Most social media professionals can't see the next rung. Here is what the people climbing the ladder told us about progression, pay, the skills that actually move you up, and AI. The findings come from The Sauce's Social Media Career Ladder survey.
When we opened the Social Media Career Ladder survey, the plan was simple: stop guessing what a social media career looks like and ask the people living one. Hundreds of you have opened it since. The full report is still being built and the survey is still open, but the answers coming back from the people who have finished it are already loud enough to write down.
These are early findings, not a finished study, so treat them as a direction of travel rather than the final word. They are consistent though, and they line up with what a lot of you have been saying out loud for years.
A quick note on who has answered so far. It is a properly mixed group: a good chunk have ten or more years in the job, plenty sit at three to five years, and there is everyone from interns to directors in between. Most work in-house, with a solid showing from agency, freelance and consultancy. So this is not only juniors who haven't found their feet, and it is not only veterans with an axe to grind. It is the whole ladder, top to bottom.
This is what the answers keep pointing to.
1. Almost nobody can see the next rung
This one frames everything else. Asked how clear their career path is, only a tiny handful said "very clear." Around half said it was not very clear or not clear at all. Most of the rest landed on "somewhat," which, let's be honest, is the polite version of "I'm working it out as I go."
A Social Media Manager put the cause plainly: the work itself is fine, but the path was never defined, because the role is so broad and companies expect it to cover everything without matching the recognition. "Now things are changing," they added, "in a very slow way."
Others were blunter about how progression actually happens. Mags, Head of Marketing, has watched it up close: "I've never met anyone who got promoted because there was a clear career path for them." Her own hardest career move? "Always having to move companies to get a promotion."
And it isn't only about title. Nick Barbosa, Social Media Specialist, has been told he's good, repeatedly, and gone nowhere with it: "Despite constant praise, several awards, and well-known reliability, I have been denied a promotion time and time again."
When this many people doing the job can't see the next rung, a lack of a clear career path stops looking like a personal failing. It looks like an industry that never built the steps.
2. The biggest blocker is employers who don't value social
We asked what's holding people back. The most-cited blocker, ahead of everything else, was the company not understanding the value of social. Pay not matching responsibility came next, then the unclear path itself, then a lack of mentoring or strategic oversight.
Money matters, and it shows up here. But more people are blocked by being misread than by being underpaid, and the two are obviously connected. You don't pay properly for something you've decided is easy.
When we asked what they wish their employer understood about the job, the answers came fast and sharp.
Demi Donohoe, Social & Content Manager, put it bluntly: "Social isn't a content function, it's a business function that happens to use content." Posting, she said, is the minor part. The real work is brand personality, tone of voice, what the brand stands for, and shaping how people feel about it over time.
Vikkie Richmond, Head of Marketing and Operations, was tired of watching skill get thrown away: discounting people with years of experience to hire someone "just to make a few TikTok videos or IG reels with no strategy is madness."
For one Social Media Manager it came down to trust: "I wish employers trusted social media specialists to do their job." Too often, she said, decisions get driven by personal opinion rather than audience insight, when the person closest to the platform is the one actually reading it every day.
Across these answers, social keeps getting treated as a button you press, by people who have a personal Instagram and assume that means they understand the job. They don't. And that assumption costs the people who do.
3. Craft gets you in the door. Other skills move you up.
There is a real tension in the answers here. When we asked which skills are most valued, the responses split almost evenly between craft skills (content, platforms, execution) and commercial skills (strategy, ROI, aligning to business goals), with meta skills like leadership and stakeholder management trailing.
But we also asked a sharper question: which skill actually gets people promoted, the one nobody writes into a job spec? The craft answers fell away almost entirely. What came back was commercial nous, ownership, judgement, and the ability to be seen.
Julia, Social Media Specialist, was direct about it. The skills that get you promoted are commercial and meta combined, because "craft skills... mean nothing to leadership. They want to see my work making them more money."
Luís Fernandes, Social Media Manager, drew the same line between doing and deciding. Plenty of people can execute, but "not everyone can take ownership, make calls, and connect what they're doing to the bigger picture."
Saumya Singh, Social Media Community Manager, said it is less about hard skills and more about how you show up: "being someone people trust to get things done without being chased," taking ownership instead of waiting for instructions, and communicating clearly when things go wrong.
And Filipa Hilario, Head of Content & Social Media, named the one nobody likes to say out loud: self-promotion. "No one will do it for you and it's usually how you get seen."
So, as far as these answers go: craft gets you hired and keeps you employed. Commercial thinking, ownership and visibility are what move you up. The problem is that nobody tells you that. You find out by stalling.
4. What almost everyone wishes they'd had: a mentor and a peer group
One answer came back more than any other. When people told us what they wish had existed earlier in their career, the same three things came up again and again: a mentor, training, and a community of peers. Most named more than one of them in the same breath.
Inna, Content and Social Media Officer, put her finger on why it matters more than resources alone. Training and information are easy enough to find yourself, but "the value of a supportive community is unmatched," and it is exactly what's missing when you work alone in a small organisation.
Saumya Singh wanted the simplest version of it: somewhere to ask "is this normal?" without overthinking it.
Vikkie Richmond, who taught herself the whole job from forums and help pages, reckons a mentor would have changed things entirely. She would have made the leap to self-employment years earlier.
And Mags, Head of Marketing, put the feeling plainly. Being part of a community of people in the same boat "would have been nice to feel less alone."
That is the gap, stated by the people standing in it. Not more tools. More people.
5. What AI is actually doing to social media careers
The responses on AI were split, close to half and half, and pretty level-headed about it. Just under half said they're concerned to some degree; the rest were relaxed or actively optimistic. Almost nobody thinks AI is coming for the job wholesale. The worry is more specific than that.
The recurring point: AI is reshaping the work rather than deleting it, and the bar for standing out is rising.
A Social Media Manager summed up the consensus: "AI isn't replacing social media careers, but it is changing how the work gets done and what skills are valued." She described it as a force multiplier for small teams: faster ideation, less burnout from constant content demands.
Several people landed on the same word for what now separates good work from forgettable work: taste. Saumya Singh said the basics (captions, ideas, edits) can be done in seconds now, "so what actually stands out is taste, creativity, and how well you understand people." Luís Fernandes made the same call. More AI means more noise, and "that's where taste, judgment, and understanding your audience really matter."
Demi Donohoe framed it as a shift in the job itself, from executing to judging well. And judging well takes taste, which is the one thing the tools can't supply.
Then there is the worry underneath the optimism. Inna, Content and Social Media Officer, named the risk of overuse better than anyone: "a homogeneous sauceless social media space" where brand voice gets diluted and originality quietly drains out of the feed. Others flagged the threat to entry-level roles specifically: the fear that the rungs people used to learn on are being automated away before they can stand on them.
So the AI story here isn't doom, and it isn't hype. The easy work is now fast and cheap, which means the work that pays is judgement, taste and understanding people. That happens to be exactly the work these answers say the industry already undervalues.
What it adds up to
Most social media professionals are climbing a ladder nobody drew for them. They are blocked less by their own ability than by employers who have decided the job is easy. The skills that actually move them up are the ones least likely to appear in a job spec. The thing they wanted most, and rarely got, was a mentor and a peer group. And AI is raising the bar for exactly the judgement-based work the industry has been busy underpaying for.
None of that is hopeless. But it does explain a lot of the burnout, the stalling, and the quiet move into freelancing that keeps showing up in these answers.
This is what the early respondents have told us. The full Social Media Career Ladder framework will be built on a lot more than this, and it will be stronger the more of you take part.
The survey is still open. It takes about five minutes, and every answer shapes the framework. If your career path was never drawn for you either, this is your chance to help draw it for the people coming up behind you.
👉 Take the Social Media Career Ladder survey
About the data: findings are drawn from the responses received to the Social Media Career Ladder survey so far, as of June 2026. Quotes are published only from respondents who explicitly agreed their responses could be referenced, and attributed exactly as each person chose: full name and title, first name and title, or job title only. Respondents who asked to be used in aggregate only are reflected in the findings and nowhere else. This is an interim read; the full framework is still in development.