Nearly a quarter of social media marketers plan to leave the profession by next April, according to a new report from Hootsuite. 

The social media management platform surveyed more than 3,800 social marketers, including social media practitioners, social media managers and directors, as well as those in VP or C-Suite level roles, in March and April. Of those, 24% said they intend to stop working in social media within the next year, according to Hootsuite’s inaugural Social Media Career Report, released this week.

At the same time, however, 61% of respondents told Hootsuite they consider social marketing as a “long-term career,” and 77% of social marketers reported they’re happy in their current roles.

Elina Vilk, Hootsuite’s chief marketing officer, credits this paradoxical view of the social marketing field to many people truly enjoying the creativity and “fun” involved in social marketing careers while simultaneously resenting the underinvestment in social media and the lack of understanding about the industry among many brand and agency executives. 

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“[Social marketers] are maybe some of the most knowledgeable people about your customers, but the value of what they do isn't fully understood, so they're not given visibility into the organization and they're not necessarily given a seat at the table,” Vilk told Ad Age. “That can be very demoralizing for someone who works so hard and often takes on so many roles.” 

That expectation for social marketers to take on a slew of responsibilities—from tasks directly related to social media, such as copywriting, shooting and editing photo and video content and managing influencer partnerships, to broader marketing duties including public relations, email marketing and event planning—is one of the five most common challenges that social marketers identified in Hootsuite’s survey.

Two in three respondents reported having too many responsibilities in their role, and the same number of social marketers told Hootsuite they work 40 or more hours per week. Social marketers are expected to perform anywhere from seven to nine separate social media-related tasks in their day-to-day role and simultaneously oversee up to three non-social responsibilities, per the survey. 

Keeping track of ever-changing social media trends and monitoring for customer questions or complaints across social platforms is effectively a “24-hour job,” Vilk said. And with 38% of social marketers being the only person on their brand or agency’s social media team, per the survey, maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be extremely difficult.

“The nature of your job is scrolling channels and doing research, so it feels like you’re always on,” said Allison Wong, a freelance social media manager, in the report. “You’re always trying to look for the next trend. You’re trying to improve yourself. So it can be very overwhelming just being on your phone all the time.”

That “always-on” mentality has also worsened a significant number of social marketers’ mental health, according to the report. Of the 57% of survey respondents who identify as having a mental health condition, 42% said working in social media has exacerbated that condition. 

Additionally, 48% of salaried social marketers told Hootsuite they don’t feel fairly compensated for their careers—and that number jumps to 53% among freelance social marketers. Hootsuite found a significant gender pay gap pervades the social media field, with female social marketers earning just 76% of their male counterparts’ income, on average. This pay discrepancy is wider than the U.S. workforce average of women earning 82% of men’s income, and is exacerbated by the fact that 73% of social marketers are women.

Vilk said the factor likely driving most social marketers to consider a career shift is the continued undervaluation of social media within the brands and agencies these marketers work for. Roughly half of the respondents to Hootsuite’s survey said they lack the time or budget to perform their jobs well, and 56% said their bosses still “don’t understand social media.”

“The majority of businesses invest in social, but they don’t know the attribution of social—Is it engagement? Is it brand value? Is it a retention play?—and they aren’t investing enough into it,” she said. “Meaning, the majority of social media managers will feel overwhelmed with responsibilities and a lot of them are on smaller teams.”

A separate report from social media management platform Sprout Social also highlighted the confusion and ambiguity around measuring the impact of social media. According to that report, brand and agency leaders at the VP level and higher primarily look to engagement metrics, such as likes and comments, as the primary (or only) metric to determine social performance, while lower-level social marketers also consider a range of metrics including reach, impressions, and social media traffic to a brand’s website. 

The Sprout Social report also revealed 43% of 900 social marketers surveyed feel siloed within their company or brand, despite more than three in four saying their social teams’ insights inform other departments. 

“Everyone wants to know that social is 'working.' The most important thing you can do is show what 'working' means for your business,” said Rachael Goulet, Sprout Social’s director of social media, in the report. “Are you attracting new fans? Are you driving sales? Can you quantify how much your advocacy program is saving you on ad spend? Talk to your teams about the value you're seeing from your efforts, quickly and often. Share insights as they come up—they are that influential and can change your business strategies rapidly.”

Supporting social marketers 

Despite the plethora of pain points leading many social marketers to contemplate leaving the profession, the fact remains that 77% still enjoy working in social media, per Hootsuite’s survey. That’s over 15% higher than the average rate of 62% reported in The Conference Board’s 2023 Job Satisfaction survey. And the simple reason for so many social marketers enjoying their careers is the ability for them to “create and be creative every single day,” according to Hootsuite. 

“The creativity that this job involves is the thing that really keeps me in it,” said Sophie Vershbow, head of social marketing at Eventbrite, in the report. “I’ll jot down the silliest TikTok idea you’ve ever seen, actually do it, and it’ll end up being our top post of the month. The idea-to-action-to-result pipeline that social media enables is my favorite thing in the world.”

As part of a larger campaign surrounding the launch of its report, Hootsuite is focusing on empowering social marketers with resources such as a salary negotiation guide, salary calculator and portfolio template, among other guides. The in-house campaign also includes out-of-home displays highlighting statistics from the report specific to social roles in sectors such as healthcare, education and the government. 

Hootsuite is also partnering with a handful of social marketers—including freelance social media manager Jon-Stephen Stansel and Bari Rosenstein, social media manager of Auntie Anne’s and Jamba—to act as influencers in the campaign and share some of the statistics and takeaways from the report that stood out most to them.

“Social teams everywhere are constantly building and fostering relationships with prospects and customers that directly lead to revenue and growth for their organizations,” said Hootsuite CEO Irina Novoselsky in a press release. “It's time for leadership teams to recognize their impact as powerhouse marketers.”