As anyone who has been in the industry for a while can attest, the role of a social media manager has changed drastically over the years. The skills a social media manager needs to have in 2024 look very different than they did a decade ago.
In this article, we’ll discuss what it means to be a social media manager in 2024, how the role has evolved, the skills needed to become one, and how to land this role.
Let’s get started.
In the most basic sense, a social media manager markets a business using social media platforms. They play a major role in strategizing and executing a company’s presence across multiple social media platforms primarily to build brand awareness and ultimately generate sales for the company.
While social media managers are specialized in one sense — they focus on one marketing channel — their roles often look more like a generalist’s. They typically play a role in several or all social media functions for a company.
Our social media manager here at Loomly, Christie Osterhus, works with all aspects of social media. She provides some insight into what her role looks like as she manages multiple different parts of a social media strategy.
“I have my hand in strategy, content creation, influencer marketing, community management, and I really enjoy this diverse scope of work. It’s fun to craft a strategy combining what's currently working on social media and my personal skill set, then execute it myself. Limitations often produce some of the most creative results, so being a part of a small team pushes me to explore so many possibilities instead of settling for the first idea I have.”
Meg Purdum, social media manager at retirement community Masonic Villages of Pennsylvania, has a similar role, explaining, “Working as the lone social media manager on a small team, I’m doing it all: social monitoring, community management, content creation and curation, analytics, advertising, etc.”
On a large social media team, social media managers might oversee all of a company’s organic social media presence, while more specialized roles might be focused specifically on paid advertising or community management. On a small social media team, or a team of one, social media managers have their hands on all the social media levers, from organic to paid to influencer marketing.
Some companies have social media teams with more specialized roles. These specialist roles may make up a full social media management team that works together on the different aspects of the strategy. Or, they may work underneath a generalist social media manager or director by providing specialized expertise in their field.
Some of these specialist roles include:
There are also roles focused exclusively on content creation — photographers, videographers, graphic designers, video editors, etc. Other social media roles don’t focus on marketing at all — community building and customer support roles can be considered more service-oriented and therefore might work on totally different teams.
These differences in social media roles are just one example of how social media management has evolved over the years — more on that next.
When social media management first came to be in the early 2010s, it looked vastly different than it does now. Let’s dig into the different ways that social media management has changed in the last 10-15 years.
The first major change comes in the number of platforms available for business use. In 2010, there were only a few social media platforms that a company could use — Facebook and Twitter primarily.
Now, there are more social media platforms out there than you have fingers and toes — and most of them want you to create a huge variety of content types to appease their algorithms.
Drishti Sharma, marketing manager at mental health company GoodLives, says, “I remember when I started my career in social media, 5 years back, the algorithm of all the social media [platforms] was very different. Even if we used to post a simple creative with a basic caption, it used to get a lot of reach.”
Meg agrees, saying, “There are more platforms to be on and more that’s required of you. The focus has shifted to video over photos, which often takes a lot of bandwidth and resources to produce. It’s harder to be in multiple places at once, but there’s often still an expectation to cover every existing channel.”
We’ve also seen major changes in the amount of content types businesses can create.
Look at Instagram alone. When it first launched, it was a chronological feed of user photos. It wasn’t until a few years later that it enabled video-sharing. Then it started allowing businesses to run ads. Before long, it launched Instagram Stories. Then live video streaming. Then carousel posts. Then shops and shoppable posts. And now, we have Instagram Reels, plus Notes and Broadcast Channels.
Not only does a social media manager need to know how all of these different content types work, but they also have to create and share them — across every platform.
Since social media has overshadowed other marketing channels as a key driver for brand awareness, you need a killer strategy to maximize your reach and integrate it with your other marketing efforts. Back in 2014, having an active social media presence at all could be a differentiator.
As Christie says, “As content becomes more and more competitive on social media, diving deeper into a couple key platforms or narrowing focus on what is producing desired results is essential. No one can really afford to ‘post just to post’ anymore, because it will ultimately hurt social accounts in the long run.”
Alfred Christ, social media marketer at 3D puzzle retailer Robotime, agrees, saying, “In the past, social media management was mostly about posting content and engaging with followers. The role has, however, widened over time to incorporate other tasks, such as data analysis, content creation, and strategy planning.”
Another expert from project management tool Wrike, Elisa Montanari, shares, “The industry has grown larger, so you must be able to manage across platforms accordingly. Back in the day, there was little in the game beyond Facebook, but now, most brands maintain a presence across at least three or four different platforms.”
If you’re interested in working in social media, there are a number of practical and “soft” skills that are key to your success.
Practical skills, or “hard” skills, are more hands-on or technical skills that allow you to perform the practical responsibilities of a job. For a social media manager, this includes skills like:
What skills or knowledge do our experts think matter most?
Soft skills are about how you get work done. In social media marketing, common soft skills that may make you a great social media manager include:
Our experts share the following soft skills that have helped them and others in the social media industry:
Interested in becoming a social media manager? One thing we love about this industry is how many different ways there are to land a social media marketing role.
For example, Christie fell into social media marketing while she was looking for a career that she could grow alongside her acting career.
“I found myself consuming a lot of content on Instagram and TikTok, and I was determined to ‘crack the algorithms.’ I started running the social media accounts for a co-working space I was working for, but soon took a role at a marketing agency in a very sink-or-swim environment... thankfully, I'm a great swimmer.”
Christie finds social media to be a fantastic career to parallel acting because the worlds are actually adjacent. “All the social media apps are competing for viewers’ attention just like streaming services and network television. At the end of the day, it's all entertainment. Understanding how to make someone laugh or feel connected to a larger community has always been my bread and butter, whether that's through a phone or on the silver screen.”
However, Meg took a more traditional route, discovering social media while she was still in college. She took a university-offered social media marketing class while also managing the Facebook Page for her college radio show.
Meg shares, “When I was a junior, I interned for my current company over the summer as a public relations associate. In my senior year, a public relations coordinator position opened up there, and my internship supervisor encouraged me to apply. I got the job right out of school and have been managing their social media ever since.”
Drishti started by taking an online marketing course. “After doing that course, I did 2-3 internships to understand social media marketing in a much better way. It’s been 5 years and I’ve handled more than 30 social media accounts for various brands and startups.”
Because social media requires many skills that can also be used in other roles, there’s no set path for landing your first social media job.
If you’re interested in getting into the industry, check out our job search toolkit for tips on finding the right roles and gathering your application materials.
Love creating social media content and have the soft skills to make a marketing role for a business work? You might just make a perfect social media manager. In 2024, you need the right tools to help make your strategy work — and Loomly is the perfect option for marketing teams. Sign up for a 15-day free trial to see how it works!