A Social Media Manager’s Point of View in 2025
Social media managers are the curators and aesthetes of modern brand identity, strategically crafting experiences that resonate with audiences and drive meaningful engagement. The following is my perspective on the current digital marketing landscape and the evolving role of social media managers. True mastery lies in understanding audience behaviour— where data informs content with intentional execution.
How has the role of Social Media Manager changed recently, and what do successful Social Media Managers accomplish for their organization?
A social media manager serves as a direct line of communication between an organization and its audience, providing everyday consumers with constant access to engage with and evaluate a brand. Everyday consumers become an organization's target audience when consistent engagement is backed by authentic interactions and content shared resonates with their wants, interests, and needs. Successful social media managers help drive growth by nurturing online connections that generate leads for an organization. This can be accomplished through effective social media tactics that encourage users to follow through on calls to action leading to conversion. A customized call to action (CTA) encourages users to take action such as learning more about a brand, product, or service. It guides consumers towards taking necessary action to lead to the conversion phase in the user buyer journey. Conversions happen when consumers have procured enough information about a brand and can easily say ‘yes’ to the lifestyle it promotes, the products it offers, or the services it provides. Information isn’t always obtained through official domains. Users corroborate an organization’s effectiveness in the marketplace by reading online reviews and feedback. Brands that take part in those real-time conversations bolster trust among their target audience through humanizing the conversation. They give a brand its voice and personality. Social media platforms also provide a ‘third space’ for community building. Thriving communities form around shared values and the mission a brand embodies. When a brand’s ethos is effective, it is reflective of its target audience's personal ethos. The result is a seamless alignment of values, whose community members naturally want to become loyal brand advocates. Social media managers are like curators, shaping the overall look and feel of a brand’s digital presence– much like an art gallery. With a strategic approach, they represent the brand during the early discovery phase, driving user awareness through thoughtful engagement while ensuring consistency in tone, language, and information across all content. This is reflected in carefully crafted copy, thoughtfully chosen visual assets, and the subtle connotations these elements evoke for the user. Social media platforms act as a canvas where a company’s ethos is vividly represented bringing its characteristics to life, making a brand real and tangible to its audiences.
Revenue generation is directly tied to social media’s ability to facilitate purchasing decisions. Operating in an attention economy means that the less steps a consumer has to take to make a purchase or take action, the better. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have seamlessly integrated e-commerce capabilities, enabling users to shop directly from posts or ads. Social proof, in the form of reviews and real-time testimonials, further drives conversions through conversational discourse as seen on platforms like Reddit where authentic (human to human) discussions influence buying decisions. As platforms evolve, organizations must evolve with them. Platforms are dynamic ecosystems each with unique attributes delicately balanced. While tipping the scales seems to be a regular occurrence, having a clear future outlook is essential, as the social media landscape is constantly evolving. Social media managers must anticipate changes—whether in algorithms, audience behaviour, or emerging platforms—and adapt strategies accordingly. By leveraging behavioural analysis and complex adaptive systems informed by community discourse, brands can build more robust, proactive social media strategies. While change carries inherent risks, leveraging data ensures these risks are calculated, empowering brands to stay ahead. This forward-thinking approach allows managers to initiate work that may not yield immediate results, but builds over time. Social media managers add value by maintaining the success and longevity of an organization through the day to day tactical execution that builds long term business equity. They directly curate a brand’s user experience. If social media platforms represent the canvas to which organizations share their brand, much like an Etch A Sketch gets shaken up, a manager’s ability to adapt to evolving trends and needs while fostering meaningful audience relationships is essential. Collectors and art spectators alike understand that when an artist changes their medium, the composition of those pieces dictates how a curator sets up the gallery. A social media manager’s adaptability ensures sustained growth and a competitive edge in the dynamic digital landscape for any stakeholder or organization. Their work allows a brand to simultaneously share their story, generate leads, and drive measurable business outcomes.
What’s changed in the world in the last 12 months, and how has that changed how I need to do my job?
AI has redefined the expectations of social media managers across industry. The role now extends beyond maintaining consistency to leading PR-driven efforts on social platforms, fostering brand affinity and identity. Companies are moving away from oversaturating platforms and instead emphasizing quality over quantity in content. There is a larger focus on adapting brand tone and presence to what platform users expect and demand, which is playful content that is entertaining and educational. This is particularly evident on TikTok. However, this shift to high-impact content has increased the demand for work in earned media and community building. Social media managers are expected to navigate these evolving dynamics while ensuring authenticity and relevance. Adaptation to the ever changing media marketing landscape should then be proactive, not reactive. To ensure long-term success, social media managers need to consistently monitor trends, optimize keywords, hashtags, engage in social listening, and form strategic partnerships with influencers and creators. These efforts not only enhance visibility and attract new customers, but also position the brand to evolve with its audience. Evaluating niche platforms for brand discovery can also allow brands to get ahead by engaging with their audience where competitors may not. Red Note saw a sudden surge in US users when there was a very real possibility of TikTok being banned in the United States earlier this year. Interactions on RedNote specifically saw some key differences and similarities in behaviour from Chinese and American users. This case study demonstrates how important it is to keep a pulse on changes in user behaviour to stay positioned for opportunity.
How should we measure success in this role? What are the milestones, accomplishments, and KPI’s that great managers should hold me accountable to?
Success as a social media manager should be measured through a combination of universal benchmarks and personalized KPIs, tailored to align with individual career aspirations and the role's broader objectives, timeline, and accompanying progression matrix if applicable. This approach fosters growth, while ensuring contributions directly impact brand or client campaigns driving performance.
Universal Framework:
Campaign Contributions: Monitor creative input closely and evaluate engagement metrics, at every stage of the campaign paying particular attention to where the impact in input falls on the customer journey funnel. We all know that vanity metrics like likes hold limited value compared to actionable insights that reveal how content drives awareness, fosters engagement, and leads to conversions.
Audience Impact: Assess how net-new audience engagement from organic content translates into measurable actions like clicks, sign-ups, or purchases.
Share of Voice (SOV): Evaluate brand visibility against competitors using ongoing analysis of mentions. SOV can help identify areas where branded content stands out from a company's competitor set. This is a multifaceted effort and should be measured through organic and paid channel metrics.
Personalized KPIs:
Individual focus areas within the social team to see upward growth or advancement, might include:
For Strategists: Monitoring how well on-going campaigns align with long-term brand goals/ business objectives or how effective social media strategies integrate across departments.
For Community Management: Measuring community sentiment, response times, number of shares, and the quality of interactions that foster loyalty. Campaign wrap reports can illustrate all of the above. The success metrics included in those wrap reports should be used in a working document advocating for role advancement.
For Influencer/Creator Campaigns: Tracking creative performance and experimenting with new formats to increase platform-specific engagement rates.
Influencer/Creator content guidelines should ensure campaign activations remain relevant, resonate, and retain the attention of the target audience set:
Relevance ensures the campaign objectives align with the target audience's interests and needs, which drives awareness at the top of the customer journey funnel. Vetting influencers/creators involves assessing their audience demographics and psychographics ensuring alignment with a stakeholder’s target audience set prior to a campaign. Referring to a brand’s set of personas can also be helpful to cross reference during the vetting process.
Resonance evaluates whether the campaign emotionally or meaningfully connects with the audience, moving them further into the consideration stage.
Retention measures the campaign's ability to sustain audience interest and loyalty, key to driving conversion, building long-term brand affinity, and establishing influencer/ creator partners as long term brand advocates.
Milestones
Launching or contributing to innovative campaigns that exceed engagement or reach benchmarks. Emphasize how your contributions consistently exceed expectations by delivering more than what’s promised.
Identifying new trends or tools and successfully implementing them to boost efficiency or creativity.
Building cross-functional relationships to align social media efforts with broader PR, marketing, and sales objectives. A good social media manager executes, a great social media manager goes above and beyond. They execute, evaluate data, and identify where campaign activations intersect, not just at the end of a campaign. A great social media manager can further future campaign optimization by critically evaluating insights that happen at the intersections of a campaign to identify areas for improvement. Digging deeper to ask ‘why’ can show there is no one-size-fits-all approach.
This personalized yet structured framework ensures accountability while encouraging team members to excel in areas aligned with their unique skills and career goals.
How could I get better outcomes – where is the friction in my job right now? What, if solved, would unlock new leverage in the role?
Key areas of friction in a Social Media Manager role include:
Stagnant Engagement: Content must hold audience attention. The only way to accomplish this is through implementing data informed strategies. Internal audits and fresh content strategies are vital to address underperformance, especially given ever-changing platform algorithms. Regularly evaluating tactics by assessing what to start, stop, or continue ensures relevance and results. Assessing previous content performance through identifying high impact subject matter that can be refined and built out further can help retain audience interest. Give them more and help them stay.
Cross-functional Misalignment: Unified goals and a shared content calendar can bridge gaps between social media and broader marketing initiatives. While stakeholders are deeply connected to their business objectives and brand voice, social media managers are attuned to industry innovation and audience trends. By identifying overlooked opportunities, we can enhance brand impact on campaigns. Presenting data-driven recommendations can unlock new possibilities and drive strategic, measurable results.
Inefficient Approval Processes & Rigidity in Content Planning: Delays caused by prolonged reviews can be mitigated by pre-approved content templates or streamlined workflows. The template should include placeholders for ‘just in time’ content placements. In practice this means creating templates that accommodate ad-hoc content activations driven by platform trends. Great social media managers use foresight and in-app discovery to identify emerging trends for integration. This approach fosters both creativity in content and flexibility in process. Here is the box—step out of it. This is how.
Unlocking leverage would involve harnessing AI tools to automate repetitive tasks, securing resources for experimental campaigns, and prioritizing authentic, audience-focused engagement. Human centric work is what matters and can unlock possibility. Possibility is only achieved when you have time for ideation and can be achieved when you automate the monotony in daily-tasks. Some call it monotony, others call it “admin”. Work smarter, not harder.
How has/will AI change this role? How are you leveraging AI, and how do you expect the role to change in 3 years when AI becomes more ubiquitous?
AI is already transforming social media management across industry by enabling:
Content Ideation and Creation: Tools like ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Canva Magic Write help generate captions and visuals quickly. OpusClip is automating video production through AI use. This is creating efficiency in editing video content which is always a time consuming post production effort.
Analytics and Insights: Platforms like Meltwater’s Consumer Intelligence AI for sentiment analysis, trend prediction, and competitor monitoring.
More Automation: Content scheduling and analytics tools like HootSuite automatically schedule posts for optimal times and track audience preferences to inform future content decisions. Long are the days of having to manually pull organic insights on platform to discern a best cadence or time for publishing, saving time and garnering efficiency.
In three years, I anticipate:
AI personalizing content for micro audiences at scale. If you are an emerging brand, product, or service launching a net new account, the focus will shift from investing heavily in creating organic content initially that may go unseen to leveraging AI for strategic ground work. Time can be spent establishing strong brand pillars and company ethos that will make a clear refinement process for future content planning. This will guarantee long- term alignment with audience interests and goals early on. This approach minimizes wasted effort in the early stages while setting the foundation for sustainable account growth.
Generative AI will have more restrictions shifting the focus back to humanity as the driving force of innovation— solidifying AI as a tool that enhances, rather than replaces human creativity. Michelangelo didn’t use ChatGPT when working out how he was going to paint the Sistine Chapel, nor did he ask AI to create a visual draft for him. Copyright infringement and legalities surrounding generative AI use and intellectual property have already started to tighten. This shift will place renewed emphasis on ingenuity in content creation, pushing us to adapt creatively while staying compliant. AI education will include mandatory job training on intellectual property & privacy laws. Training programs will be catered for businesses and influencers/creators alike. This increase in awareness will ensure that organizations that use generative AI, or work with vendors that do should keep their legal counsel abreast of the scope and nature of that use as the law will continue to evolve rapidly. AI training will ensure brands, businesses, and influencers/creators are held accountable to using AI ethically and responsibly, demanding innovative campaign use for digital marketing professionals. The expression “starving artist” , once common verbiage, might then be replaced with “start with an artist” placing more of an emphasis and investment in creativity and the arts in the business marketplace.
Augmented Reality (AR) experiences being integrated into social media ads and everyday life. We are already seeing this with Ray-Ban’s Meta glasses and Humane’s AI Pin.
Advanced predictive analytics making campaign adjustments proactive, not reactive. This will revolutionize how companies can identify patterns in data to identify risks and opportunities. Predictive analytics will have brands more intrigued by the idea of engaging in “calculated risk”, if the risk is backed by data, is it then that risky?
What tools, technologies, or methodologies are unlocking outsized gains in your role?
Social media managers can utilize these tools and practice adaptive methodologies to excel in their work.
Social Media Listening Tools (Meltwater, Brandwatch): Provide real-time sentiment analysis and uncover trending topics for proactive engagement. Seeing where your brand, product, or service is being mentioned in online conversion can guide you towards where your brand can join in on the conversation, adding a sense of authority to the discourse.
AI Design Tools (Canva, Adobe Firefly): Accelerate content creation without compromising quality.
Analytics Dashboards (Sprout Social, RivalIQ): The insights gleaned from these dashboards illustrate what is working, and allows a streamlined process for stakeholder reporting.
Agile Methodologies: Implementing sprint planning for campaigns ensures adaptability and quicker pivots based on performance data.
Being a great social media manager requires agility as the only consistent variable is change. Mastering creative collaboration builds confidence and competence in delivering ideas that drive results. Results in turn, deepen understanding and illustrate that valued input holds equal, if not greater weight in output. Fluency in craft, demonstrated through clear communication of expertise allows marketing professionals to show before they tell. If the landscape is always changing, assume that what is known can always be expanded by what is yet to be known. Lean on and learn from industry leaders to embrace a lifelong student mindset— one with an insatiable curiosity, and a resilient desire to grow unlocking new possibilities for career progression.