‘Your team is going to get completely burnt out’: Confessions of a job-hunting social media expert

“The number one problem right now with social media roles is that they are expecting you to wear way too many hats,” they said. 

In the latest edition of our Confessions series, in which we offer anonymity in exchange for candor, Modern Retail spoke with a social media professional with more than five years of experience working for small local businesses, fundraising platforms and consumer packaged goods companies. They specialize in brand strategy and video content, and have held roles like social media manager and content marketing director and created freelance campaign work. This person was laid off in late 2024 amid the mounting responsibilities of today’s brand social media representatives. The field, while seemingly ubiquitous for brands, is still evolving thanks to a flurry of new platforms, changing guidelines and shifting generational behaviors.

This mid-career professional has led a team of social media managers while strategizing larger brand or product campaigns. Their role also encompassed what they referred to as “crisis communications,” or dealing with angry or unhappy customers who showed up in the comments or DMs.

At a moment when the platforms are consistently shifting their own processes, this professional sees job postings that seem to ask too much of one person for a salary that feels too low. The average social media manager, according to ZipRecruiter, is paid about $65,000 a year. But this job seeker is seeing posts that ask someone in a social media manager role to also be responsible for higher-level brand strategy conversations as well as daily execution, like scheduling posts and engaging in comments.

“There are the times when you’re in the comments and things are like fun and people are like, ‘I love you!’ but then there are also the people who are coming into your DMs who have questions about your product,” they said. “And a lot of social media managers are expected to do that when, in reality, that should be a customer service person.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Where are you at in your job search right now, and where would you like that to lead?
I just recently got laid off, and now I’m on a search. And it took me, I would say, probably about two or so weeks to kind of really figure out what I was looking for. I feel pretty confident that I’m on the path to CMO [eventually], so my decisions that I’m making today are hopefully going to lead me there.

I’m looking to continue to climb up the social media and brand marketing ladder, and I’m looking for leadership roles. I don’t want to go back to signing into an Instagram account every single day. 

What are some of the challenges or concerns that you have about the job postings you see in the field?
Number one is the amount of tasks that they’re asking people to do. They’re looking for someone to be the designer, to run analytics, to find the trends, to create the strategy, to execute, to do the daily management of the page — and then be in the DMs and community manage.

Number two is the salary that’s coming with that. It seems to me that salary and title are extremely arbitrary. And I think it has a lot to do with, which is problem number three, the fact that the social media field is so new. There’s no true ladder upward, and a lot of places are stopping at social media manager because they think that’s it.

But then you have me, who has been essentially a social media manager now for five or so years. And I’m like, “What’s up? Can I get a director of social? Can I be the head of social?” I think because the field is so new, no one really knows, like, what are those next steps.

What is important for brands to know about the difference between social media strategy and social media execution?
Your team is going to get completely burnt out, and something is going to lack — either the creativity or the content creation. 

You don’t know it until you’ve lived it, what it feels like to sit in strategy meetings all day and then, on top of that, still be expected to make sure your three posts are scheduled for the day; that you have answered any comments from yesterday within 24 hours and that you’ve also answered any DMs within 24 hours. And when there’s one social media manager on the team, you are likely creating the content for the day and for tomorrow the day before.

And that is, like, the definition of burnout. And it is going to compromise the success of your social channels. 

What do you see as a better way for brands to handle social media management if not all one person?
I would assume most brands do this already, and that’s that social media teams and customer service teams need to be talking to each other constantly. And then I think there’s a role for a community manager who is trained [in both], who sits on a CX team and sits on a social team. And they are trained to answer customer service problems and also have the brand voice to do the engagement. If there’s no community manager role, there are tools that can be integrated that connect a company’s DMs to the customer service software that they use.

Barring companies being able to ramp up staffing on social and community teams, how can people in social jobs manage expectations around their roles?
I do think that there are unrealistic expectations that typically come from very high up. Your direct supervisor is usually a lot more grounded than the founder or CEO. But what I did a really good job at — and what I think a lot of people can do — is really manage expectations by setting the scene. Like, “Here are our KPIs. Here’s what we usually hit. This is what is considered really great. And this would be considered bad for us.”

You can also lower the priority. “If this is something that you want me to take on, understand that that means something else is going to have to come down if you want me to focus on this.” Those are the conversations I’ve had to have with bosses in the past. You say “This is great, I hear you that this is really important to you, but also last week you told me this was really important and I was working on this. Are you fine with redirecting priorities a bit?” You have to manage up a little bit, no one knows your schedule but you.