[Podcast] Social Media Professional Anxiety?

Social Media Professional Anxiety

Exploring the Challenges Faced by Social Media Marketers

So, you want to be a Social Media Marketer…

This episode sheds light on the complex, yet rewarding world of social media marketing. From understanding the fluid nature of social platforms to acknowledging the mental health aspects, this discussion provides a comprehensive view of what it means to be a social media professional today.

Key Takeaways:

Adapting to Change: The ability to adapt to the rapidly changing social media landscape is crucial for success in the field.
Internal Communication: Effective internal communication is key to aligning social media strategies with broader organizational goals.
Career Path and Mental Health: Discussing the unique career path challenges and mental health aspects associated with social media marketing.

Content in this episode:

01:26 Training and organizational problems.
09:11 Social anxiety.
12:24 Social media marketing backgrounds.
19:06 Return on investment in social media.
24:27 AI and problem-solving in organizations.
28:08 Fractional expert roles.
32:22 Marketing’s role in tech support.
37:33 Doing what you love versus Managing what you love.
43:49 Social media marketers leaving.
49:08 Mary Czarnecki’s website.

Show Notes:

Hootsuite 2023 Social Media Career Report

Show Transcript

[00:00:00] Mary Czarnecki: It’s like just as soon as I thought I had it figured out like we had a sleep schedule and I knew how they were doing. It’s like all of a sudden next week would change, right? All of a sudden we’re on a new thing. And now I’m like, I’m not going to learn this all over again.

[00:00:13] Matt Bailey: Kids are a great study. I always used to say, if something bothers you, just give it two weeks.

[00:00:18] Matt Bailey: It’ll change. But this leads into the survey had five hardships. Welcome to endless coffee cups—a regular discussion of marketing news, culture, and media for our complex digital lifestyle. Join Matt Bailey as he engages in conversation to find insights beyond the latest headlines and deeper understanding for those involved in marketing.

[00:00:41] Matt Bailey: Grab a cup of coffee, have a seat, and thanks for joining. Well, hello, and welcome to another edition of the endless coffee cup podcast. I’m your host, Matt Bailey, and with me, is a former guest on several appearances, Mary Czarnecki, Mary, how are you doing today?

[00:00:59] Mary Czarnecki: Good. [00:01:00] So happy to be back, Matt. Thanks for having me as a guest.

[00:01:03] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. I think last time we talked about entrepreneurship and you know, we’ve talked about some customer journey and I think over the summer, maybe it was over the summer, the 2023 social media career report was published by Hootsuite. And immediately I thought, I got to talk to Mary about this. Uh, you are.

[00:01:24] Matt Bailey: You know, in the field, you are like me, you are actively out in training companies. You are getting a firsthand look. And I think it’s interesting, like you and I doing training, we get the outsider perspective and we get to go into an organization. And I like to joke and we get to see all the problems that we don’t have to deal with.

[00:01:46] Matt Bailey: So it’s always an interesting view. How do you feel about that?

[00:01:50] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, you know, it’s, it is interesting. Cause I, I know both of us do a mix of consulting as well as, uh, speaking and training, and it is interesting. Cause when I go in as [00:02:00] a, as a trainer and it’s just one kind of gig, you start to see some of those problems.

[00:02:04] Mary Czarnecki: You almost want to say, we should talk more. Yes. You know, it’s not always either an option or maybe there are other priorities. Right. I guess that’s the thing that’s so interesting too, because being able to kind of get those little windows into so many different organizations and different teams, you do see pretty stark differences between organizations, but then you also start to see some of those commonalities, which I think is even more interesting.

[00:02:32] Matt Bailey: Yeah. It’s always fascinating to even get some conversations that are going on within the organization. And as you said, it’s, it’s that we should talk a little bit more because I think there are times when I’ve gone in and I feel like we’re training, but we’re training for a specific problem, but there’s a deeper issue going on.

[00:02:54] Matt Bailey: And this training might just glance off. It might [00:03:00] solve something, but you’ve got deeper systemic problems that Are going to affect this training and the outcome of the training.

[00:03:08] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah. And I mean, I think one of the challenges I see as, as a consultant and trainer is that so often, you know, even when organizations do invest in training, which in this day and age, you know, it’s not a given, you know, a lot of learning and development departments are being.

[00:03:22] Mary Czarnecki: Either downsized or limited or budgets cut and, you know, teams of downsized, which means each marketing professional has more on their plate, which means a sense of urgency, which means less time for personal development and learning. So, I mean, I think I’m interested in watching how, when people do commit the time to training or development, those organizations that actually.

[00:03:49] Mary Czarnecki: Enable them to spend the time in the training as opposed to the teams that, you know, there are organizations and say, okay, we’re going to do the training and we’re going to make it required, but then they don’t give them [00:04:00] employees space. They don’t give them the ability to focus on the training for an hour, 2 hours, or even 3 hours.

[00:04:06] Mary Czarnecki: Right? So I’ve been in training before where, you know, even the managers on the training with the, with the reporters are emailing them during the man during the training.

[00:04:15] Matt Bailey: Yes. So I don’t mind it happening when like we’re in the middle of an activity and they’re getting ideas. I think that’s cool. But when they can’t leave each other alone about normal business stuff and you know, how’s this going?

[00:04:31] Matt Bailey: Give me a status. And it’s like, you’re in training. What? Leave this stuff behind. What, what is going on?

[00:04:38] Mary Czarnecki: Well, because I think it, you know, it’s like anything when it comes to. dividing our attention these days, right? I know there’s the switching cost a lot of people talk about where even if it’s just your, you know, your phone, your watch beeping the couple seconds it takes to switch your attention is the same as, you know, looking at something else for 10 minutes and then [00:05:00] coming back, your brain doesn’t know the difference.

[00:05:02] Mary Czarnecki: And so Enabling the team, not only to have access to learning and development and training but giving them intentional permission, right? I’ve also seen those teams and those, those business leaders that have said, look, they do the, you know, I’ll do my intro, but they’ll get on even before that and say, I mean it when I say shut everything else down.

[00:05:24] Mary Czarnecki: I mean it when I say, listen to Mary, she’s got some things that we can use and apply. But if you don’t take the time today to actually. Learn and not just learn but actually like break it like play with it. Let’s learn from her Let’s look at the examples But then let’s try to apply it because all of a sudden when you start to apply it even if it made sense when she said it, you know when you try to do it for yourself, sometimes it doesn’t work quite Well the first time you gotta gonna ask some questions or oh, I thought that made sense, but You know if you’re not paying attention, you don’t have the opportunity to ask things like that.

[00:05:59] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. [00:06:00] And what I love about that is, you know, when you’re breaking out into activities, when, when they’re now putting it into practice, I love it when there is that, that serendipitous moment of everyone’s come together, they’ve left their phones behind. And one of the things I do is, is I try to make all my activities independent of any device.

[00:06:20] Matt Bailey: We’re going to do it on the whiteboard with markers. So that we can leave the laptops and the phones behind and everyone uses that. But when they start working together and trying to solve an internal problem, trying to improve a process, and that’s when you see the excitement, that’s when you see now they’re on board.

[00:06:37] Matt Bailey: Now we’re, and when they start to solve internal issues. or come up with new ideas, either for a product or a service or something that they can offer. That’s just fantastic. I love those moments because it’s like, okay, everyone’s on board. They’re seeing the benefit of it. And I feel like as a trainer, I can sit [00:07:00] down because they’re teaching themselves, they’re taking it to the next step.

[00:07:04] Matt Bailey: And at that point, I can only coach a little bit because they’re the experts in their business and they’re making it happen.

[00:07:11] Mary Czarnecki: No, 100%. Yeah. And I know, you know, for me, that’s why I like doing both. I mean, I’ve got the opportunity to do training workshops, but, when I’ve had a lot more fun with, especially for teams that don’t work together physically every day, I found that those teams, I’m also doing more of the facilitation workshops where I’m not doing a lot of Teaching, it’s just holding a space for them to talk to each other, right.

[00:07:38] Mary Czarnecki: And to share ideas and build off each other, because I think, especially one of the big challenges I’m seeing with hybrid and distributed teams is you miss that opportunity for creativity, right? You miss that opportunity to just hear someone, not that’s talking to you, but that is talking to someone.

[00:07:54] Mary Czarnecki: Even across the pod. Right. And you hear something and just because you heard that it can [00:08:00] influence what you’re doing, the way you’re thinking about it. And we’ve missed that opportunity when we’re not in the same physical space.

[00:08:07] Matt Bailey: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. We could go all day on that. Wow. Yeah. And it’s funny, you know, you see articles about work from home and space, but there.

[00:08:17] Matt Bailey: Is an advantage to working with a team. Now, granted, I don’t think it has to happen every day, but when you’re with other people, you’re exposed, like you said, just something someone else says in a different conversation, being able to just talk to people. And there is so much more information that is passed face to face than through an email or a text or a Slack.

[00:08:39] Matt Bailey: Chat or anything like that. So there is value to that. And that’s one of the things I love about training in person is, you know, you and I could go on about the difference between training on Zoom and training in person, there is a distinct difference between the two, but when you do get people together, there is a lot of shared [00:09:00] experiences.

[00:09:01] Matt Bailey: That they can pull from it. It’s like, they’re more willing to talk about that. So that I think is like a great segue into this social. So I titled this so far. I don’t know if this is going to be the right title, but I’m going to call it social anxiety because it’s all about the, so, okay. Hootsuite did this career report.

[00:09:23] Matt Bailey: They surveyed almost 4, 000 social media marketers. I was like, okay, we’ve got a good size. That’s a good size. A couple of things about this just to kind of set the stage. So almost 4, 000 respondents, 48 percent, have been social media marketers for four years or less. That jumped out to me. Very much so.

[00:09:47] Matt Bailey: And just under 20, about 17 percent have been a social media marketer for 10 years or more. That jumped out to me. That’s a significant number. Okay. The next number that jumped out to me, [00:10:00] 77 percent are happy. I thought that was just an interesting stat to throw into the report. I thought that was, you know, three out of four are happy social media marketers.

[00:10:09] Matt Bailey: Why is that? Why do you think social media marketers are happy, Mary?

[00:10:13] Mary Czarnecki: Well, it’s interesting because I think it’s not a role, at least in my experience, the exposure I’ve had, it’s not a role that people typically like fall into it’s a little more intentional, I think, than other areas of marketing and communications.

[00:10:26] Mary Czarnecki: And so I’m wondering if that’s part of the contribution is that, okay, this is something that it’s not just that I’m good at it. And there I, therefore ended up, that’s the end of the way my career went, but almost I’ve intentionally chosen to pursue this path. So maybe that’s why I have a higher.

[00:10:43] Mary Czarnecki: rate of happiness.

[00:10:46] Matt Bailey: You know, if you asked me a while ago, maybe a couple of years ago, I would have said it’s because your job is to be on social media. I think of the days where you’d be in trouble if you were on social media at work and now you’re getting paid to do it. So it’s, but it’s something different every [00:11:00] day.

[00:11:00] Matt Bailey: I’ve got to imagine I hired someone to handle a lot of my social media and she just absolutely loves it. She is just. In love. And it’s a challenge. Every day is a challenge. Like, how do we get the LinkedIn numbers up? How do we get the YouTube numbers up? Oh, this works. It’s like just this fascinating and I’m interested and I’m like, wow, that’s cool.

[00:11:18] Matt Bailey: And, and I’m trying to figure out why things work, but she loves it. And you know, it’s very interesting to, I don’t know, to see happiness is a stat in a report. I thought that was just. I’m like, Oh, that’s so cute.

[00:11:33] Mary Czarnecki: No, I mean, it is interesting. Cause I mean, you know, a couple of decades ago, you know, it doesn’t matter what was the revenue, like what people are happy.

[00:11:41] Mary Czarnecki: Oh, that’s a nice benefit as opposed to it being a key measure of success. You know what I mean? Whether it’s not people, whether self-selecting into being social is a key. Contributor to that, I do think you made a good point about the fact that it is so fast-moving, right? So if you’re the kind of person that doesn’t like to sit still [00:12:00] and likes a new challenge and likes innovation and likes that first mover experience, I mean, that’s a great fit because you do, you, you can’t, you can’t say, oh, well, I learned that now I’m going to be able to use that for the next 10 years.

[00:12:13] Mary Czarnecki: Right. That’s, that’s

[00:12:14] Matt Bailey: out the window. Absolutely. I think also you’re the first one to know the meme. What’s the next meme coming up? You can see all those trends happening. So you’re the first of your crowd to know what’s next. Um, yeah, it was very interesting that most, most people in social media marketing have come out of journalism, communications, media, or actual marketing in school.

[00:12:36] Matt Bailey: And they’re the ones that seem to have the easiest time. So, 52% of social media marketers, I thought this was interesting, come from media, journalism, communications, and media marketing. It said that they have the easiest time on social media. The ones that have the more difficult time come from financial services, STEM things, [00:13:00] where I think there are more rules.

[00:13:03] Matt Bailey: Would that be a good way to say it? More rules, more structure. And people that come from journalism, media, there are, there are fewer rules. It’s more idea-driven rather than rule-driven. And so it seems to be that there’s a personality, a flexibility of how you view things or what you’re comfortable with that helps you be a little bit more adept at your

[00:13:25] Mary Czarnecki: work.

[00:13:26] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I think You know, being a science undergrad myself, you know, I, you like the principles and the laws and, you know, laws of physics or the laws of physics, you know, although apparently, quantum things are changing that. But the idea here is that I know what my universe is.

[00:13:44] Mary Czarnecki: I have boundaries. I have things that work. I have things that don’t work. I have areas where we don’t know what works, but at least I have these. Kind of buckets as opposed to, you know, in social media, it’s so interesting because what worked yesterday may not be the thing that is going to work tomorrow and I need to be [00:14:00] open to that.

[00:14:00] Mary Czarnecki: And I need to say, and I think this is a key to, you know, who likes it, but then who’s successful in this is I not only need to know what I need to do and be open myself to this innovation and change, but I need to be able to influence others in my organization to be able to do that.

[00:14:17] Mary Czarnecki: Right. Because if you are working in a social in this role, It’s not just that you have to have the idea and you have to be able to know what to do. You have to be able to socialize that and get buy-in from these other types of thinkers in your organization. Some of which may be a little more comfortable with less risk and more roles.

[00:14:38] Matt Bailey: Yeah. And we’ll get into that because there, there is definitely, that’s part of the hardship. Uh, of the role that is, that was brought up, but I think you make a great point because I was reviewing, uh, someone’s social media accounts the other day and it was interesting looking at their Instagram that, okay, here’s a post with 5, 000 likes [00:15:00] and 20 comments and then here’s two likes, no comments, then 6, 000 likes and 40 comments it.

[00:15:07] Matt Bailey: And I’m like, there is no. Sense to this. It’s completely random to look through that. Whereas other counts I’ll look through them and there’s a consistency that, you know, there’s 8, 000, you know, and there’s variation, but this was just extreme swings and. As you said, there’s no science here. There are no rules.

[00:15:31] Matt Bailey: It’s completely, you know, algorithm-driven, but yet how many factors do we have to look at? And I think that’s where that, that random style of personality or that open thinking, there’s no rule. There’s how are you going to do this? How are you going to think through it? And come up with a plan to figure it out.

[00:15:51] Matt Bailey: So it takes a personality to do that. Yeah. It reminds me of a

[00:15:55] Mary Czarnecki: a lot of when I have two boys, one of my boys were infants, you know, getting into that toddler stage. [00:16:00] It’s like just as soon as I thought I had to figure it out. Like we had a sleep schedule and I knew how they were doing. It’s like all of a sudden next week would change, right?

[00:16:08] Mary Czarnecki: All of a sudden they’re on a new thing. And now I’m like, All over again, kids

[00:16:12] Matt Bailey: this is a great study. I always used to say, if something bothers you, just give it two weeks. It’ll change, but this leads to the survey having five hardships. And I think these were all very related. 66 percent said they had too many responsibilities.

[00:16:29] Matt Bailey: And I think this is related to another that said almost 60 percent said that their bosses don’t understand social media, getting to what you said about, you got to sell your idea. And then two-thirds are working more than 40 hours a week. And so then that leads to life-work balance compensation. But I thought several that they’re overworking, they’re working more than a full- schedule.

[00:16:57] Matt Bailey: They feel like they have too many responsibilities and bosses don’t [00:17:00] understand social media, that’s all related. That is all part of the job expectation.

[00:17:05] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think it goes back to what we were saying is that you know, you’ve got to not only have a good idea, be able to execute it, but you have to help other people see that it’s a good idea, you know, and especially if you’re working for or with stakeholders, managers, others in the organization that aren’t.

[00:17:23] Mary Czarnecki: As familiar with it, don’t have the expertise in it and potentially are even threatened or it’s a hit to their confidence that they don’t feel like they can ask smart strategic questions about it. And depending on who you are, that can lead to being more defensive. It can lead to being more of a micromanager.

[00:17:43] Mary Czarnecki: It can, you know, all of these other things. And so. I think that’s a big challenge for anyone who’s working in an innovative area of marketing, social media included, where I don’t just need to know my stuff. I need to be able to help others know this too, at least [00:18:00] to break down those barriers, to break down those walls.

[00:18:03] Mary Czarnecki: So that they can be open to the ideas that have the open seat, the proposals, or the innovations that I want to pursue.

[00:18:10] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. But let’s go a little deeper and let’s go into the strategic, which you love, I know. And that gets to the strategic level of the organization. Do they understand what they want to do with social media?

[00:18:25] Matt Bailey: And I think that leads to a lot of issues then with expectations, job roles, is when organizationally, there’s just this, we need to do it drive, but we don’t know how it fits, we don’t know what to expect and, and so without that strategic piece of how does this fit an organization, you’re going to get it.

[00:18:50] Matt Bailey: You know, too many responsibilities, too much to do, nobody understands. And that’s where organizations tend to see these silver bullets as we just attach it to the business. There’s no [00:19:00] strategic integration of these tactics into The

[00:19:06] Mary Czarnecki: work well, I mean, I think there’s a common challenge highlighted, which is okay.

[00:19:09] Mary Czarnecki: I’ve got these social efforts. I’ve got all this energy and effort revenue that I’m plowing into this content creation and the people creating the content. What’s my return on investment? Right? Where’s my return? How does this? How do I directly attribute this to revenue and sales? And I think it’s tricky because, you know, there’s now.

[00:19:31] Mary Czarnecki: So many ways where you can, you can directly attribute online activities, social activity. To business results, but I also think you’re making a really good point, which is that am I doing this with intention or am I doing this as a should, Oh, my competition are, or everyone says I should, or the agency said I should, or do we have an actual intention for this?

[00:19:54] Mary Czarnecki: Do we know how this fits into our audience journey, our buyer’s journey, our [00:20:00] consumer customers’ behavior? Do we understand whether or not this is just air cover? To other, you know, direct marketing initiatives we’ve got, or is this a direct marketing initiative that’s leading to a specific action and moving people through that journey so that they either know, do understand, or believe something that’s going to help them move to the next phase.

[00:20:22] Mary Czarnecki: And I think that’s exactly the problem is that different groups within organizations may even know it, but that cohesion, that connection of. We are doing this campaign on this platform at this time. And this connects to our bigger business goals, those profit, those share, you know, those revenue goals that we have at the organizational level.

[00:20:41] Mary Czarnecki: It a lot of times isn’t connected to any given campaign. And I think that that can be a problem for really any kind, of campaign, whether it’s, you know, offline or online, but I do see it more often with those social media campaigns being

[00:20:57] Matt Bailey: disconnected. Absolutely, and it [00:21:00] even goes into other areas in a previous podcast.

[00:21:02] Matt Bailey: I talked about all the shiny objects that have happened over the past 20 years. Um, big data marketing automation, you know, metaverse, you know, we can go down the list of all these shiny objects that companies were like, Oh, you know, we’ve got to do this, but you can tell the ones that had a strategic, you know, View of how we’re going to use it versus the ones who said marketing automation.

[00:21:24] Matt Bailey: I want that. And then, Oh, we have to automate what? And you’re there saying, well, what’s your marketing process? What’s your framework? How do you communicate with people throughout their lives? Oh, you know, I thought you would do that. That’s automation, right? But you have to have something to automate. And we’ve seen this throughout, I think it even goes beyond digital.

[00:21:43] Matt Bailey: Digital just made it faster, but there’s always been these, these sort of shiny objects that let’s attach it to what we’re doing and not quite sure, but everyone says we’re going to make money. We’re, everyone says there’s an ROI, we’re just not quite sure how it’s going to happen.

[00:21:59] Mary Czarnecki: Well, that’s [00:22:00] why I’m so passionate about it.

[00:22:01] Mary Czarnecki: Start with the problem first. Like what, what is the insight that you have into your audience that this will fix? Right. Instead of saying, Oh, great. Awesome. I have this tool. Like you said, I have this shiny object. Great. How do I use this? It’s the same thing we used to fall into, you know, product-based marketing versus audience-centric marketing.

[00:22:17] Mary Czarnecki: Right. Great. I make this. Now, go figure out who you can sell this to. Great. We now have this tool. We have this new shiny object. We have, how do we use that? Let’s just figure out how to like shove it into our processes and organization, as opposed to saying, okay, well, what problems are we not solving right now that we didn’t have a solution to address?

[00:22:36] Mary Czarnecki: Or we had a solution, but it’s not as good as this solution. And I think that’s the perspective I’ve seen. Like you said, organizations who have taken these innovations. And leveraged it effectively to move their business forward, grow their business, increase revenue, and reach, and improve their audience experience.

[00:22:57] Mary Czarnecki: They’re using it to address something in that experience [00:23:00] or their internal experience as an organization. As opposed to just saying, ah, let’s just figure out how we can install this.

[00:23:08] Matt Bailey: Right. Right. Oh, I love that. I love that. A problem-based, problem-based approach that is so original, Mary. I love it. It is incredible.

[00:23:17] Matt Bailey: And I love how you just went there and brought that up because that is just that simple self-assessment. Uh, what are we not doing well and where can we improve and does this help us improve that? Hey everyone, this is Matt, and thanks for listening. Just a quick break in the middle of the podcast here to let you know there are a couple of ways that you can connect with us.

[00:23:40] Matt Bailey: The first is to learn. sitelogic. com. That’s the learning site where you can see courses on analytics. Courses on digital marketing across paid search, SEO, and multiple disciplines. And then also you can connect with us on Slack. Go to Slack if you’re there [00:24:00] and look for us at endlesscoffeecup. slack. com. Connect with us.

[00:24:05] Matt Bailey: I’d love to hear from you. Hear what ails you in the realm of digital marketing. Are there courses you need? Information that you’d like to hear? Or maybe some past guests that you’d like to hear more from? Thanks again for being a listener of the Endless Coffee Cup, and I look forward to hearing from you.

[00:24:24] Matt Bailey: Yeah, I think we’re seeing this now a little bit with AI. That I can see certain organizations, the ones who are saying, well, here’s where we need to improve. Let’s see if that way. And it’s, you know, for some, it’s working for some, you know, not so much. I tend to see a little bit, I don’t know. The whole AI thing is across the spectrum, but I am reading people who are solving problems first.

[00:24:55] Matt Bailey: With, but it’s that self-reflection that self-assessment, [00:25:00] what are we not doing well? And how do we make this work for us? I am happy to be seeing that in the AI conversation rather than just using it for everything. It’s great.

[00:25:13] Mary Czarnecki: Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, if you have, I mean, I think honestly, one thing I’d love.

[00:25:18] Mary Czarnecki: Seeing people do is not just like the bucket list of dream projects. I wish I could do or dream of things I want to accomplish, but almost like that running list of the problems that I wish we could fix or the improvements. I wish you could make, the optimizations I wish you could make. I just don’t know how to make it now, or we don’t have time.

[00:25:35] Mary Czarnecki: Energy effort, revenue, et cetera, to address it now, because when something new like this comes, that’s when you pull that sheet out and you’re like, Oh, actually, you know, if our team could crank out content, just 10 percent faster, that would allow us to X, Y, Z. Right. So then all of a sudden you have a place to plug in.

[00:25:53] Mary Czarnecki: Right? Someone, instead of staring at the blank sheet and the blinking cursor and spending, you know, an [00:26:00] hour trying to get this blog post out, can now leverage a tool to at least get a starting point, even if they rewrite 100 percent of it, you know because AI doesn’t always sound like your brand voice, even if you train it.

[00:26:13] Mary Czarnecki: Sometimes there are things that you want a human to go back to. At least they have a starting point. So even if that takes now, instead of an hour to complete, now it takes 45 minutes, it takes 30 minutes to complete. Not only does that potentially a personal level make someone more confident, more efficient, more excited about their job, and not feeling so frustrated, but you also are increasing the overall efficiency of the work itself.

[00:26:36] Mary Czarnecki: I mean, just on the point of, of that personal, I think that can sometimes be downplayed, right? It’s like, how is, how is this going to make us more sales? How’s this going to get us more customers? How is this going to generate more leads? We’re in business. We’re not here, you know, just for the kick of it.

[00:26:50] Mary Czarnecki: This isn’t a hobby, but at the same time, going back to the report, you’re saying that happiness, if someone’s enjoying what they’re doing the work

[00:26:58] Matt Bailey: The product will be better. [00:27:00] Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I love looking at that problem-based approach, keeping that list of where do we need to improve. That is such a great idea.

[00:27:10] Matt Bailey: But I think part of what happens is there’s this, we can come back to management. And their understanding of marketing and the place of marketing. I was talking to a marketing director a couple of weeks ago, and they were telling me that, you know, a couple of years ago, if a product manager needed a video, we would coordinate with an agency.

[00:27:29] Matt Bailey: We would, you know, create scripts. We, you know, sketch it all out and then the agency would take care of it. He says, today, it’s just kind of thrown at us that, Hey, make a video for this. And they expect the team. This is our primary responsibility. And I was making videos for social media and, you know, and he’s just sitting there saying this has, you know, within a decade, my job, my team has the responsibilities and expectations have changed dramatically because of this emphasis in social.[00:28:00]

[00:28:00] Matt Bailey: And he says, I’m not sure, you know, how do we handle this? It was just a very eye-opening discussion. And he was being very honest about

[00:28:08] Mary Czarnecki: that. Well, and it’s interesting too because I think. Growing up alongside that, at least what I’m seeing is, the growth of this kind of fractional expert role, right?

[00:28:19] Mary Czarnecki: So at least you used to have like the internal marketing team, right? So you had the internal team, you know, depending on the organization, sometimes you’d have product marketing versus brand marketing and those kinds of divisions. But you’d have basically, like you’re saying that the marketers. The agencies or the executors, the creative team, and you know, maybe a couple of advisors or consultants aren’t in there.

[00:28:40] Mary Czarnecki: Whereas now, you know, the more teams I’m working with actually are saying, oh, well we have an agency external, but then we also have an internal agency. But then we also have, you know, a fractional CMO in addition to our CMO in addition to our VPs and directors. And so you, I think these. Fractional roles that are coming in as kind of almost these experts, whether it’s a [00:29:00] consultant or a fractional or whatever the term, term that individual chooses to use, I think it’s coming in because of exactly that these roles have changed so fast.

[00:29:10] Mary Czarnecki: I’m now being asked to be an expert in this area that I may not have had the time, energy, or experience to develop expertise in. I don’t even necessarily want to, but how do I get my job done? And I think having not necessarily a full-blown agency specialist, but something that you can call on to kind of fill those, fill those gaps is something that I’ve seen, uh, kind of grow up.

[00:29:38] Mary Czarnecki: Alongside that shift in that responsibility. What people are being asked to do as marketers?

[00:29:43] Matt Bailey: Oh. And I think a previous podcast too, we were talking about job listings and how it just turns into this amalgamation of, Oh, we need this, and oh, we need that. And oh, if they, you know, if we could have a social media marketer who can edit video, you [00:30:00] know, it’s, you know, and I talked to my daughter’s in that position right now.

[00:30:03] Matt Bailey: She, she’s a photographer. But they keep telling like, Oh, can, can you do some social? Can you, can you do some video? Can you change this on the website? It’s like all of a sudden it’s she’s expected and she’s like, I’m the photographer. I’m not even a social marketer, but because I know it, it’s like all of a sudden that’s just being thrown at me.

[00:30:23] Matt Bailey: So when I see this. You know, 66 percent have too many responsibilities. I guess my first response is that’s just 66 percent because I think, especially within marketing, there’s this, you know, this, so you must know that you’re comfortable, you know, we’re still in that you’re comfortable with these computer things, so you, you must know how to fix it.

[00:30:47] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, I know. I think there was a quote there that I pulled out that I liked in there from someone from Thinkific and he was saying. You know, there’s a lot of overlap into other people’s roles when you’re in the social media space, social media manager. And it’s true [00:31:00] because even if the hub, right, to all of these different spokes, right, because customer service has to have something related to social, your sales team has to somehow be related to social to be able to pull out or identify potential hot leads.

[00:31:12] Mary Czarnecki: Right. So you end up. Needing to also know enough to be dangerous in a lot of other different areas. And I think to your point, you know, like your, like your daughter, if you’re good at something, people are going to see that and they’re going to take advantage of it. Even though you may be the photographer.

[00:31:30] Mary Czarnecki: Oh, she’s the creative one. Oh, she must be able to also

[00:31:32] Matt Bailey: do graphic design. You get

[00:31:36] Mary Czarnecki: pulled

[00:31:36] Matt Bailey: into these projects in all these different ways. training, I talk about the importance of interfaces. And that, you know, everyone’s becoming much more impatient. And so you need to be spending much more time evaluating your interfaces and the usability of those interfaces.

[00:31:54] Matt Bailey: And I asked them, how many of you do tech support for your parents? And almost the entire, you know, it [00:32:00] it’s across age range, it’s across everything. It’s yes, I do tech support for my parents. It’s just funny to see. And, and it’s, it’s a great bridge into that understanding of why are you doing tech support for them.

[00:32:12] Matt Bailey: Because something’s not understandable. It’s not clear. It’s difficult to understand. And your experience may help you through that. But, whatever your parents are trying to do, it wasn’t built with them in mind. And so it’s, and I’m trying to explain to them, it’s not their fault. It’s marketing.

[00:32:29] Matt Bailey: It’s your fault. Your job is that interface and the usability of it. So there’s, there’s a, again, that crossover in understanding. It’s not just getting people there. So we got to get them through. The process or the task that we’ve set out before them. But so many times I think as marketing, we’re especially social media.

[00:32:49] Matt Bailey: It’s all about the acquisition. And past that acquisition, it’s, it’s like, well, that’s someone else’s problem. Yeah, exactly. It’s operations. That’s. But [00:33:00] I mean,

[00:33:00] Mary Czarnecki: to your point though, I mean, you’re talking about the external audience, but even the internal audience of, oh, we’re asking them to do these things.

[00:33:07] Mary Czarnecki: Am I enabling them to do their job? Like what enablement have you given someone? Or is it more of a turn-and-burn attitude where it’s like, oh, well, if they can’t figure it out? Those are the people who can figure it out,

[00:33:17] Matt Bailey: right? Yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Dangerous. Dangerous. Because it doesn’t take much of getting into conversion rate optimization to figure out you can turn around an entire organization by making a more accessible interface.

[00:33:30] Matt Bailey: It’s, that’s, you know. Again, that’s, another thing there, but this leads to something because I just talked about conversion rate optimization, talked about usability. Here was something in the report that jumped out to me is that less than 30 percent of social media marketers Advance into management and that jumped out to me and I’m, I have my theories as to why that is low because even though there are a lot of, I’ll give you one, even though there’s a [00:34:00] lot of overlap, even though there’s, as we were just saying, you’re the creative one.

[00:34:05] Matt Bailey: I think when you are in social media marketing, it does lock you in. To a very narrow pigeonhole of responsibility because you are focused here. Whereas, and I don’t know, Mary, if you saw the salary comparison, the SEO manager makes more money. The email marketing manager makes more money than social media.

[00:34:29] Matt Bailey: The content marketing manager, marketing manager, digital marketing, most of the other disciplines. Are promoted more and make more. And my theory is that because social media is such a niche and focused area, it doesn’t allow you to expand beyond that. See, like if you’re an SEO. You’re involved in content, you’re involved in marketing, you’re involved in the website, you’re [00:35:00] involved in usability, you’re involved in many areas of marketing, so you’re much more visible in those, you know, if you’re in meetings, you’re in more meetings if you’re an SEO, whereas if you’re in social media, you’re kind of kept, this is your role, and I think it’s hard to step out of

[00:35:18] Mary Czarnecki: that.

[00:35:18] Mary Czarnecki: I think, I think that’s probably. Valid because, you know, it goes back to mentorship, right? So those who progress to management typically have mentors, have champions within the organization who are part of the planning for advancement who, you know, who is going to be, you know, set up for success in different ways.

[00:35:38] Mary Czarnecki: And I think if you’re, like you said, not involved or not even exposure to or visibility into how what you do. Social relates to bigger business strategy or other initiatives within the organization, the kind of things that you will have to think about if you’re going to go into management.

[00:35:58] Mary Czarnecki: I think [00:36:00] missing those opportunities probably contributes to the fact that that numbers are low compared to other groups. And, you know, it’s 1 of those things too, where I know some people think, oh, well, the social media world tends to be younger, right? It’s a, it’s a younger individual. That may have been the case in the past year, and a few years, but it’s not necessarily the case anymore.

[00:36:18] Mary Czarnecki: Right. So you could say, okay, it’s, it’s a job for someone at the beginning of their career, therefore that’s why the salary is lower, but you know, I’ve seen some ages working in SEO and social. So why the difference? And. You know, does age matter? Is it really about contribution to the organization and success?

[00:36:34] Mary Czarnecki: So it is interesting. I think what I also theorize though, is that I’m wondering how much of it is, and I think it’s probably both, but I also wonder how much of it is also self-selection, right? Cause we said earlier if it’s true that this role tends to. Attract people who want the change and they want innovation and they want to be on the cutting edge and they want to be doing [00:37:00] something different and solving those problems and, you know, breaking the rules so that they can find some new path forward.

[00:37:06] Mary Czarnecki: We can all hold up certain leaders within businesses that. are touted for having those skills, but I would say, by and large, sometimes those skills don’t always fit with the management because you’re not on the front lines anymore all the time. You’re, you are expected to not just follow rules, but even set and enforce rules.

[00:37:26] Mary Czarnecki: So I’m wondering too, I guess I would theorize that there, there might be something too about maybe it’s a self-selection situation.

[00:37:33] Matt Bailey: I like that. It’s funny. I would have never brought this into this conversation, but I used to tell people there’s doing what you love. And then there’s managing what you love.

[00:37:43] Matt Bailey: And so many times I look back in my career where I love the job. But as soon as I got it. Promoted into management like this stinks. The fun is gone because now I have to manage people. That was one of the best examples was when I was in the army. As soon as I [00:38:00] got those Sergeant stripes, life stopped being fun.

[00:38:04] Matt Bailey: Like, I just want to go back to being a, you know, a private and making trouble. For everybody else and not being the person who has to watch them and keep them out of trouble. There is something to, yeah, I love doing it, but managing is a completely different thing. I love that. I think that’s great, the other way I was going to go as well.

[00:38:24] Matt Bailey: And you alluded to this earlier is the perception of value to the organization. I think, you know, SEO, you can tie more financial impact to the work. As a result, any other let’s go beyond any other department is financially driven. Marketing, however, is kind of alone in that it’s somewhat financially driven.

[00:38:49] Matt Bailey: We can look at ROI, but it depends on what kind of organization you are. It depends on how easily you can track all of that. You know, if you have multiple products and [00:39:00] multiple things and distributors, retailers, it’s going to be hard, but you know, you’re making an impact. It may not be as measurable as you’d like.

[00:39:07] Matt Bailey: And then you get into the different. Areas of marketing and some have, like you said, there, there’s a little more direct, not completely, but if an organization understands, I can measure 40 percent of what SEO does, but I’m going to look at that 40%. I think social is a moving target. And when people don’t understand the purpose of it, I’ve had to go to organizations to say, you got to look at this as PR.

[00:39:34] Matt Bailey: That’s it. It’s PR to get a direct ROI of social. It’s going to be near impossible because of you and your situation.

[00:39:44] Mary Czarnecki: In the organic vein. I mean, I know it’s slightly easier to do your funnel math when you’ve got a, you know, paid ad campaign and it’s a direct call to action. Right. But if you’re, if you’re thinking about more kind of like brand equity level and kind of air cover level, I think you’re [00:40:00] right on.

[00:40:00] Mary Czarnecki: Thank you.

[00:40:00] Matt Bailey: I appreciate it. But yeah, well, but, and that’s the thing we, I say it all the time. And you allude to it too. Likes don’t make any CEO happy. I mean, you bring likes or engagement into a meeting. Nobody cares. And I think that gets to where social marketers have to learn that measurement language.

[00:40:25] Matt Bailey: They have to learn that, that where’s the impact that I’m making. And if they can’t, to your point, if they can’t verbalize it. If they can’t promote it, if they can’t communicate it within the organization, that’s going to restrict their career prospect. It’s going to restrict their growth and their value in the organization.

[00:40:45] Matt Bailey: That’s why I’m

[00:40:46] Mary Czarnecki: so interested in when I work with teams, you know, we have to connect what is, you know, what is going on in this campaign to that big number, right? At the big number, the beginning of this year, we know we had to hit this percent, you know, growth or this [00:41:00] revenue number. Great. What piece of that are we driving with this?

[00:41:05] Mary Czarnecki: Because if we, if we don’t know that, it makes it very hard for us to, as you said. Influence and sell at, you know, the CCV to the management level. Cause that’s what they’re gold on, right? They’re not gold on how well this, you know, this one social campaign goes, this is just one, one piece of the puzzle that they care about.

[00:41:25] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, and that, I think, you know, that’s why I’m so focused on, you know, there are so many soft skills and so much of the time, I think, uh, there was a role delineation study that even in social media, like. More than 30 percent of the time is spent communicating. And so learning to communicate, not just your strategy, but the results, the communicating the data, the analytics, but communicating in a way that shows your innovation.

[00:41:57] Matt Bailey: That shows your insights. What [00:42:00] have you learned and what now is the impact of that learning so that there is an entire communications process to learn that enables you to evangelize what you’re doing within the organization and raise your profile doing that? Yeah, no,

[00:42:16] Mary Czarnecki: definitely. And I know that’s one of your specialty areas is helping people tell better stories with their data, you know, being able to say, okay, well, graphs are great, but, so, you know, I mean, it’s, I’ve seen the same too, you know, I do a lot of brand storytelling where you’re talking to an external audience training.

[00:42:36] Mary Czarnecki: But more and more, I’m starting to also get a lot of requests for people saying, well, but how do we communicate better internally? Right? I can’t, and it all connects, right? If we’re not communicating internally, we’re not going to effectively be able to put something together. That’s going to have an impact on the market.

[00:42:53] Mary Czarnecki: You know, I think anyone who’s undercrediting the ability of their team, to improve internal efficiency and [00:43:00] efficiency. Effective communication might find themselves behind the eight ball in a few years.

[00:43:05] Matt Bailey: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I think I think communication is by far going to be one of the most valuable skills moving forward.

[00:43:11] Matt Bailey: We’re seeing it now that there is a demand. There’s a need for effective communication and some reason, it’s just not being met. And I just did something the other day. If it’s chat GPT, you’ll put in a pretty good set of instructions. But if you’re sending an email to a co-worker, you don’t do the same.

[00:43:30] Matt Bailey: You should, but you don’t. You’re expecting more from a machine than a human with less You’re not giving the human the fair shake. You’re not giving them the instructions. I think that leads to one of the final stats that jumped out at me. I don’t know if you saw this, but 24 percent of social media marketers plan to leave the field in the next year.

[00:43:53] Matt Bailey: That’s huge: that, a quarter. A quarter of social media marketers plan to leave the [00:44:00] industry, you know, not just switch jobs, they’re planning on just getting out. And I’m wondering how much communication has to play in that, that even though they’re happy, other things are going on that I think is just, it’s affecting, you know if that’s a bad retention rate.

[00:44:18] Matt Bailey: I’ll just say that.

[00:44:20] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah. I mean, and, it does kind of bump up against that happiness stat though, right? Yeah. Because if they’re happy in what they do, it leads me to ask the question, do they feel appreciated? Yeah. Are they recognized? And that is what could contribute to the idea of, well, I like what I’m doing, but I’m not getting rewarded.

[00:44:41] Mary Czarnecki: As you said, the pay is lower. I’m not, I’m having to fight harder for my ideas. Right. Right. Right. I have to work harder to even get buy-in get a budget or get approvals. I think those all I would guess directly contribute to that because it’s not just about being happy in what you’re doing, but you also have to be

[00:44:58] Matt Bailey: appreciated.[00:45:00]

[00:45:00] Matt Bailey: Oh, that’s big. That is big. Yeah. And if you don’t feel it’s there, it’s interesting. Another step actually from another study and another, one of my previous guests, she would say, you know, where they’re going. They’re going into business for themselves. They’re going to leave and start their own thing.

[00:45:16] Matt Bailey: That if I’m going to work this hard, I’m going to do it for myself because that’ll be more rewarding. And I think she might be onto something if you’re a social media manager and you are learning all of this, why am I going to do it here where I’m not appreciated? I, you know, as LeBron said, I’m taking my talents to Miami.

[00:45:37] Mary Czarnecki: Well, I think she’s right on though because I mean, I think. That’s kind of where I was going with the whole, is it self-selection? Are they opting out themselves? If I am not involved in certain conversations, I’m not finding mentors or champions within my organization who can help me get to the next level within my organization.

[00:45:57] Mary Czarnecki: And you’re seeing that these skills are so highly [00:46:00] prized that there are so many people who don’t know how to do this and aren’t as comfortable with the constant shifting landscape, then yeah, doing it as a consultant can be a little bit more lucrative.

[00:46:09] Matt Bailey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Mary, this has been a fun, fun conversation.

[00:46:14] Matt Bailey: Is there anything out of the report that you picked up that you want to throw out here?

[00:46:19] Mary Czarnecki: Yeah, I mean, for me, I think just the overall theme of the fact that there was Excitement for what they’re doing, right, which is, I see this here, but I see this in other, other areas too, but like, I love what I do and I’m excited about what I do, but I’m feeling unfulfilled.

[00:46:36] Mary Czarnecki: Like I’m feeling this lack of buy-in, a lack of support. And I think for me, just the key takeaway overall was just seeing that, wow, this is, there’s like a talent. Exodus happening here. These are people who can contribute something to the organization in a way that complements other skill sets of the organization, but we’re not taking advantage of it.

[00:46:58] Mary Czarnecki: We’re not [00:47:00] recognizing it. We’re not pulling it in in the right way. You know, going back to the kid example, right? You know, you’ve got kids that don’t necessarily learn. By sitting at a desk and writing and reading, you’ve got kids that need to touch things and play with things and move their bodies and experience it.

[00:47:17] Mary Czarnecki: And they’ll still learn the same lesson, but they might need to do it differently. And I think that’s 1 thing that I think the organizations that are doing this well are starting to realize is that potentially this role and the people who are attracted to this kind of role need. Maybe a different career path and maybe the career path looks slightly different

[00:47:39] Matt Bailey: in the future.

[00:47:39] Matt Bailey: That’s cool. I like that. Yeah. It’s very interesting. There is an upside. There is a thread of happiness and joy in the work. Yes. There’s frustration. Yes. I, you know, leaving the industry that, that kills me though. But yet at the same time, I think there was one that almost 50 percent say their mental health is [00:48:00] affected and that could be the, but yet it doesn’t seem to affect.

[00:48:04] Matt Bailey: The joy in the work that there is. And, I like how you pulled that out, that there is a special group of people who enjoy doing this. And now how do we make the most out of that? And I think a lot of that’s going to fall on management, those people that are in those areas that how do we better utilize the talents?

[00:48:24] Matt Bailey: How do we make a doable workload? And how do we create clarity and expectations? I think those are key areas of how to retain and grow and get the most out of your social media teams. 100%. Interesting. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, I appreciate it. So, I

[00:48:48] Mary Czarnecki: mean, this is the kind of stuff I love thinking about, so thank you, Matt.

[00:48:51] Matt Bailey: Yeah. Oh, thank you. This has been a great, great conversation. It’s been great to connect with you again and talk more. And [00:49:00] Mary As always, if people are interested to learn more about what you do and how you do it, how can they get in touch with you? Absolutely.

[00:49:09] Mary Czarnecki: The best way is just my name. com. So Mary Czarnecki.

[00:49:12] Mary Czarnecki: com. I’m sure you’ll help them with the, uh, the spelling with the show notes, but, um, that’s the one size fits all to find me and find out what social platforms you can connect with me on. I’m always on Instagram

[00:49:24] Matt Bailey: and LinkedIn. Absolutely. And like we said, Mary does training as well. So lots of stuff organizationally.

[00:49:30] Matt Bailey: I highly recommend Mary. If you want to talk more about that, go see what she does, and how she helps people. Mary, this has been such a great conversation. Great catching up with you. Thanks for coming on. Thanks,

[00:49:41] Mary Czarnecki: Matt. Enjoyed the conversation and

[00:49:43] Matt Bailey: hopefully do it again. We will. Absolutely. We’ve done it before and we will continue.

[00:49:47] Matt Bailey: So thank you, dear listener. For listening in, uh, it looks like I’m at the bottom of my coffee cup. Hopefully, you’ve been able to get through a couple of cups as well, but I look forward to our next [00:50:00] conversation on the endless coffee cup podcast.

[00:50:06] Matt Bailey: You’ve been listening to the endless coffee cup. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with somebody else. And of course, please take just a moment and rate or review our podcast service if you need more information. Contact me at SiteLogicMarketing. com. Thanks again for being such a great listener.