Social Media or Marketing Manager?

Social media management and marketing are both key elements of online success, but they're not the same thing. In fact, their roles are quite different. Luckily, both social media managers and marketers can collaborate to make your business more successful on social media!

Social media skills are different than marketing skills.

A social media manager needs to be able to ask questions and listen, but they also need an active idea of how to fix issues when they arise. You can't fix a problem without knowing what it is, and you don't know what your customer thinks about an issue unless you ask them!

A social media manager can change the messaging in their program, but a marketing manager can change the message itself.

You might be wondering why there's such a big difference between the two. The answer is because social media managers are responsible for managing their own programs, while marketers are responsible for managing the entire company's program.

Social media managers have the freedom to change messaging in their own programs, but marketers don't have this option--they're responsible for creating messaging that can be used across multiple channels (and even by other teams).

A social media manager has more control over the tone of their posts than a marketing manager does over their campaigns.

You may be wondering why the tone of your social media posts is so important. After all, they're just words on a screen. But this is exactly what makes it so important: It's not just words on a screen--it's an interaction between you and your audience. The tone with which you write will affect how people perceive you and therefore affect how well they engage with your content.

If we go back to our marketing manager example above, imagine that instead of changing the campaign name from "Roller Coasters" to "Ferris Wheels," we change it to something like "The Most Terrifying Rides Ever Created." This would definitely get more attention than if we left everything else alone (and hopefully lead people away from roller coasters!). But in order for this change in title (and thus in tone) work as intended, there needs to be consistency across all channels where they appear together--social media included!

The audience for a social media manager's work is smaller and more specific than that of a marketer's work.

Social media managers have smaller audiences and more specific audiences than marketers.

Social media managers tend to have smaller, more niche audiences than marketing managers. A social media manager might be focused on a particular topic or demographic, while a marketer may work on a wider campaign that targets different segments of people (e.g., "millennials").

Social media managers and marketers fill different roles in terms of managing with respect to their work, but they can both make a huge difference in your success on social media

Social media managers and marketers fill different roles in terms of managing with respect to their work, but they can both make a huge difference in your success on social media.

Social media managers are more focused on the day-to-day operations. They'll be looking at what posts need to go up, when they should go up, who should post them and how many times per day/week/month you should be posting. They'll also be monitoring analytics such as engagement rates and response times so that you know what works best for your audience. These tasks take time--and sometimes lots of it--so it's important for social media managers to know how much time they need for each task before starting work on it or else things could get out of control quickly!

Marketers help develop strategies from the top down: thinking about how best practices translate into real-world applications while understanding where competitors fall short (or exceed expectations). This allows marketers not only identify gaps in existing plans but also create new ones based off those findings.

At the end of the day, it's important to remember that there are many different roles in marketing--and social media management is just one of them. A good social media manager can help you reach your audience more effectively and make sure that they're getting value out of their time on your platform; but if you want an overall company strategy (don’t hire one to do all jobs!) ;)