Teams, tasks, and tribulations
Creating content, responding to comments, tracking analytics, and so much more. Social marketers handle a lot—and social isn’t the only thing on their plates, either. They’re busy. They’re stressed. They’re doing it all on their own. And we need to talk about it.
01
Who are social media managers, really?
The majority of people who work in social media actually spend less than half their day doing it.
Not nearly as many salaried social marketers are fully dedicated to social media as we thought—in fact, only 11% of them have roles that primarily focus on social.
Social media-only roles are anything but the norm
Sample: In-house and agency social marketers (n=3,220)
Source: Social Media Management Career Survey 2023, March/April 2023
At first, we wondered if this meant we surveyed the wrong people—where were the real social media managers? But we quickly realized that the amount of time you spend doing social doesn’t necessarily determine whether or not you are a social media marketer.
There are so many other contributing factors, including who you work with, the social tasks you perform, your connection to those responsibilities, and even how much you enjoy them.
And, of course, there’s your job title—more than a quarter of our survey-takers have “social” in their official titles.
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02
Everyone’s swamped—but not everyone’s stressed
The average social marketer does about eight different social tasks—things like writing copy, shooting and editing photos and videos, scheduling posts, creating ads, building strategies, tracking analytics, monitoring what people say, and managing influencer partnerships.
That’s a lot of tasks (and those are just the ones they’re telling us about!). No wonder two-thirds of them claim they have too many things to do.
More sticky notes, please: Social marketers’ to-do lists go on forever
Sample: In-house and agency social marketers (n=3,220)
Source: Social Media Management Career Survey 2023, March/April 2023
As you’d expect, the Devoted group (who spend the most time working on social media) perform more social tasks than the groups who spend less time working on social.
With all those tasks, you’d think they’d be the most overwhelmed. Turns out, Devoted social marketers are significantly less likely to say they’re drowning in tasks than the others. But here’s the thing: They don’t have to split their time between different lines of work as much as everyone else.
The Distributed, Divided, and Dedicated groups are more likely to feel bogged down because they’re expected to carry out more non-social responsibilities—like PR and communications, email marketing, web design, event planning, and admin—on top of all their social tasks. Sheer workload isn’t the only issue; when you’re constantly being pulled in different directions, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
Propel your career in the right direction
Are you on the right career path? If your boss doesn’t understand social, what does that mean for you? The full 2023 Social Media Career Report has the answers you crave.
03
Building your social dream team: Is bigger really better?
Social media marketing as a career is still in its infancy. That becomes even more evident when we look at social teams—or the lack thereof. Most commonly, organizations have just one person dedicated to social media.
Flying solo: The one-person team reigns supreme
Sample: In-house social marketers (n=2,703)
Source: Social Media Management Career Survey 2023, March/April 2023
We were shocked to learn that 8% of businesses don’t have any dedicated social marketers. Even more surprising: These are brands that have a social media presence, but function without a designated team—which means every single person who works on social has other, possibly more pressing, priorities.
The good news: The vast majority of organizations (nine out of 10) have at least one person managing their social channels—so they know there’s value in social marketing (even if they don’t know how to show it).
But social marketers who sit on larger social teams are happier in their jobs than those on smaller teams.
The more the merrier: Larger social teams have happier social marketers
Sample: In-house social marketers (n=2,703)
Source: Social Media Management Career Survey 2023, March/April 2023
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