Social media proposal template that promises posts, not followers.

A social media proposal should promise the work you control and nothing you don't: how many posts and videos go out each month, the hours replies are answered in, when the calendar and the report arrive, and what each extra costs. Followers, reach and inquiries belong in it too, as numbers you'll report every month and review together at day 90, rather than as targets the fee depends on. The version below is filled in for Oxbow Dog Daycare, a daycare and boarding business with two locations in Spokane, Washington, and you can copy it or take it as a Word file or PDF.

What should a social media proposal include?

It has to do two jobs before the client signs, which are to make the plan concrete enough to say yes to and to settle in advance which numbers the agency answers for.

Sprout Social's guide runs from a cover letter and an executive summary through business objectives, social media goals, an audit, the scope of work, schedule and budget, KPIs, testimonials, terms and next steps, and it tells the writer to use the client's current numbers and growth rate to put reasonable, numeric goals in the proposal. PandaDoc's social media marketing template sets out a weekly schedule of one to three Instagram uploads and five to eight Facebook actions, promises responses within two hours, and asks for projections of engagement percentages and follower counts. Better Proposals' social media management template covers a cover page, services, process and timescales, a case study, pricing and a pre-written contract, with no post count or price shown on the page.

That's a sound list, and the proposal below covers all of it. What we didn't find in any of the three is a line between the numbers the agency is promising and the numbers it's only measuring, and on social media that line decides whether month four is a renewal conversation or a refund conversation. So the version below splits them into two sections, prices every extra next to the work it adds to, and dates the meeting where the measured numbers get to change the plan.

Why shouldn't a social media proposal promise followers?

Because a follower count is the product of things the agency doesn't control, and a number written into a proposal gets read as a promise however carefully it's worded.

Oxbow's Instagram account will grow or stall on the dogs, the prices, how quickly the owner approves the calendar, whether a competitor opens down the road, and how much she spends boosting posts, which in the proposal above is nothing at all. A goal like doubling Instagram to 3,680 followers by June sounds modest when it's written in November. By March, with the account at 2,105, it reads as a missed target at 57%, even though the same three months took message inquiries from three in October to eleven in March, which is the number the owner hired an agency to change.

Sprout Social's advice to write numeric goals from the client's growth rate is right about one thing, which is that a proposal with no numbers in it can't be judged. The fix is to keep the numbers and change their status. Section 3 writes down the starting point the agency measured on November 12, says the figures will be reported every month and reviewed at day 90, and says in plain words that none of them is a condition of the fee. That's still a commitment, and a fairly demanding one, because the agency has to show the numbers every month whether they flatter it or not.

What do you promise instead, and how do you count it?

Promise the work in units somebody could count at the end of the month without asking you, and attach a date or an hour range to every one of them.

Section 2 of Oxbow's proposal does that in five lines. It promises sixteen feed posts a month, and a post adapted for both Instagram and Facebook counts once, which settles the question before the client counts thirty-two. It promises four short videos of up to 30 seconds, cut from the clips the staff drop into a shared folder. It answers comments and messages Monday to Saturday from 8:00 to 18:00 Pacific within three business hours, which matters to a business whose customers message at seven in the morning to ask whether there's room today. And it sends the calendar by the 20th of the month before and a two-page report by the fifth business day.

Compare that with a weekly range like one to three Instagram uploads, which is what PandaDoc's schedule offers. A range is easy to sell and impossible to fall short of, and that's the trouble with it, because a client who gets one upload a week for a month has no way to say whether the agency delivered. A fixed count with a fixed price per unit is also what makes the review in section 5 work, since the agency and the client can trade posts for videos at the printed prices without reopening the fee. The agreement that follows the proposal does the rest of the counting, including what happens to a post the client never approves, which our social media management contract template settles with a dated approval and a hold.

How should a social media proposal price the extras?

Print a price for every kind of request the account is likely to produce in six months, next to the line it adds to, so the first time the client asks, the price is one they've already read.

For a daycare those requests are easy to predict. Oxbow told the agency it closes for snow on a few days most winters and has to say so within the hour, so 6.5 adds $55 to any post published within one business day of being asked. The owner will want a third platform once the first two are working, so 6.3 prices one at $380 a month for the upkeep, with its posts drawn from the sixteen or bought at $90 each. An extra half-day shoot is $850, running boosted posts is $350 a month for ad budgets up to $1,500 with the budget itself paid straight to Meta, and anything nobody thought of is $110 an hour, quoted in writing first.

The monthly fee is built the same way, out of lines rather than a lump: $640 for keeping two platforms answered and scheduled, sixteen posts at $90, four videos at $135 and $360 for the calendar, the approval call and the report, which comes to $2,980. Our guide on how much to charge for social media management walks through setting each of those lines from hours, and the reason to show them in the proposal rather than only the total is that every extra and every trade at the review is priced from them.

Setup is priced once, at $1,650 for the January audit, the content plan, the post templates and one half-day shoot at both locations, because the first month costs more than any month after it. A monthly retainer that hides setup inside the fee either overcharges month six or undercharges month one, and the client notices whichever one it is.

What changed at Oxbow's day-90 review?

The mix of posts and videos changed and the fee didn't, and a request to tie the fee to followers was settled by a sentence the owner had signed in December.

The review was on Friday, April 2, 2027, with January to March laid next to the November starting point. Instagram had gone from 1,840 followers to 2,105 and Facebook from 2,310 to 2,362. Message inquiries had gone from three in October to five in January, eight in February and eleven in March, and seven of March's eleven came in on the videos. The owner added a number of her own, which was that weekday daycare at the Spokane Valley location had gone from about 40 dogs to 52 of its 70 places, and the agency wrote that down as her figure rather than its result.

Her business partner asked whether the fee could depend on reaching 3,000 Instagram followers by June. The agency pointed at 3.1, which the partner hadn't read and the owner had, and the conversation moved on to the part the review is actually for. Videos were doing the work, so under 5.2 the plan from May 1 became thirteen feed posts and six videos, and since three posts at $90 cost the same $270 as two videos at $135, the month still came to $2,980.

She also asked for posts on the Google Business Profile of both locations, since new customers were finding the daycare through maps, and that was 6.3 at $380 a month for May and June, $760 in all. Add the two January snow-closure posts, which were extras at $90 plus $55 each, $290 together, and the six months billed $20,580 against the $19,530 the proposal set out, with every dollar of the difference coming from a line the owner had read before she signed.

Where does the social media proposal stop and the contract start?

The proposal stops at the plan and the prices, and the contract starts at the rules for running it, which on social media means approval deadlines, reply hours, account access and how the arrangement ends.

Oxbow's proposal mentions approval in one section, because the owner needs to know before she signs that the calendar has to be approved by the 25th. The detail of what happens to a post nobody approves, how the agency gets into the accounts and what an after-hours call costs belongs in the agreement, which is where the difference between a proposal and a contract puts it. Keep the counts and prices identical in both documents, since a client who finds $90 in the proposal and $95 in the contract will reasonably wonder which one they agreed to.

If the client already buys other marketing from you, the social media work can sit inside a wider plan instead, and a marketing proposal template that prices each channel separately is the better starting point. A social media proposal earns its own document when the account is the whole engagement, or when it's the first thing a new client is willing to buy from you.

Followers go in the report, and the fee goes to the work

If you copy one sentence from the proposal above, make it 3.1: we report these figures every month and review them with you at day 90, and none of them is a condition of the fee. At Oxbow it turned a request to tie the fee to 3,000 followers into a two-minute conversation, and it let the review spend its hour on the mix that was bringing in eleven inquiries a month.

The proposal sets the prices, and the approvals still have to happen in May. Docket is where a request like the Google Business Profile lands: the agency enters the $380 from line 6.3, sends it to the owner as the approver named in section 7, and her approval is kept with its date next to the project, so June's invoice matches what she agreed to.

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