Jon-Stephen Stansel’s Post

Same with finance. Social media managers should understand how SOWs and purchase orders work so they don’t go down the rabbit hole of, “I don’t know why I’m not growing in my career.” You grow by understanding revenue flows as much as how to write unique copy/create creative things. It’s the one role that can truly be entrepreneurial if you open your mind to it.

It helps if the social media manager is able to do at least basic graphic design on his own for cases when the graphic designer has other (more important) deadlines.

As a manager, our key strengths revolve around team management and collaboration across different departments within the organization. Mastery of every detail in our team members’ tasks isn’t necessary; however, possessing a fundamental understanding of their roles, responsibilities, and the metrics is crucial. This knowledge not only facilitates our growth in management and collaborative capabilities but also contributes to the achievement of broader organizational objectives. It allows team members to leverage their strengths, guided by our strategic focus. While it’s not essential for every social media manager to have in-depth skills in graphic design or video editing to fulfill their roles effectively, experiencing these tasks firsthand, even at a basic level, can improve collaboration with specialists in these areas, which fosters mutual comprehension and establishes a shared language, proving to be valuable. In turn, experts in specific fields should also familiarize themselves with the duties and challenges social media managers face, incorporating innovative approaches outside their traditional expertise. This mutual exchange of knowledge and experience enhances teamwork and boosts overall team performance.

Same goes for copy teams. One of the best things I ever did for my career was work closely with a team of graphic designers on print magazines. Learning how to give design feedback beyond “make this bigger” or “why is there so much white space?” 🫠 is critical to being a good partner in content creation. It also helps create better copy from the jump when you understand what will help a designer communicate the message visually.

I didn’t even know you could manage social accounts without designing or editing videos. How is that slightly possible?

It also sets up expectations for requests from those team members and can possibly help eliminate the dismissive language often used, i.e. "Can you do x? Shouldn't take you too long." without any knowledge of what the task actually invovoels ==> my pet peeve. It: 1) Hurts employee morale by diminishing the skill of the labor you are requesting directly to the person you are requesting it from. 2) Creates a an unspoken culture of fear that implies "if this takes you longer than whaat I am willing pay, you won't have a job" 3) Sets up poor communication channels because you are asking people to hide the amount of time or skill involved in the task because the requester has already made it difficult for the laborer to clarify out of fear for their job or rate

On top of that, I've seen job descriptions for social media managers, specialists, strategists, etc. to be in front of the camera for videos/reels. That stuff would be for content creators and influencers. Plus, using too many social media management tools instead of a few, at least.

Surely it's a 2 person job? A web developer ideally needs a web designer to do the job right, and vise versa. Problem we are having lately, is we are going down a road where we have to be multiple peoples jobs in one. Maybe we should retitle ourselves the "handyman" or "jack-of-all-trades". I probably wouldn't hire my leccy to sort out my plumbing. But I get why people want to save money, at half the quality have one person that can kinda do it all.

The only reason I ever learned was because our in-house design team needed 7-10 business days to produce things and social simply can't move that slow.

I appreciate this sentiment because while it's partially true, I think every manager should have practical experience in the basics of the work they expect others to do - or at least sit down with the team they manage and find out what, exactly, their people are dealing with. Being a manager comes with a duty of care to your team. The only way to provide that is to understand their job, which requires more than just an attempt. But the spirit of this idea is 100% necessary to a good and healthy work environment.