Every few months the same line does the rounds again. "Social media managers are the future CMOs. They touch every part of the funnel. They know the customer better than anyone."
There is some truth in that. Social teams are close to the data, the audience and the chaos. They see everything. They carry a lot, but being close to the funnel is not the same as being ready to own it.
With the Social Media Career Ladder, I have been trying to put language around what really happens between "posting the content" and "owning the whole thing". The more conversations I have, the more one gap keeps appearing. It sits between practitioner and leader. Between "social media manager" and "head of social, director, CMO". That part is rarely explained properly.
What the ladder actually shows
On paper, the ladder looks neat. Entry roles. Execs running channels. Managers looking after strategy. Senior people leading the function. Then, beyond social, the people who run marketing or sit on the leadership team.
Real life does not look that tidy. Titles get bigger, but people are still doing the same work. Someone becomes "lead" or "head" and is still expected to post every day. Social lands on the P and L, but the person running it is not invited to the meeting where budgets or plans are agreed.
From the outside it looks like progress. From the inside it can feel like more pressure without more say.
When we tell social media managers "you are the next CMO" without talking about that gap, we create false hope. We also let organisations dodge their responsibility. It is not only on individuals to upgrade themselves. Structures and expectations have to improve too.
What CMOs do that most social roles never see
Many social people have never watched a CMO at work. From a distance it looks like "bigger campaigns and nicer decks". Up close it is a different story.
A CMO is looking after brand, performance, product launches, pricing input, partnerships, agencies, headcount, board conversations, investor stories, reputation, risk and budget. They are not choosing whether a TikTok goes out on Wednesday or Thursday. They are choosing which markets to invest in, which products to back, which channels to cut altogether.
Social media managers feel the impact of those choices every day. They rarely get to make them. That does not mean they cannot. It does mean there is a long list of skills and experiences between "I run social" and "I run marketing". Skipping that list helps nobody.
From doing the work to owning it
Moving from practitioner to leader is not about learning one new tool or reading one strategy book. It is about changing what you focus on and how you judge your own contribution.
As a practitioner, your focus is close to the work. You care about the copy, the visuals, the timing, the conversations in the comments and the performance of every post. You notice when a small change doubles saves or when a new format suddenly lands. You are close to the craft, and that matters.
As you move up, the craft is still important but it is not the main thing you are paid for. Your main job becomes decisions. What to do, what to stop, what matters this quarter and what can wait. You start caring less about every individual asset and more about whether the whole approach makes sense and whether your team can do their best work.
That change is hard. Many social managers get promoted for being excellent doers and then are left to figure out budgets, headcount, politics and people management on their own. No support, no training, just a new title and a longer to do list. It is not surprising that many people burn out at that stage or decide leadership is "not for them".
Extra skills that take you beyond social
If you are a social media manager and you want to move into leadership, there are a few skills that sit outside the usual "get more strategic" advice.
One is getting closer to the numbers that sit beyond your analytics dashboard. Not just reach, clicks and conversions, but revenue, margin, cost of sale, pipeline, retention, recruitment, reputation. You do not need to become a finance director. You do need to understand how your work shows up in those numbers and how those numbers drive the conversations above you.
Another is seeing your output as the team's success, not your own heroics. That means hiring well, letting go of some tasks, backing your people in meetings and being honest about what you can and cannot carry. Some days your most important work is a one to one, a hard conversation or a decision to stop a project that is draining everyone, even if nobody on LinkedIn sees it.
The third is context. Reading the room. Knowing what sales are worried about. Knowing what finance cares about. Understanding what keeps customer support busy. Seeing where social helps and where it might be getting in the way. Leaders translate. They move between teams and points of view. Social people are already good at translating for audiences online. Leadership asks you to do that inside the organisation as well.
What we are trying to do with the Career Ladder research
With the new Social Media Career Ladder research, I am not writing a fairy story where every social media manager ends up as a CMO if they just believe hard enough. I am trying to map what actually happens.
Where do people get stuck What changes between each rung Which skills really matter Where do organisations block progression without meaning to
To get there, we are talking to senior practitioners, consultants, academics and hiring leads. We are running a questionnaire for the wider SocialDay ® community. We are taking everything we have already published in The Sauce about roles, skills, AI, burnout and pay and building something more structured from it.
The aim is a framework that is honest and useful. Something you can take into a career chat, a job design exercise or a salary conversation and say "this is what this role should include, this is what the next step involves, and this is how we can get there".
How you can help shape it
If you have been in social for a while and you have views about careers, I would love to hear from you.
Right now I am especially keen to speak to:
- Senior social practitioners (around eight to ten years plus in the industry) in house, agency or freelance
- People in hiring or leadership roles who regularly build and manage social teams
- Consultants and trainers who see patterns across lots of organisations
- Academics or researchers who look at careers, digital work or communications
If that sounds like you, or someone you know, email me at lucy@socialday.live with a line about your role and how you would like to be involved. That might be a short call, a longer interview, or simply adding your thoughts via the questionnaire when it goes live.
Social media managers are not automatically the next CMOs. Some of them will be. My hope with this project is that we can make the path clearer, fairer and a lot more honest for the people who want to take that route.