Saw a post on Threads lamenting how non-marketers often underestimate just how hard marketing is – in the post the activity in focus was social media management.
Here’s the post:
Every so often, one of my posts about the struggles social media managers face will make its way outside of marketing circles and I’ll get replies like “How is posting on social media a real job?” or “Any 13 year-old could do that.” and I’m reminded just how much more we need to educate the general public about what we social media managers actually do and the amount of skills and responsibilities this job requires.
J.S. Stansel
Thought I’d mention my reply, since it’s something we hear as well:
Agreed on this. It’s about educating clients, but that’s really hard.
A few notes:
1. If you’re good at what you do (which I suspect you are), you probably make it look easy (like all the best at their game do)
2. Most people, who don’t have any expertise in a field, think from the outside that it’s easy (eg the number of experts on global conflict who magically come out of the woodwork when something happens, or the people who yell ‘advice’ at the TV screen when watching elite sports teams, etc)
3. Of all the digital marketing disciplines, social media and content writing are the most dismissed, probably because the barrier to entry is sooooo low (anyone can start an account). Whereas SEO, Paid ads, website design, landing page design, email marketing, etc at least have some skill requirements to get started…
Tangential to this, we used to have (not so much these days) prospects ask us to ‘position them as thought leaders…’ After asking if they had anyone in the company who could help with ideating the content, they would look confused and say ‘that’s what we’re paying you for’
