now part of the job

Sourcing creators, briefing them, handling whitelisting and measuring the output has moved from a specialism to a baseline expectation, because creator content is routinely the best-performing thing on the channel. If you are buying creator content specifically to run as ads rather than for reach, that is a different purchase — see UGC & creator content.

Evaluated

And the ones we cut, so you can judge the rest

Named, with the reason and the sources.