Your DMs are sales calls, not community management
Why your DMs are sales calls, not community management, what goes wrong when an agency answers an enquiry it cannot follow up, and the escalation rules to set.
Short answer
Comments are community management. DMs are sales calls that arrive as text: enquiries, bookings, complaints, from people who assume they are talking to the owner. VALORAE Media handles comments on Full Page and does not answer serious DMs, because an agency that cannot follow up should forward the enquiry to you, not reply to it.
Search "social media community management" and DMs get filed under it, next to replying to comments and liking things. That filing is the mistake. Comments are community management. DMs are where people who want to buy something end up, and a business that hands them to an agency is handing its sales calls to someone who cannot close them.
Here is the distinction, what goes wrong when it is ignored, and the escalation rules we hold to.
Why your DMs are sales calls, not community management
A comment is public and it is about the post. Someone saw a video, had a reaction, and typed it under the video where everyone can see it. Most comments need nothing. A few need a reply, a few need hiding, and the odd one asks a question the caption already answered.
A DM is private and it is about you. Someone opened your profile, pressed the message button, and typed a question to the business. Do you do this. How much. Are you free next month. Can this be fixed by Friday. My order has not arrived.
Those are sales calls. The medium is text and the timing is whenever, but the shape is identical to a phone ringing in your office. The person on the other end assumes they are talking to you, or to someone who can commit on your behalf. Nobody sends a DM hoping to reach a contractor with a script.
That assumption is what makes delegation risky. In a comment thread, a slightly generic reply costs nothing. In a DM, a slightly generic reply is read as the business being uninterested.
What comments are for
Comments are fair to delegate, and on our Full Page tier we handle them. Replies where a reply adds something. Hiding spam and the bot compliments. Answering the "where is this" and "what is the song" questions. Keeping the thread from turning into a place nobody wants to be.
Nothing in that list needs a decision only the owner can make. When something in a comment does need one, the right move is to take it to the DM, and the DM is where the rules change.
What goes wrong when an agency answers a DM it cannot close
Three shapes, all of which we have watched from the outside.
The guess. An enquiry asks about scope, price or availability. The agency does not know, so it answers something plausible. Now you are bound to a promise you never made, or you have to walk it back, which is worse than a late reply.
The stall. "Someone will get back to you shortly." Fine once. As a pattern it is corrosive, because the enquirer wrote to the business and got a receptionist, and every hour before a real person appears confirms the impression.
The dead end. The agency replies well. The enquirer comes back with the follow-up, which is always the one with the real question in it. The agency cannot answer that one. The conversation dies at the exact moment it was going well, and it dies on your account under your name.
Complaints follow the same logic in reverse. An agency has no authority to refund, reschedule or apologise in a way that holds. A complaint answered by someone who cannot fix it is a complaint that will be made again, louder, in public.
Escalation rules that work
The fix is a sorting rule applied on first read, and a hard line on who replies.
| Type | What it looks like | Who replies |
|---|---|---|
| Noise | Spam, bots, collab pitches, "promote it on" | Nobody. The agency archives it. |
| Simple | A question the website or FAQ already answers | The agency, from a script you approved |
| Serious | Money, timing, a complaint, a named person, anything with a decision in it | You, every time |
Some detail on the third row, because that is where the money is.
- The agency does not answer a serious DM. No helpful first reply and no quick clarifying question. Any reply from the agency starts a conversation it cannot finish.
- The one exception is a holding line you have approved word for word. Something like "Thanks, passing this straight to the owner, who will reply to you here." It tells the enquirer that a different voice is about to appear, so the handover reads as intended rather than as a fumble.
- The forward is the thread plus a one-line summary, sent to wherever you will see it, inside a window you both wrote down in advance. Whatever the window is, it exists and it is checked.
- You reply from the account, as yourself. The agency does not write in your voice in the inbox. Ghostwriting a caption is normal. Ghostwriting a private conversation with someone who will eventually meet you is a different thing, and they notice.
- Once a week, the agency shows you everything it forwarded and marks which ones you never answered. That list is the leak. An enquiry that got a clumsy reply can be rescued. One that got no reply has already gone somewhere else.
The weekly list belongs in the same report as the numbers you already look at, because unanswered serious DMs explain more about a slow month than reach does.
What this has to do with access
If an agency is going to read your inbox at all, it needs a way in. Every platform offers delegated access for this: Meta Business Suite roles, YouTube channel permissions, LinkedIn page admin roles, TikTok business roles. Delegated access works alongside two-factor authentication and it can be revoked in one click, without touching your password.
Ask for that specifically, because it is not the industry default. When we read through competitor FAQ pages this week, only one answered the password and two-factor question at all, and its answer was that it requires your credentials. None said who owns the accounts or what happens to access when you part ways.
Small business forums carry a recurring story of a manager who lost access to several client accounts at once because everything was chained through one login. An inbox is the most sensitive thing you can share. Share it through a role, and take it back through the same role on the day you stop.
Where we stand
On Manage, we cut, package, schedule and post. Your inbox is yours and we are not in it.
On Full Page, comments are ours. DMs stay with you. If you want us in the inbox to sort noise from serious, the table above is the arrangement, and the serious row does not move: we forward, you reply. We would rather forward a question and have you answer it late than answer it ourselves and have you inherit a promise.
That is the same line we draw everywhere, and it is the line that decides which tier you are paying for. Delegate the work that has a checklist. Keep the work that needs a decision. A DM from someone with money in their hand needs a decision.
Open your message requests now and count the threads older than a week that contain a question. Whatever that count is, it is the price of filing DMs under community management, and it is the first number to get to zero.
Frequently asked questions
Should a social media agency reply to my DMs?
To the noise and the simple questions, yes, from a script you approved. To anything with money, timing, a complaint or a decision in it, no. A serious enquiry is a sales call, and the person sending it assumes they are talking to someone who can commit. An agency that cannot follow up should forward it to you rather than answer it.
What is the difference between comments and DMs for a business?
A comment is public and about the post. A DM is private and about the business. Comments are reasonable to delegate because nothing in them needs a decision only the owner can make. DMs are where enquiries, bookings and complaints arrive, so they need someone with the authority to answer the follow-up question, which is where the real enquiry usually sits.
How fast should a forwarded DM get a reply?
Whatever window you and the agency write down and can hold to. The number matters less than the habit. What kills enquiries is a serious message that gets a holding line and then silence. Agree the window, have the agency track which forwarded messages you never answered, and treat that list as the first thing to fix each week.
Does the agency need my password to read the inbox?
No. Meta Business Suite, YouTube, LinkedIn pages and TikTok all have delegated roles that give an agency page or inbox access without your credentials. Delegated access works alongside two-factor authentication and can be revoked in one click. An agency that asks for the password instead is asking for more than the job requires, and you should ask why.
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