Why Is Social the Hardest Job in Marketing?

Reflecting on 10+ years working in social

Last year, a friend told me about a social media manager at her company who used copyrighted music on a brand account and they were sued by Warner Brothers for millions. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard something like this. A former employer of mine was hit with a similar lawsuit years after I had already left the team and the Instagram account.

My friend (who, to be fair, has nothing to do with brand marketing) said, “Well, it’s the social girl’s fault. She should be fired.”

My jaw was on the floor.

I tried to explain, “Everyone does it. She was following common practice. Copying what every other brand does.”

I felt for the poor social media manager who probably went from team hero (“Our engagement is amazing!”) to wearing a scarlet letter overnight.

I’ll say it: social is the hardest job in marketing.

And it only gets harder as a company grows. With small brands, you can have fun, move fast, experiment (even if budget limits execution). With bigger ones, you’re not just managing a channel… You’re navigating politics, legal, layers of approval, and direction from people who don’t even use social media.

When I started on the Birchbox social team, I was an intern taking feed photos on my iPhone, and you couldn’t even edit captions. Social was lightweight, fast, and largely unpoliced. Today it’s mini film productions, legal reviews, approval chains, and scrutiny from every corner of the company.

While the platforms have changed tremendously since I started, one thing hasn’t: everyone has an opinion on social media. Personal usage is constantly confused with professional expertise. Someone with a personal Pinterest board feels qualified to weigh in on strategy. Someone who “likes Instagram” has notes on the feed. There’s no other business function where familiarity is so consistently mistaken for authority. No one would ever tell the head of finance, “I have a bank account, so I think it would be cool for you to do X.”

Part of the reason this happens is that social output looks deceptively simple from the outside. A 30-second video. A five-image carousel. You consume it in seconds. But the people who actually made it know the real truth: strategy, creative direction, production, talent, edits, and approvals. Weeks of work compressed into seconds.

And, of course, I understand why social media attracts this level of attention. It’s the first place consumers look. It’s public, immediate, and deeply tied to how a brand is perceived. Which is why, even at the fractional CMO level, I stay deeply involved in social. It’s the beating heart of the brand.

What makes it so hard?

Beyond everyone having a point of view, there’s another reason managing social media has become so difficult: it’s constantly treated like a Band-Aid.

Sales are slow?
“Can you post something on Stories?”

A founder loves a trending TikTok sound from five months ago?
“Let’s jump on it.”

Social teams get pulled in every direction, and I spend a huge chunk of my time protecting the integrity of the platform. Social should be for the fans. The community. The brand story. It should not be the dumping ground for last-minute requests and endless promotions.

Yes, we should track performance. But people forget the basics of marketing. It takes 6-8 touchpoints to convert. Social plays a role, even when it isn’t the final click before purchase.

And while social teams are asked to prove ROI daily, they’re also expected to post whatever corporate wants, clean up for other marketing functions that aren’t working, or beg the influencer team to negotiate a collab post instead of a repost.

I spoke with Julia Chesky, a longtime social and brand strategist, about why the role feels uniquely high-pressure, and her perspective immediately clicked:

“A lot of people want to gamble with social because it feels like a casino. You never know when you’ll win or when you’ll lose, and everyone wants to believe they ‘won’ because of their instincts or cultural awareness. Being a heavy user of the internet gets mistaken for expertise, while the people who actually know better often get drowned out.”

Another friend, who preferred to remain anonymous, shared this:

“I once worked somewhere that had 10+ people in the room approving every single social post. It was wild. Creative would make assets, the CMO would veto them, and some days the best thing to do was not post at all because too many cooks had completely broken the process.”

Here’s the part no one talks about: social is downstream of everything.

Social is uniquely dependent on other people doing their jobs well, and yet it’s often the first function blamed when performance dips. When inputs break upstream, social becomes the messenger that gets shot.

• If product development doesn’t run substantiated claims studies, social suffers.

• If paid media is turned off, social suffers.

• If the influencer team doesn’t brief talent correctly, social suffers.

• If PR doesn’t seed enough product, social suffers.

Social performance isn’t just about the social team. PR, influencer, paid media, partnerships - all of it affects organic performance. Read that again: social performance isn’t just about the social team.

I asked another social lead about this dynamic, and their response stuck with me:

“Social is expected to perform like a growth channel, but we don’t control product launches, influencer timing, PR hits, creative quality, or paid support. When any of that breaks, the performance still lands on us.”
— Social Lead, Fashion Brand

Recently, a client told me our reach, while up month-over-month, was down compared to another global market. What did I have to gently call out? The other market had a collaboration post with a world-famous celebrity. Meanwhile, ours had turned off paid media entirely that month.

Another reason social teams struggle is simpler, and far less discussed: they’re chronically underfunded relative to the responsibility they carry.

As Julia Chesky put it…

“We underpay people to be the brand’s most visible touchpoint, then act surprised when the channel underperforms. Teams will spend more on a website refresh or a single influencer post than on running social properly.”

So what’s the solution?

It’s not more KPIs.
In fact, sometimes it’s about caring less about the wrong ones. Stop obsessing over follower count. Start paying attention to saves, shares, and the signals that actually indicate resonance.

It’s not more approvals.
And it’s definitely not treating social like a panic button.

The best social teams I’ve seen share a few things in common:

• Clear ownership and trust, including a real budget they can use at their discretion

• They’re brought into the mix early and given a real voice. Social isn’t treated as a distribution channel — it’s part of the strategy.

• Oversight by senior leaders who understand both the business and social — someone who can work with the CEO and a 25-year-old social manager

• Fewer cooks in the kitchen

• Leadership that understands social is a long game, not a one-post fix

• Space to move fast, learn, and respond in real time

Also, we need to stop planning social calendars three months in advance. That’s not how trends work. You will miss them.

When social is respected, not overloaded, it works.

And to the social managers reading this: you’re not crazy. You’re doing one of the hardest, most visible jobs in modern marketing — often with limited resources, endless (usually contradictory) opinions, and zero margin for error.

Heavy is the crown.

But when it’s supported properly, social does what it’s meant to do: It builds a brand. It creates culture. And yes, it drives sales.