The future of Social Media Marketing Department

I’m starting to think that the role of a Social Media Manager will begin to be increasingly difficult. What does a Social Media Manager do today? Creates content? What type of content: text, visual or audio? Answers questions on the brand’s social media pages? Analyzes and writes reports? Launches campaigns? More media than social or more social than media? Evangelizes the product through his online behavior or at events?

But what if we start from the idea that a Social Media Manager shouldn’t do all of this? Furthermore, let’s divide these responsibilities in different jobs that can be made into a Social Media Marketing department: Content Marketer, Visual Marketer, Podcaster, Community Manager (did you know that the first Instagram employee was a Community Manager?), Analytics Marketer, Chief Evangelist, Growth Hacker, etc. Then a Social Media Manager should just “steer” them? Perhaps.

Let’s go even further and see what is (or should be) the purpose of a Social Media Marketing department. To create and deliver content to users on different platforms that may then be converted into customers and who then become ambassadors of the brand? To provide a real-time customer service? To “transparently” communicate (this thing with communicating transparently still amuses me) and give the fans a memorable experience with the brand? Questions … more and more questions.

And if we don’t know what the purpose of a Social Media Marketing department is then how can we know what its future is? Where is it heading towards?

Currently in Romania we have managed to start talking about the Content Marketing phenomenon, only just at the level of a campaign. And let me tell you that doing Content Marketing should not be just about a campaign but should be about brand strategies; in fact it should be part of the brand’s DNA.

Content Marketing should be the brand’s behavior.

And I keep looking at the Social Media Marketing department today and I wonder, is it supposed to be part of PR, Marketing or be an independent department? Do we want more stories on social media from the brand? Do we want more sales from the brand? Do we want awareness or subscribers? What do we want? Because that is what we should be talking about here, what do we want from the Social Media department?

I don’t want to draw any conclusion but just to ask a question for today.

Whether you are a brand manager, marketing manager or social media manager (or executor) you should ask the following question to define the statement, purpose and strategy:

What do you want from the Social Media Marketing department tomorrow?

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