By Julia Sames | May 16, 2023

Speaking as one of one of the tens of thousands of people who works in social media in the U.S.: If you don’t stop referring to us as “interns,” we will revolt. K?

Running the social channels for a brand is no joke; it takes some real marketing know-how, agility, and creativity to pull this off successfully. You posting a photo of your lunch to your personal page and a company navigating a PR crisis may occur on the same app, but that’s basically where the similarities end.

So we thought we would break down some common misconceptions about working in social media.

All the accounts are run by interns

FICTION

The average social media manager is over 40 years old, and only 17% are in the 20-30 age range, according to data compiled here. 82% have a bachelor’s degree or higher. This is a full-time, 24/7/365 job that requires a wealth of working knowledge. We are not interns.

It’s easy

FICTION

This job requires the management of company accounts across several platforms, community management, strategy and analytics, writing, graphic design, photography, video production and editing, trend forecasting, and inevitable troubleshooting — all while balancing the varying needs and wants of company management and their audience.

If you don’t have firm work-life boundaries, this job can be all-consuming.

It’s low-stakes

FICTION

Hmmm. Running all of the direct communications of a business to their audience, for the whole world to see? Yeah, stakes couldn’t be lower. 🙄

Our job is to know all the memes

KIND OF FACT!

As stated above, this is not our ONLY job, but it is in fact part of it! Memes are a great vehicle for adding humor and relatability to your content, so it would be a mistake not to capitalize on them! A good social media manager has bells go off in their head when they see a new meme twice over the course of a few days. That means it’s time to pounce!

We’re a jack of all trades

FACT

Social media managers are not only writers, they’re graphic designers. They’re not only video editors, they’re crisis communication experts. They’re not only performance analysts, they’re content strategists. It requires a lot of disparate skill sets to pull off this work!
Feeling overwhelmed about doing all of the above for your business? Give us a shout! We’d love to take social media off your plate and put it squarely on ours. 😂