We've been asking social media professionals one question: what does progression actually look like in this industry?
Responses have been coming in for months, from in-house teams, agencies, freelancers and consultants, across B2B tech, education, media, retail, healthcare and government. People at every stage, from first-job assistants to Heads of Social.
These are the findings so far.
Almost nobody can see the ladder
Hardly anyone describes their career path as "very clear." Most say it's somewhat clear at best, and a large group say it isn't clear at all.
This doesn't improve with seniority. Heads of Social are almost as much in the fog as executives. Getting to the top of the visible ladder doesn't reveal a next rung, it reveals that there wasn't one.
I don't think there's a career ladder. Social media professionals had to create their own ladder, educate their companies, senior leadership and themselves, all while also doing their job.
--PULL-QUOTE-START----It's title inflation in reverse. Job titles shrink while job descriptions grow.
Rewarded for the craft, promoted for the commercials
Ask people what their employer values most and the top answer is craft: content, platforms, campaigns, execution. Ask what they need support with and the top answer, by a wide margin, is commercial skills: strategy, ROI, aligning to business goals.
Most of the people who said craft is what their employer rewards also said commercial is where they need help. You get recognised for making the thing and promoted for explaining what it did to the P&L, and almost nobody is being taught the second part.
Craft skills from what I've seen are skills that creatives are already expected to have in my role and mean nothing to leadership. They want to see my work making them more money.
The people who get promoted are the ones who can connect audience insight with business outcomes. A lot of job descriptions focus on execution such as posting, scheduling, content creation. However, progression comes from understanding why you're doing it.
We also asked what really gets people promoted, the things that never make it into a job spec. The same words came back repeatedly: judgement, taste, ownership, managing up, self-promotion, dealing with ambiguity.
Dealing with ambiguity - taking something vague like 'we need to level up social' and turning it into a working plan... Owning outcomes rather than tasks... Having opinions and backing them.
'Self-promotion', getting yourself out there and shout about your wins. No one will do it for you and it's usually how you get seen.
Some were blunter about it:
Getting in there with the right people, as I find there a lot of politics and favouritism attached to a lot of promotions.
Promotion comes from doing someone else's job
Among people who had been promoted, the most common driver wasn't strong performance in their current role. It was taking on responsibilities outside their job description.
So the reliable route up is to absorb work you aren't being paid for until the organisation notices. That's a progression model running on goodwill, and it explains a lot of the burnout in these responses.
Roughly as many people told us they hadn't been promoted as told us they had.
The ceiling is at Manager
The most consistent theme in the written answers is that the ladder stops around Manager or Head of Social, with nothing clearly above it.
In many organisations, social media roles seem to plateau at manager, without a well-defined path into senior leadership. There's often a gap when it comes to roles like Head of Social or pathways into broader marketing, brand, or digital leadership positions. I'd also like to see more recognition that social media is a long-term career, not just an early-career role.
Organisations are not ready to deal with senior and c-suite social media. Bring us into the room.
Two structural asks came up repeatedly alongside this.
The first is a track for specialists, not only for managers.
Today, progression is often linked to people management, but in roles like social media, deep expertise and impact should also be recognized as a growth path.
The second is room to move sideways without starting over.
The ability to move around more horizontally, gain new skills and try new disciplines of marketing without having to go back to the beginning.
One respondent took issue with the metaphor itself:
Perhaps the career ladder is becoming somewhat an outdated term altogether. I have recently come across 'career garden' as an alternative, which is perhaps a more suitable approach specially in a field like social media... your versatility is then more difficult to be reflected by a linear upwards ladder.
What people wish they'd had: mentoring and community
We asked what would have helped earlier in their careers. Mentoring and community came up far more than tools, courses or resources.
Most of the guidance wasn't really built for the day-to-day reality of the role. Most of the times it felt like a solo quest, figuring things out on your own and constantly having to prove your impact.
Honestly, more community and mentorship. Just having people you can ask 'is this normal?' or learn from without overthinking it would've made things a lot easier.
Resources and training are fairly easy to come across by yourself but the value of a supportive community is unmatched. It's much more enjoyable to connect with real people and learn together, something that is difficult to find when you work for a small organisation.
There's a lot of loneliness in these answers. Many people in this industry are the only person doing their job in the building.
AI: less panic than you'd expect, but the bottom rung is at risk
More respondents told us they're not concerned about AI than told us they are, and very few are highly concerned.
Adoption is close to universal and clustered around ideation and copy. Content ideas and brainstorming came top, then drafting captions, then reporting. Only a handful say they don't use AI at all.
Most people don't think AI takes the job. They think it raises the bar and removes the training ground.
AI isn't replacing social media careers, but it is changing how the work gets done and what skills are valued... Those most affected are junior roles and high-volume content producers.
Entry-level/junior roles most affected - basic copywriting & research can now be done with AI... I'd say the invisible skills of having taste and judgement will become more and more valuable. Everyone else's content will get lost in the noise.
There is a risk of a homogeneous sauceless social media space if overused.
Two specific warnings came through that we think deserve more attention.
One is about juniors outsourcing their own development:
I manage junior to mid level social media execs and I see them using AI in a very surface-level way... they are outsourcing their thinking and no longer exercising their creative, copywriting and problem solving muscles.
The other is about AI flowing downhill from people who don't do the job:
If a manager or business owner does not know marketing - they use AI to create the brief or a social media strategy to pass to their marketers... this brief or strategy written by AI does not make sense or it's outdated... managers trust AI more than their specialist.
Combine the entry-level squeeze with a ladder that stops at Manager and you get a profession with a hollow middle and no obvious way in.
What employers are getting wrong
We asked what one thing people wish their employer understood. Almost every answer was about scope rather than budget or tools.
Social isn't a content function, it's a business function that happens to use content... Posting is a minor part of the job... Most of this work is invisible, and thus can go undervalued.
A lot of companies still see social media as a one-person role, when in reality it's a mix of different profiles and skills. You have strategy, content, community, analytics, and expecting one person to do it all doesn't really work long term... that's why there is so many social media manager burning out.
Social media is brand, reputation, creative, strategy, insights and analytics. All in one pot together. The social media role is the most comprehensive role within the sector.
I wish employers trusted social media specialists to do their job. Too often, decisions are driven by personal opinion rather than audience insight.
"They are not administrative roles and they are not roles anyone can do, including the intern. I'm often frustrated that I am contracted as a specialist, but yet everyone has an opinion on how I should do the job."
Freelance arts marketing professional
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Where this goes next
Four things are coming through clearly enough to build on.
- Defined rungs with real differentiators. Not just titles, but what actually changes between levels, including the invisible skills like judgement, ownership and taste that people say decide promotions but never appear in a job spec.
- Salary transparency tied to responsibility. Standardised bands, so a job spec describing a whole marketing team can't be paid as a junior.
- A route past Manager, and a route sideways. A senior leadership path, plus a specialist track for people who don't want to manage people.
- Mentoring and community treated as infrastructure. This was the loudest single ask, and it's the one the industry can fix itself.
The survey is still open. If you work in social at any level, in-house, agency, freelance or in any sector, we want to hear from you.
Quotes are published with respondents' permission. Some have been trimmed for length; wording is unchanged.
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