Social media managers are recurrently requested to tackle various totally different roles, primarily based on the evolution of platforms, the event of recent methods, target market, staffing conditions, and many others. Nevertheless it’s that variation that usually makes the job so attention-grabbing, based on the latest survey from Hootsuite, which includes a vary of insights from folks working within the social media area, to offer a greater understanding of how they see their work, their key challenges, and the way the trade, on the whole, is altering over time.
And it’s altering, as at all times. And with numerous companies compelled into lay-offs over the previous 12 months, the survey comes at a very attention-grabbing time within the area.
Hootsuite surveyed over 3,800 folks working within the social media area for the report, which covers a variety of key parts like job expectations, satisfaction, pay charges, and extra.
You possibly can obtain the total 80-page report here, which features a heap of in-depth insights, however on this submit, we’ll check out a number of the key notes.
First off, the report appears on the key challenges for social media managers, which can sound fairly acquainted to most.
By no means having sufficient time is nearly an embedded staple, as a result of we’d all love to have the ability to create video clips, AR results, VR experiences, and many others. However you possibly can solely achieve this a lot, and typically, that signifies that your social media supervisor is masking the essential parts, although there are at all times different alternatives on the horizon.
Additionally value noting the “56% of people don’t feel like their bosses understand social” stat. That’s altering over time, however it may be a frustration, in that you just’re creating methods generally primarily based on a flawed understanding as to what social media advertising and marketing can really present.
In different phrases, a whole lot of exhausting conversations about how one can’t simply make issues go viral on demand (I’m kidding, however…).
But, regardless of these challenges, most social media managers do take pleasure in their job.
In keeping with the report, 77% of social entrepreneurs are glad of their position, whereas social professionals whose jobs are solely devoted to social media are the happiest cohort.
Although that’s not the norm, with most social managers break up throughout different parts.

Perhaps there’s a case to be made for extra devoted social media roles, although the challenges in monitoring ROI, which will be partially linked again to the above-noted broader misunderstanding of the method, may very well be a proscribing issue right here.
The report additionally appears on the benefits and drawbacks of working from dwelling for social media managers.

No surprises there, whereas it additionally appears at which particular duties social media managers discover kind of difficult.

Hootsuite’s additionally included information on common pay charges for social professionals, which can offer you some benchmarks on your subsequent evaluate assembly.

Additionally value noting that solely 29% of social media managers indicated that they’ve been in a position to advance into increased administration roles, which means that regardless of social media maturing as a enterprise consideration, it’s possible nonetheless not considered as being on the identical degree as extra conventional processes.
Or social media managers don’t make nice folks managers, perhaps. You possibly can draw your individual conclusions, however it’s one other attention-grabbing information level from the survey insights.
There’s a heap extra data within the full report, which additionally covers extra particular parts of working in social, together with gender stability, responses to current lay-offs, impacts on psychological well being, and extra.
You possibly can obtain Hootsuite’s full “2023 Social Media Career Report” here.