There's a word that keeps coming up when social media professionals talk about how their role is perceived. Not respected. Not valued. Not taken seriously. The word is: girls.
Social media girls. Marketing girlies. The person who does the "pretty pink content."
I've spent months now sitting down with some of the most experienced people in our profession as part of SocialDay's Social Media Career Ladder 2026 research, the most comprehensive study ever undertaken into the social media career. We're talking to practitioners, hiring managers, consultants, and academics across the industry, alongside a major survey of hundreds of people working in social media right now. And the perception problem came up unprompted in every single conversation I've had. Every single one. It's not a niche frustration. It runs through the whole profession, and it's doing real damage.
Laura Chamberlain, marketing academic and educator, put it in a way that stopped me in my tracks: "Social media marketing has a perception problem. What social media can actually do for an organisation strategically, there's a gap between that reality and how it's perceived. And that gap exacerbates every other problem in the industry."
The consequences are financial as well as cultural. Laura shared a recruiter's post that had genuinely shocked her: a junior marketing role paying £22,000 for a 35-hour week, which works out at £12.36 an hour. National Living Wage from April 2026 is £12.71. In her words: "We've got people being invited into our profession who aren't even being paid the minimum wage."
That sentence sat with me for a while.
Carolina Barbosa is direct about where the language problem starts: the industry's own content. The hustle culture. The aesthetic reels. The practitioner-as-influencer persona that glamorises the role without ever showing what it actually involves. The strategy sessions, the board justifications, the always-on pressure, the burnout. "The glamour gets perpetuated on social media for attention," she told me. "It creates expectations that are completely at odds with the reality of working in a tech business."
Sheeza Anjum, senior social media strategist, makes the point that the devaluing of the role is also gendered in a very specific way. The framing of social media as inherently female work has made it easier for organisations to pay less and expect more. "Social Director roles now command six-figure salaries," she says, "but you'd never know that from how entry-level practitioners are talked about."
And that's the gap we need to close. Not just in perception, but in pay, in structure, and in how the industry talks about itself.
What this means if you're a practitioner
Start with the language you use about your own role. The way we describe what we do matters. Lean into the strategic, commercial, and analytical dimensions of your work in how you talk about it on LinkedIn, in interviews, and in conversations with leadership. You're not "doing social." You're managing brand presence, driving audience growth, and contributing to commercial outcomes. Say it that way.
And if you're being paid below market rate, know that the data exists to challenge it. The State of Social Media Careers 2026 report will include salary benchmarking for the first time. Use it.
What this means if you're a hiring manager
Look at your job descriptions and salary bands right now. Are they reflective of the actual scope of the role? Social media managers are often doing the work of multiple people across content, strategy, community, analytics, and reporting. The pay should reflect that. If it doesn't, you're going to keep losing good people to organisations that have woken up to this already.
The career ladder we're building is designed to be part of the solution. Recognised salary bands, legitimate career paths, and a framework that makes clear this is a profession, not a pastime.
If you've experienced the perception problem (as a practitioner, a hiring manager, or someone who's had to fight to be taken seriously) I want your input. Fill in the survey here: socialday.live/career-survey