Facebook is still the centre of gravity in Egypt
Marketing teams arriving with a plan weighted towards short video and lifestyle feeds usually discover that the largest, most commercially active audience is still sitting on Facebook. Pages, groups and Messenger carry an enormous share of everyday commerce here, from furniture and electronics to clinics and private tutoring, across age groups that other platforms reach thinly.
That does not make the newer platforms optional. TikTok has become the default entertainment surface for younger audiences and a genuine discovery engine, Instagram carries fashion, beauty and food, and YouTube absorbs long-form viewing. But a channel plan that quietly deprioritises the biggest platform because it feels dated elsewhere is a plan written for a different country.
Which Arabic you publish in is a strategy decision
There is no neutral choice. Formal written Arabic reads as institutional and works for banks, government-adjacent services and serious announcements. Colloquial Egyptian reads as human and is what actually performs in social feeds, in comments and in video scripts. Many brands run both, formal for policy and colloquial for conversation, and the boundary needs to be written down rather than improvised.
Alongside that sits the practical craft. Arabic script is right to left, which changes layout, reading order and where a logo can sit, and typography choices affect legibility on small screens more than in Latin scripts. Latinised Arabic typing appears in youth communication and can feel authentic or gimmicky depending on the category. Ask to see the agency's Arabic design work at mobile size before judging it in a presentation.
The Ramadan cycle is the marketing year
The holy month restructures media consumption, working hours, spending and tone in a way no other period does. Viewing spikes in the evening, promotional creative shifts towards family and generosity, and much of the year's most ambitious brand work is produced for this window. Production and media booking start months in advance, and late arrivals pay more for worse slots.
The weeks after the feast carry a spending hangover, the summer coastal season moves attention and audiences physically, and the school return produces its own demand peak. Ask for a plan with dates attached to this cycle. A calendar organised only by content pillar has been copied from a global template.
Comment moderation is a staffed function, not a checkbox
Engagement volumes on large pages here are extraordinary, and comment threads become a public customer service queue, a price negotiation and occasionally a reputational event. Left unmanaged, they fill with spam, competitor sniping and unanswered complaints that every future visitor reads before they read your post.
Establish who moderates, in which hours, and by what rules. Agree what gets hidden, what gets answered publicly and what moves to a private message. Ask for coverage over weekends and holidays specifically, because that is when volume rises and staffing usually does not.
Selling happens in the inbox and often ends in cash
A large proportion of transactions begin with a comment or a direct message asking for price and availability. Cash on delivery remains widespread, card penetration is uneven, and trust is built through responsiveness rather than checkout design. This makes reply speed a revenue metric rather than a service metric.
Scope it explicitly. Who answers, how fast, using which scripts, and how an order moves from a chat thread into fulfilment without being retyped. Ask how returns and refused deliveries are handled, because with cash on delivery the cost of an over-promised message lands on your logistics, not on the campaign report.
Creators, rates and the paperwork nobody mentions
The creator market spans household-name entertainers with celebrity pricing and a deep tier of smaller accounts where the commercial return is usually better. Rates are negotiated rather than listed, exclusivity is often assumed and rarely documented, and content rights for reuse in paid media need to be agreed separately.
There are also regulatory expectations around media activity and licensing that apply to accounts operating at scale, and paid promotion is expected to be identifiable to the audience. Health, pharmaceutical and medical services messaging carries additional restrictions. An agency that raises these points unprompted is doing the job properly.
Budgets move when the currency moves
Media pricing and international platform billing are exposed to exchange rate movement, which means a budget fixed in a foreign currency behaves differently month to month than one fixed locally. Contracts, invoicing currency and who carries the exchange risk are worth settling in the first conversation rather than during a reconciliation dispute.
Ask how the agency reprices when rates move, whether the retainer is indexed, and how media budgets are converted. Two otherwise identical proposals can differ substantially once this is clear.
Own the page, the pixel and the number
Verified pages, the Business Manager, ad accounts, the pixel, the product catalogue and the business messaging number should sit under your company, with the agency holding access that can be withdrawn. Assets created under an agency profile are difficult to recover, and a customer base used to messaging one number will not migrate to another.
Write the handover into the contract at the start, listing the assets, the administrator transfer and an export of message history and creative files. It is a short clause that saves a long argument.
Shortlisting a social media partner in Egypt
Ask for live page links rather than screenshots, and read the comment sections rather than the case study. Ask who writes the colloquial copy, who replies to messages, and whether those individuals stay on the account after the pitch. Ask for an example of a campaign they advised against, and what happened.
You can compare verified teams in the social media agency directory, review their sector work and client feedback, and see how each firm explains its results. Brands building a fuller presence often combine this with performance and search execution or press and reputation support, and setting the boundary early keeps two teams from reporting the same activity twice. When you are ready to compare real proposals, request tailored quotes and give each agency the same brief, the same period and the same definition of a result.