As social media becomes an increasingly important piece of the marketing puzzle, more businesses are paying close attention to how they structure their social media teams and what types of people they hire for these roles.
While brand new start-ups or small businesses might immediately hire a social media manager, covering your social media needs isn’t always that cut and dry. In fact, if you don’t get clear on your goals, functional needs, and skill requirements up front, you run the risk of building a team that can’t scale with your business.
This guide will give you a clear path for planning and structuring your social media team, including the most common social media roles and when you might need to hire each of them. We’ll also cover some key considerations that come after you’ve hired your team: How will they work together? What resources will they need? How will you keep them happy and high-performing?
Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Define your social media team’s purpose
The purpose, structure, and focus of your social media team are directly related to your brand's goals. These goals will help you build a social media strategy, identify the social media functions you need covered, and prioritize the skills and specializations you need on the team.
1. Get clear on your social media goals
Before you can structure your team, you need to know what they'll be doing. Otherwise, you’ll fall into the most common social media pitfall: Just posting to post.
If you don’t already have a social media strategy that outlines your goals, you can develop a loose idea from the following question: What are your brand’s overall goals, and how can social media help reach those goals? This will clarify your social media goals and how to reach them.
For example, if a startup brand’s main goal is to build brand awareness, this might translate to the social media goals of increasing views and follower count. A tactic for reaching these goals is to focus on short-form video.
That’s a fine starting point for now, but be sure to bookmark our guide to building a social media strategy so you can read up on it later.
2. Identify your team’s core functions
Next, you need to figure out the functions or focus areas that your social media team will work on in order to reach these goals.
You probably don’t have unlimited headcount to hire as many social media folks as you want. Most businesses average one to five social media team members. That’s why you have to get extremely clear on the key functions that will move the needle for your business. There are many areas that your social media marketing team can be directly or indirectly responsible for, including:
- Content creation: This is the classic and most common function of the social team. They might handle the actual creation — photography, videography, copywriting — or collaborate with other teams or freelancers. It doesn't have to be exclusive to social content; many teams are responsible for blog posts, infographics, long-form YouTube videos, and more.
- Customer service: Social media teams often play the role of customer service reps. They address issues, answer questions, and solve problems to convert potential customers and keep existing ones happy.
- Lead generation: By posting valuable content, hosting webinars, or running contests and giveaways, the team can attract and engage potential customers, driving them toward the sales funnel.
- Social listening: This involves monitoring and analyzing conversations about your brand or industry on social media. By identifying trends, sentiments, and potential issues, the team can get insights and adjust the marketing strategy accordingly.
- Community management: It’s not enough to just post content — the team also needs to engage with the audience by responding to comments, encouraging discussions, and building relationships. This helps nurture an active and loyal community around your brand.
- Crisis management: From dealing with negative comments to handling PR disasters, some social teams are on crisis standby. These team members are key to mitigating damage and maintaining the brand’s reputation.
Remember, your social media team should be laser-focused on your brand’s goals. An effective social media team has a north star — they’re not built to do everything at once.
3. Identify the skills your team needs
Once you’ve established the functions and focus areas of your team, you’ll have a better idea of the skills required to execute your strategy.
For instance, if you’re focusing on community building, you might need to hire people with strong communication skills and online event management experience.
Here are some skills your team may need:
- Leadership, organization, and team management
- Content creation, including writing, editing, video production, and graphic design
- Paid advertising expertise on various social platforms
- Customer service and support
- Communicating with internal and external stakeholders
Soft skills are those intangible ones like leadership, teamwork, and communication. These keep the team humming along and help you partner with other parts of the business.
Hard skills, on the other hand, are all about the technical stuff. We’re talking creating killer content, navigating specific social platforms, and having a knack for customer service.
It’s perfectly fine if everyone doesn’t have every skill right off the bat. In that case, it’s important to look for interest level when you’re hiring. If an entry-level candidate doesn’t have a ton of experience in a key focus area but they’re super motivated to learn more, their interest can go a long way.
4. Review your budget and resources
You know what you want to achieve and what you’ll need to achieve it, but do you have the budget and resources to achieve your goals?
Budget is the most obvious constraint to social media team structuring. Then again, it gives you extremely clear guardrails to hire against. Teams usually develop one person at a time, so it’s important to think about the best fit for your current needs before you commit to a social media org chart in your head. The work your first hire accomplishes will often guide subsequent hires.
For instance, most small companies and startups hire a social media manager as their first social role. They’re looking for someone who can do it all — strategy and execution. Maybe that social media manager does a great job building a following and you want to leverage it. A community manager would be a clear next choice. Or say your manager is all in on content creation and needs more time to be creative. In that case, you might want to hire a coordinator who can take day-to-day operations like scheduling off their plate.
In-house social media teams vs social media agencies
Before we go any further, we need to distinguish between in-house and agency social media teams.
Social media agencies collaborate with brands to provide social media services. Depending on the company’s size and requirements, the agency can scale its team accordingly. For instance, one team could serve two or three small brands, but larger accounts may require the equivalent of two or three teams.
In-house social media teams are formed according to the company’s size, structure, and emphasis on social media. For instance, a startup might have one marketing manager responsible for social media, email marketing, and blog content.
On the other hand, a large enterprise might have multiple teams for different objectives, such as brand awareness, community building, and customer success. Mid-sized companies sit somewhere in the middle and typically have one person per role.
Step 2: Determine your social media team structure
As your brand grows and your social media efforts become more complex, building a strong social media team is essential for success. Each role brings unique skills to the table, and understanding which roles to introduce and when will ensure your social media strategy is both efficient and effective.
Here are some of the most common social media roles and responsibilities, and when you might consider adding them to your team.
Social media manager
Social media manager the catch-all role for most social media professionals. Depending on your organization, they could also be called a brand manager or head of social. The bottom line is that they’re an overall team leader, or at least the leader of a social strategy.
They can wear many hats, especially in a small company. They may handle content publishing, comment replies, and analyzing results. Content creation is a major part of their work, often involving copywriting, designing visuals, and producing videos.
But they also need a high-level view of social media. They often craft strategies that align with business goals, manage social media calendars, and brainstorm creative campaigns. They need to know the brand inside out.
When to hire: Hire a social media manager when you need a leader for high-level strategy and day-to-day execution. Ideal for businesses with a growing social presence that require someone to plan, create, and manage social media strategies. Perfect for small and medium-sized teams needing a mix of strategy, content creation, and community engagement.
Learn more about what a social media manager does →
Social media strategist
Unlike roles focused on daily execution, social media strategists emphasize strategic thinking over operational tasks. They design high-level strategies to align a brand’s social presence with broader business goals.
When to hire: Hire a social media strategist when your social presence is established, but you need a long-term plan to scale and align with business objectives. This role is ideal for brands looking to refine existing strategies, drive engagement, and utilize data-driven campaigns. Perfect for mid-sized and large teams focused on growth and brand consistency.
Learn more about what a social media strategist does →
Social media specialist
Typically an individual contributor with three to five+ years of experience, social media specialists focus on maintaining a brand’s social presence through a wide range of support activities, including content creation, calendar management, publishing, and community engagement.
Specialists usually report to a manager or director on the social media or marketing team. In smaller companies, they may handle multiple responsibilities, while larger companies or agencies assign them to specific accounts or tasks.
When to hire: Hire a social media specialist for day-to-day management, content creation, and scheduling of social media accounts. Ideal for smaller teams or businesses, they’re versatile team members who excel at execution and keeping social channels running smoothly. Perfect for a hands-on role focused on content and operational tasks.
Learn more about what a social media specialist does →
Social media coordinator
A social media coordinator is typically an entry-level role with one to two years of experience. They support senior team members by executing strategies through daily tasks like content creation, managing calendars, responding to audience interactions, and tracking performance.
When to hire: Hire a social media coordinator when you’re starting to build your social presence. This role suits small teams or businesses with limited budgets, as they handle content scheduling, engagement, and basic analytics. It’s a great way to support senior staff by executing strategies and maintaining consistent social media operations.
Learn more about what a social media coordinator does →
Social media analyst
A social media analyst tracks and interprets KPIs (key performance indicators) like engagement rate, click-through rate, traffic, and conversions to assess the effectiveness of social media effectiveness. They measure ROI and translate data into insights for the team and stakeholders to understand what’s working and what isn’t.
When to hire: Hire a social media analyst when you need to measure campaign success and business impact. This role is essential for businesses running large campaigns or those that need detailed performance reports to refine social media strategies and make data-driven decisions. Ideal for companies focused on growth and improving ROI.
Paid social media specialist
A paid social media specialist builds and optimizes social media ad campaigns across multiple platforms. They set campaign goals, define target audiences, create or collaborate on ad content, and run A/B tests to maximize ROI.
Your advertising specialist needs to understand how each social ad platform works, what content excels on those platforms, and the budget required to accomplish your goals.
When to hire: Hire a paid social media specialist when you have a large ad budget and a solid pipeline to handle incoming leads or customers. This role is crucial for businesses needing to maximize ad spend and scale quickly through paid social campaigns.
Community manager
Community managers focus on listening to and engaging with your audience and customers on social media. They are often considered the face of your company. They play a strategic role in developing customer relationships, increasing brand loyalty, and fostering a community spirit with your brand’s biggest fans and advocates. They handle tasks such as moderating content, responding to interactions, managing user-generated content, and hosting events.
When to hire: Hire a community manager when your brand needs to build a strong online community and deepen relationships with your audience. This role is crucial for businesses with an active, engaged following that contributes to their brand awareness and reputation. It’s particularly important for larger brands that use social media as a customer success or service platform.
Learn more about what a community manager does →
Bonus: The extended cross-functional team
Besides core social media roles, the best brands work as cross-functional teams involving people from all departments. These team members can play an important role in your social media workflows. For example:
- Product: helps define target audiences and messaging around your products
- Sales: ensures you have a social to sales pipelines for prospective customers
- HR: collaborates on employee-generated content and ensures accurate employment information.
- Legal: ensures there are no liability risks in branded content
- Finance: ensures accurate budgeting and helps forecast additional resource needs.
- Third-Parties: any clients, agencies, or contractors you may be working
Step 3: Set up your social media team for success
It doesn’t matter if you have a social media team of one or 20 — you’ll need to create a foundation that supports their daily work and overall career growth. There are many facets to creating a high-performing and happy team, but there are a few you can start thinking about at the outset.
- Workflows: Setting clear expectations about how work gets done helps your team stay nimble, organized, and on-target.
- Tools: Identify the specific and team-wide tools that will help your team create work they’re proud of and eliminate tedious tasks so they can focus on the good stuff.
- Culture: Prioritize a team culture that helps individuals do their best work and feel safe to share new ideas or concerns.
Let’s look at each one more closely.
1. Workflows
With your team members in place, you can start planning your workflows and processes. It all starts with the social media calendar — the touchstone of a social media team. Regardless of what roles you hire for, everyone will need access to the calendar to help them plan, schedule, and manage content and campaigns.
You’ll also want to map out your social media workflows. Organizing who creates, approves, publishes, monitors, and tracks content – and how — is one of the most challenging aspects for a social media team, especially the bigger they get. A social media workflow implements repeatable steps and deadlines for each content creation phase so that everyone knows what they are doing and when to complete it.
You can really support your team by combining these needs and aligning their calendar and workflows in the same place. With a social media management tool like Loomly, you can create a shared calendar for everyone to see the overall timeline as well as more granular views, like campaigns or platform-specific schedules. And you don’t need to leave the platform to create your content — you can draft, review, schedule, and auto-publish everything directly from Loomly.
With a custom approval workflow, you can also notify the right team members for feedback and revisions in the platform. For example, you can create a trigger that automatically assigns your manager to posts that are Pending Approval.
2. Tools
Navigating the world of social media can be challenging, but there are brilliant content creation and marketing tools to make your team’s job easier and more efficient.
Starting with content planning and scheduling, Loomly is an affordable and easy-to-use choice for teams of all sizes. In a single platform, you can manage your social media calendars, draft content, get feedback and revisions, and schedule posts to auto-publish. The built-in analytics dashboard lets you track post and account metrics across platforms. That’s the entire social media content lifecycle housed in one platform!
When it comes to creating eye-catching content, you have many software options. Your organization might already have a go-to design/content creation tool, but your best bets are Adobe Suite and Canva. If you’re after something more user-friendly or cost-effective, Canva is the undisputed choice with its easy drag-and-drop interface. Plus, Canva integrates with Loomly, so you can transfer content you’ve designed into the tool for publishing.
Depending on your budget and social media goals, you might also want to invest in social listening, customer service chatbots, audience research tools, and more. Our guide to the best marketing tools on the market is a great way to start building your social media tech stack.
3. Culture
Aside from hiring the right team members, it’s important to develop the right team culture.
An employee’s team is fundamental to their well-being, engagement, and overall work ethic. When employees feel like they have a strong workplace community, they're more likely to stay with the company and continue to grow.
So, here are four ways you can develop a team culture and ensure your team members feel safe, empowered, connected, and valued.
- Foster autonomy: Micromanaging is stressful for leaders and employees. Show you trust the individuals on your team by giving them room to take the lead on projects. By supporting them as they learn about their skills and interests, you’ll help them build a sense of self that contributes to accountability and success.
- Promote openness: When teams have more freedom and flexibility to experiment and be creative, they feel safer speaking up in their team environment and taking risks.
- Encourage peer-to-peer collaboration: Team is just a word — you’ll need to implement workflows that actually encourage your employees to work together. Create a comfortable environment where everyone knows each other’s skills and focus areas, then use social media workflow tools like Loomly so your team members can tap each other for support and feedback on the right projects at the right time.
- Celebrate successes: Recognize and share team accomplishments in meetings, newsletters, and on social platforms to inspire continued excellence.
Start building your social media team
Starting a team from scratch is harder than just finding excellent hires and onboarding them. You need to ensure that you're hiring for the right roles in the first place.
Remember to start from your foundation — your brand goals — and hone in on your needs from there. Your brand goals will reveal your social media goal, which will reveal the areas you need to focus on, which will reveal the skills you need to hire for. Beyond that, it's important to weigh your budget — and how much budget you're likely to get approved in the future — to refine your choice.
If you can prioritize these factors, including functions, skills, and budget, your choices will become much clearer. The next step is to start the candidate search! Once you hit the interview stage, be sure to review our most common social media interview questions to ensure you cover the most important topics.
More articles to help you build a social media foundation for your business:
- How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar
- How to Manage Social Media Content: Daily, Weekly, Monthly Workflows
- Best Times to Post on Social Media — Days & Times for Every Platform
- 21 Social Media Metrics to Track and Why They Matter
