The Role of Social Media Experts 2022

Team Locowise posted on 7 June 2022

Overview

This report is a benchmarking resource into the role of social media experts from around the world. 150 experts provided insights into their roles to explore how the landscape is changing over time.

Methodology 

Our open survey reached out to social media experts to confidentially share their experiences of working within the industry. Questioning explored their day-to-day role, opportunities, challenges, and more.  

Over 150 experts took part in our survey from around the world. 

Respondents work within the industry in a variety of company types and sizes. Within this question category, the findings present clear changes in company sizes. Only 7.6% of respondents to the October 2021 report worked for a company with 30+ people, now it is 36.5%. There is also a big shift in the proximity of clients our respondents work with, 18.7% of clients were located locally to respondents in the October 2021 report, this figure now stands at 31.2%.

Insights for growth 

This report provides a rich source of data for you to gain insights into what it’s like to work in social media. Discover how roles have changed since our previous report, shared in October 2021, as when you read on you’ll see some big shifts. 

1. PASSION, CHALLENGE, EXCITEMENT. Key themes cited as reasons social media experts joined the industry 

2. 68% USE TIKTOK. There has been a big growth in TikTok use – 67.7% of respondents now use the platform, a jump from 29.7% of respondents in our October 2021 report. 

3. NEW BUSINESS PITCHES. 88% of respondents use social media reports within their new business pitches. This is a jump from 68.5% of respondents to our October 2021 report. Is there now more value in social media for helping to win new business? Or are more businesses now outsourcing social media? 

4. WEEKLY REPORTING. The percentage of respondents producing reports every month has fallen from 54.6% in October 2021 to 38.4%. However, the frequency of weekly reporting has increased from 18.5% to 35.8%. 

5. RELIANCE ON MANUAL PROCESSES. The reliance on manual processes to produce reports has increased, from 85% in October 2021 to 88%. This is while Excel and Word (or equivalents) remain the top two platforms used by experts to produce their reports. It is therefore unsurprising to see the common themes for disliking reporting and analytics because of the time it takes, which reduces the time available to work on the insights provided.