I am a Miami-based social media strategist, so I have a stake in this topic. But I have also sat on the other side of the table, hiring and managing agencies, freelancers and consultants for large brands. That experience taught me what separates people who deliver business results from people who deliver activity.
If you are a founder, CMO or marketing leader in South Florida considering outside help, here is what I would look for.
A senior strategist is not a person who posts
Both roles are valuable, and they are not interchangeable. The confusion is behind many disappointing engagements.
- A poster executes: creates, schedules and publishes content to a plan someone else has set.
- A senior strategist decides what the plan should be, why, and how it connects to the business. They set priorities, shape the team, manage stakeholders, and are accountable for results.
If your problem is "we have no time to post," you may need execution support. If your problem is "we are posting and nothing is happening," you need strategy. Be clear on which one you are buying, and be wary of anyone who will not tell you the difference.
What to look for
- Experience leading, not just doing. Have they managed teams, budgets, approvals and complex stakeholders? Social at a serious company is as much about operations and alignment as creativity.
- Business fluency. A good consultant talks about pipeline, bookings, retention and brand health before they talk about reach.
- A point of view on measurement. They should be able to explain what they would track, why, and how they would report it to leadership.
- Range across the whole system. Strategy, content, community, creators, paid and analytics. They do not need to personally do all of it, but they should know how it fits together.
- Evidence of judgment. Ask about decisions they made, including ones that went badly, and what they changed.
- Clear, plain communication. If they cannot explain their approach simply, they will struggle to align your executives.
Questions to ask in the first conversation
- How would you figure out whether social is the right investment for us before recommending anything?
- What would you want to understand about our business in the first few weeks?
- How do you decide what we should not do?
- How do you handle approvals and legal or brand review?
- How will you report results, and to whom?
- What do you need from us to succeed?
- Who would actually do the work, and who will I be speaking to week to week?
- What does the engagement look like when it ends? Will my team be able to carry it forward?
Pay attention to whether they ask you good questions back. The best consultants are curious about your business before they pitch.
Red flags
- Guarantees. Nobody can guarantee viral results or specific follower growth.
- Vanity-metric focus. If everything is framed around followers and impressions, the business connection is missing.
- No questions about your goals. A pitch that arrives before any diagnosis is a template.
- Vague on who does the work. A senior name in the pitch and a junior on the account is common. Ask directly.
- Dependence over capability. A good consultant builds your team's skills and documents the system. Be cautious of anyone who makes themselves the only person who understands it.
- Trend-chasing as strategy. Trends are tactics. A plan that is only trends will not hold.
- Unwillingness to share thinking. If they cannot show how they reason, you are buying a black box.
The South Florida brand landscape
South Florida is an unusually interesting market for social. It is a hub for hospitality, real estate, finance, healthcare, wellness, consumer brands and fast-growing startups, with an international profile well beyond the region. Audiences here are mobile, brand-aware and quick to notice what feels authentic and what feels staged.
A few things worth considering:
- Competitive attention. Many brands compete for the same visually driven audience, so generic content disappears quickly.
- A deep creator ecosystem. The region has a lot of talent, which helps if you have a clear way to work with it.
- Seasonality and events. Tourism, major events and weather shape demand and the content calendar.
- Multicultural and bilingual audiences. For many brands, language and cultural fluency are one consideration among several. Whether they matter depends on your customers, not on assumptions about the region.
The right consultant will test these against your actual audience instead of applying a local stereotype.
Local or remote?
Local has real advantages. In-person workshops, content days, event coverage, and the ability to sit in a room with your leadership team all help. A local strategist also understands the market, the creators and the rhythm of the city.
Remote has advantages too, particularly for strategy, reporting and team coaching, where proximity matters less than experience. Many strong engagements are a hybrid: remote for most of the work, with in-person sessions for kickoffs, shoots and key meetings.
My advice is to choose on capability first and geography second. Hire the person who is right for the problem, then decide how to work together.
Choosing the right model
A consultant is one of several options. A fractional director embeds with your team on an ongoing basis, an agency brings a bench of specialists, and an in-house hire gives you full-time dedication. I compare these in fractional vs. agency vs. in-house social media, and explain the fractional model in what a fractional social media director does.
If you want to see how I work with brands, you can read about my services.
Want a second opinion on your social?
I offer a free social audit for brands: send me your handles, I review what you're doing, and we talk through what to keep, cut and try next. Request your free social audit →
