Career Advice

The Insider’s Guide to Social Media Jobs

Learn all you need to know about the diverse jobs and careers available throughout the world of social media digital marketing.

Turning a love of social media into a career is a viable opportunity for many people with an interest in marketing, customer service, digital media, and business development – learn all you need to know about choosing the roles to apply for and gaining the essential experience you’ll require.

Social media has made a profound difference to the way we communicate, socialize, and consume content, creating a subsector within digital marketing focused wholly on social media, from designing paid ad campaigns to improving customer awareness and tackling reputational damage.

At its core, social media provides social proof – the more followers or likes a page or post gets; the more likely subsequent visitors are to think it is of interest or a brand they want to be involved with. Reviews, comments, and testimonials reinforce the importance of social media marketing with a forum that is uniquely transparent and subject to user-generated content, both good and bad.

In this guide, Digital Marketing Jobs Board explains some important aspects of working within social media as a digital marketing professional, from the types of jobs available to the required skill sets.

An Overview of Jobs in Social Media Marketing

The original social media platforms – some of which are now defunct – created a step change for businesses in almost every sector. While it took a little time for commercial organizations to leverage the advertising opportunity presented through social media marketing, it is now unheard of to have a B2C company that doesn’t have a social media presence.

However, there isn’t one standalone ‘social media job’ because there are multiple potential positions and areas of responsibility businesses, particularly larger enterprises, will require to manage the scope of communications across every channel – think:

  • Lead generation and nurture
  • Brand reputation and awareness
  • Market share and position
  • Customer support
  • Outreach marketing
  • Paid promotional campaigns
  • Reputation management
  • Competitor and consumer behavior research
  • SEO and SERP position management

Combining these functions means that companies may hire strategists, analysts, and experienced marketing professionals to unpick their performance, set KPIs, and design comprehensive strategies to turn social media activity into revenue and profitability.

Most social media jobs, therefore, are based around a central strategy, which sets out what the company wants to achieve – or allocates priority objectives, such as driving sales, improving brand credibility, or boosting repeat customer visits.

social media marketing benefits

Different Types of Jobs Working in Social Media

As we’ve touched on, social media is a multifarious field. When you start browsing our jobs board, you’ll likely see a wide range of diverse positions with varying criteria, such as prior experience, qualifications, personal skills, and existing knowledge.

You may also find that the roles available and the duties and tasks included in the position depend a little on the size and sector of the business since organizations will always have different targets and expectations about how social media will feed into a wider marketing strategy.

Among the most frequently advertised social media jobs are:

  • Content creation roles, providing text captions, videography, photography, graphic design, and other mediums to post on social media channels as part of a campaign, to improve organic reach, or as part of ongoing brand messaging.
  • Promotional advertising, using paid tools to publish campaigns targeted at specific audiences or demographics, and with adjustable budgets.
  • Page management, creating a consistent pattern of posts to keep followers and visitors engaged, and adding value to visitor experiences so they keep coming back and are more likely to share your content.
  • Customer service functions include responding to questions or queries, answering negative comments, dealing with reviews and ratings, and aiding as required.
  • Social media strategy development looks at competitor performance, market share, consumer trends, and other factors that influence the way the company presents itself on social media and how it plans to achieve core deliverables.
  • Budget management, linked to budgets on PPC promotions and ad spending, alongside budgets associated with hiring marketing influencers or paying to promote or boost specific posts.
  • Analytics, which can involve looking at how individual posts and campaigns have performed or analyzing emerging social media platforms or changing demographics to provide data-driven insights.

Some roles in social media also incorporate several of these areas – for example, you might work in social media advertising and be tasked with budget management, alongside creating the content for paid promotional campaigns.

Next, we’ll explain some of the typical roles, in order of seniority, to give you an idea about what recruiters and interviewers might be looking for when appointing a new employee to their social media team.

social media manager

Working as a Social Media Manager

As the title suggests, managers are responsible for overseeing the work across all social media platforms, which may vary depending on the company. For instance, B2C businesses commonly use Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, whereas B2B organizations might focus on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit.

Each platform has pros, cons, audience demographics, and formatting requirements, so as a manager, you need to have knowledge about how the channel operates, what sort of people use them, and the best content to meet your objectives. Sites like Quora and Reddit are often used to establish authority as an industry expert. In contrast, a channel such as Twitter could be used for promotions, engagement, and growing brand awareness.

Managers will normally need to approve content, manage channel moderation and customer interactions, and monitor outcomes against targets, alongside managing the wider social media team. To apply for this type of social media job, you will need previous experience, be able to manage individuals and a team, understand strategic marketing, and be able to use analytics to extract data and feedback to inform future posts and projects.

Discover the Role of a Social Media Manager: Get Insights from Our Guide!

Working in Social Media Strategy

We talked earlier about the importance of a strategy to establish the fundamental objectives a company has when it interacts through social media. A strategist often works at a high level, coordinating with managers, directors, and executives to develop and adapt the strategy, report on progress, and propose new strategic tactics to achieve the desired outcomes.

Strategists look at the big picture and how various aspects of social media feed into their targets, such as paid advertising, data capture, lead generation, and visitor engagement.

This role requires a firm knowledge of social media demographics, analytics, and ongoing developments, with companies often looking for expertise in analytical tools such as Google Analytics and HubSpot.

Working in Social Media Customer Service

A lot of the work involved in maintaining a social media following is in communications, keeping visitors engaged and immersed in the content you produce, or creating a sense of community by sharing the brand story, key messaging, and input into big ideas, events, or issues.

Social media customer support can involve responding to problems and answering questions, providing links to product information, or moderating the page to ensure all comments and participation are appropriate and conform to the community the brand is trying to cultivate.

You can learn more about this aspect of working in social media through our job descriptions for roles such as Social Media Assistant and Social Media Coordinator.

social media marketing skills

Essential Skills and Knowledge to Apply for Jobs in Social Media

The diversity of the positions within social media means the experience, qualifications, and skills you need to apply will naturally vary between roles and the recruiter’s priorities. We’ve collated the most requested skills within social media job posts to help showcase what you might expect to be able to demonstrate in your resume, application, and interview.

  • Great analytical abilities: social media marketers need to be able to work with data and turn it into information to see how campaigns have performed and track trends and changes in consumer behavior.
  • Excellent communication: the crux of social media is all in the way marketers communicate on behalf of brands, so social media professionals need strong capabilities in written and spoken communication.
  • Superb time management: if you apply for a role with a company that manages several social media pages, you will need to be able to coordinate multiple tasks across numerous sites, keeping pace with trends, campaigns, content schedules, and customer interactions.
  • Content creation skills: although not every social media job involves content creation, you will normally need to have a creative mind to see which campaign drafts are most consistent with the brand tone or to help edit graphics before posting.

If you have previous experience in social media, digital marketing, general marketing, customer service, or business administration, you may have transferable skills which are highly relevant to social media jobs – and recruiters will often look at your own social media pages to see how well you communicate!

Applying for Job Vacancies in Social Media

Candidates who can show a strong correlation with the job specification and demonstrate a proven record in marketing, social media, or a related field will often be ideal applicants. Still, you can also take various online courses if you’d like a formal certification to add to your resume.

The best advice is to read the job description in detail, and ensure you tick off each requirement within your resume and cover letter, rather than sending a generic application that may not accurately reflect your suitability for the role.

As we’ve indicated, recruiters will also often review your personal social media pages to see whether you have experience using the relevant channels, so doing a little spring cleaning can be useful. It can also help if you have a professional, up-to-date LinkedIn profile, as this is a key research space for companies hiring social media staff.

If you’d like to know more about the types of jobs currently available in social media or the skills you will need to apply, please search our social media job listings, register your resume, or browse our more detailed marketing job descriptions to get to grips with all the ins and outs!

Lauren Edwards-Fowle

Lauren Edwards-Fowle

Lauren is a copywriter and content writer at Digital Marketing Jobs Board, specialising in digital marketing for business and all things finance, having been a logistics MD and practice accountant before moving into digital! She loves to break down complex topics to make information accessible and produce content that is fun, entertaining, and genuinely useful, capturing data, stats, and trends and translating them into real-world terminology. As a writer, parent and crossfitter, Lauren's most treasured asset is free time, where you'll find her on the beach or walking her dogs to make the most of the fresh air.

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