Social Media - an overlooked role in an organization?

Being in the role of a social media manager for so many years and hearing the same complaints over, I do agree with the realization that social media is amongst one of the most misunderstood jobs around.

It is a position that is often touted as trendy and in-demand, but often poorly articulated.

Social media is now a part of our daily lives; it’s often the top sources of information for many, and is the most common platform where content is being consumed. I cannot count the number of times whereby I’ve spoken to business-owners and individuals that tell me they need a social presence, just because ‘others have it’ without being able to tell me why they need it, and what results they hope to achieve out of having one.

How this translates to organizational building is that in a lot of small companies, social media marketers are often an afterthought, and they are tacked on to any convenient marketing role which results in a diluted approach to building your community. In fairness, these smaller organizations may not be able spare such a resource (but, if it’s critical to your marketing strategy… why not?). In bigger companies however, these roles often overshadowed by those who are in traditional marketing roles, such as product marketing, sales and marketing, and public relations where they have more say over what goes out than to trust their dedicated social hires in developing the right social strategy. There’s never a right mix of relevant scope and you often end up with either a very redundant role, or a very overworked team member.

Which brings me to the next point of social media being…

A job that demands one to be a jack of all trades, in a world where the master of one is still largely favored.

My fellow social media managers often joke and laugh about how we have to master customer service, public relations, branding, content marketing and take on everything that’s tagged to “social media”, beneath this laughter, this couldn’t have been truer.

Failing to understand the nuances of social media marketing, a lot of job descriptions advertise the role to be one that demands the skillsets of multiple marketing disciplines. But yet at the same time, they don’t map out the career roadmaps for someone that’s adept in all of them by virtue of the name of the role.

Social media managers are often left unheard because they are not accorded the weight and respect that they give to traditional marketing functions, where the mastering of the role is perceived to bring more business value to the organization. Not helping is the fact that since social media is commonplace, everyone has their own ‘hot-takes’ on the subject matter just because they are capable of posting a status update.

I hope that question I got was not done out of mockery as I had someone from another organisation ask, “how does one dance their way up to be a marketing director on TikTok?”. Coming from experience, while I’ve certainly had my successes (along with luck), I often have to work doubly hard to prove my capabilities, often times being thrown projects that are not-social media related as a ”challenge to prove myself to the marketing organization”, even when I’m trained in the disciplines of digital marketing and public relations. It’s role where people unfortunately don’t pay a lot of attention to.

Yet – many social media marketers I know are some of the most determined, creative and relevant marketers I know. These guys have their pulse on the community and the industry because they are your front desk members on social. They possess a certain level of grit to navigate the toxicity on the internet and are there around the clock because social never sleeps. There’s no textbook to their job function and the best ones constantly pace themselves at the speed of which social media moves.

Which brings me to the last point of social media marketing and management being…

A role in a fast-paced, dynamic space that is often undermined by data-reliant, process-driven thinking-

It remains surprising to me that many continue to apply the thinking of ‘failing to plan = planning to fail’ to a field such as social media. While there will be guidance amidst overarching strategies, there needs to be a certain threshold in building processes around these kinds of decision making. I’ve seen a lot of missed opportunities happen, for example, where a drafted response/content failed to happen in time (or became irrelevant because the trend is dead), because the review is done with the same rigour as a million-dollar marketing campaign, necessary data research, SWOT analyses and all.

There’s an element of experimentation that an organization should grow an appetite for; we could all agree that the marketing landscape is changing faster than ever given the times we live in, with many of those that survive the times being ones that are nimble enough to pivot.

Approach with an open mind and hear your social media guys out – you may be surprised at the insights and ideas they can bring to the table than most traditional marketer could. These marketers that work proactively and instinctively will outpace one that’s sitting around waiting for data to come in to make a decision (not that they are unimportant).

My 11 years in the space is fraught with similar challenges, right to this day where I still clash with other marketers on why random hashtags are a pointless affair (and sometimes still getting decisions overridden). But serendipitously, through these challenges, I also found the right opportunities to hone some of these additional skillsets that allow myself to be heard. As a manager, I’ve learnt to take a very careful look in terms of the types of candidates I look out for (the right attitude/hunger vs skillsets) to take on the social media manager role.

As more delve into the intricacies of the social media role many years later - it shouldn’t be this difficult to find clarity in the function that helps you build presence, brand and drive results like any other marketing roles, and I hope more will pay attention and ?give interest to what’s a very overlooked position in your marketing organization.

Above thanking them for the tireless work, have you sat down and chatted with your social media managers lately, and what insights have you gleaned from them?