Are Social Media Marketing Skills Overrated?

Marketing Week survey reveals 23% of marketers think social media skills are overrated. Discover why social media jobs demand analytics over creativity, what employers really want, and how to build a future-proof social media career.

“Overrated.”

It’s probably one of the worst things to say about a movie, a band, a restaurant – or even worse – about a person. We hear it applied to athletes who show big promise but never live up to the hype. The sting is made worse when someone unknown shows up and overperforms, making that “overrated” label stick even more to those working hard but not quite delivering.

So when Marketing Week’s headline landed in my inbox a few weeks ago, it stopped me cold: “Social Media is the most overrated skill by business, marketers say.”

Something I never thought I’d see in the social media jobs landscape, but here we are. This has massive implications for anyone seeking social media careers or companies hiring social media talent. Let’s break this down and examine what’s really happening behind this surprising claim.

The Shocking Survey Results

Based on Marketing Week’s Career and Salary Survey, marketers themselves are pushing back against businesses’ obsession with social media skills. A striking 23% of marketers claimed that businesses overvalue and overrate social media capabilities.

What’s particularly interesting is the breakdown: 22.4% of B2B marketers versus 24.2% of B2C marketers made this claim. That was surprising – I would have expected B2B marketers to be more critical of businesses overrating social media skills.

Here’s the complete ranking of what marketers consider the most overrated skills:

1. Social media skills – 23%
2. Performance Marketing – 16%
3. Digital Marketing – 15%
4. Advertising and Marketing Technology – 13.7%
5. Content Marketing – 13%

The Social Media Skills Gap: What Job Seekers Need to Know

Here’s where it gets fascinating for anyone in the social media jobs market: just a month before this survey, Marketing Week reported on LinkedIn’s Most In-Demand Skills 2023, which listed social media skills as one of the most sought-after capabilities for marketers. Job postings and recruiters were clamoring for these skills.

How quickly things change in the social media career landscape – or do they?

This reveals a significant disconnect between what experienced marketers know they need and what businesses think they need when posting social media jobs. If you’ve worked in the agency space or as a consultant, this probably doesn’t surprise you. Many businesses attempt to self-diagnose their marketing needs based on trending headlines or the buzzword of the moment.

Remember the metaverse frenzy just a few years ago? Companies were scrambling to post social media jobs requiring metaverse experience and hire metaverse specialists. Fast-forward to today, and Google, Disney, Microsoft, and other major players have quietly shelved their metaverse initiatives, pivoted to AI, and now….? Those same employees were often the first to go during recent layoffs.

The Problem: Misunderstanding What Social Media Skills Actually Are

The core issue isn’t that social media is inherently overrated – it’s that we’ve collectively failed to define what “social media skills” actually means.

I witnessed this firsthand during a recent training session. When I asked a room full of marketers about their social media goals, “engagement” was the predictable first answer. But when I pressed them to define engagement, things got murky fast. Few could articulate what engagement meant to them, let alone how it connected to business outcomes.

The real breakthrough came when I shifted the question: “What is your organization’s goal for social media? What do you want to accomplish?” Suddenly, we moved beyond buzzwords and started discussing measurable impact and tangible outcomes.

The Marketing in 2007 Déjà Vu

This feels remarkably similar to 2007, when companies would start meetings by saying, “We want more website visitors” – usually seeking SEO help. But after some gentle pushing, their real goals would emerge: leads, sales, revenue. They’d made an assumption that more visits automatically meant more sales, not realizing that visits were just one factor among many influencing their desired outcome.

Before that, companies asked for more “hits” to their websites, completely misunderstanding what that metric even measured.

We’re seeing the same cycle with social media, but it’s been with us longer. Companies demand “social media skills” without clearly defining what those skills should accomplish.

What Social Media Jobs Actually Require vs. What They Advertise

When businesses post social media jobs, what exactly are they looking for?

Option A: Basic Platform Management

• Creating posts
• Uploading images
• Managing comments
• Cross-platform posting

Option B: Strategic Social Media Marketing

• Identifying and targeting specific audiences
• Creating on-target messaging
• Developing entertaining, educational content that persuades people to action
• Measuring and analyzing the impact of social media efforts

The confusion between these two dramatically different skill sets explains why we see social media job postings with absurdly broad requirements – photography, video creation, video editing across multiple platforms, community management, and strategic planning – all for entry-level wages. No single person can (or should) excel at all these diverse skills, especially for the ridiculously low salaries often offered in social media jobs.

Why Social Media Professionals Feel Undervalued

Here’s what makes social media skills seem overrated in the job market: the widespread inability to translate social media activity into demonstrable business impact.

I’ve spoken with hundreds of social media managers and professionals who share the same frustration. They attend my training sessions with one primary goal: to justify their jobs and prove their value. They feel the constant pressure of needing to transform all that social media activity into something meaningful, tangible, and profitable.

Without the ability to justify activity beyond “busy-ness,” social media professionals – or any marketing activity, really – become vulnerable to budget cuts and layoffs. Other marketing areas and business functions can cost-justify their activities and operations. Marketing has traditionally struggled with translating activities into justifiable outcomes, especially when companies understand the difference between attribution and incrementality.

The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

Did you notice which skill was conspicuously absent from the “overrated” list?

Analytics.

Just two weeks after the original article about overrated social media skills, Marketing Week published a follow-up: “Data analysis is the biggest skills gap for marketing teams.”

The numbers tell the story: 40% of businesses reported lacking data and analysis skills – more than double the gaps in content copywriting, social media, and ecommerce combined.

The business response is telling:

• 42% are focused on hiring existing staff with analytics capabilities
• 45% are looking to hire external analytics talent
• Only 15% are conducting skills audits of their existing teams

Why Analytics Changes Everything

Analytics is the skill that enables and amplifies all other marketing capabilities. Consider the skills currently in demand:

• Content marketing
• Search advertising
• Display advertising
• Programmatic advertising
• Ecommerce
• Search engine optimization
• Social media marketing

Every single one requires basic analytics knowledge to measure impact. More importantly, in-depth analytics knowledge can dramatically increase impact by uncovering trends, identifying patterns, and providing insights that answer the crucial question: Why?

Why did this campaign succeed? Why did that audience respond differently? Why did engagement spike on Tuesday but crash on Thursday?

Without analytics, recommendations are guesses – usually based on feelings, headlines, or trends. With analytics, recommendations are based on history, comparisons, and results. They’re informed by actual data and can be translated into estimated financial impact.

This is what makes analytics such a powerful skill and why it lifts every other digital marketing capability. This is also why analytics will never be overrated.

The Solution: Defined Digital Audits

Social media isn’t inherently overrated, but our approach to it often is. The value of social media to any organization will be unique to that organization – but only if the organization has:

1. Clearly defined purpose and objectives for social media
2. Specific, measurable goals tied to business outcomes
3. Proper measurement systems in place to track progress
4. Analytics capabilities to interpret results and optimize performance

Without these foundations, social media becomes just another expensive activity with unclear returns.

What’s Really Being Overrated?

The “overrated” label attached to social media skills isn’t really about the skills themselves – it’s about our collective failure to implement them strategically. When businesses chase trending skills without understanding their purpose or measuring their impact, disappointment is inevitable.

The solution isn’t to abandon social media or dismiss its potential. Instead, we need to:

• Define clear, business-aligned objectives for social media
• Invest in analytics capabilities alongside creative skills
• Focus on outcomes rather than vanity metrics
• Bridge the gap between marketing activity and business impact

What do you think? Are social media skills truly overrated, or are we just approaching them wrong? The answer might determine whether your next social media hire becomes a strategic asset or another line item looking for justification.

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What’s your experience with social media skills in the workplace? Have you seen the disconnect between demand and results?