The rise of social media as a marketing channel has outgrown the handful of junior employees that were once assigned to it, but high investment doesn’t equate to solid team structures.

When social touches nearly every marketing activity, staff responsibilities can get murky, leading to burnout and disjointed visions across an organization.

The channel is the top priority for 84% of US digital media professionals, according to an October 2025 survey from Integral Ad Science and YouGov.

• Some 75% feel that they are managing too many tasks at once, according to a March Metricool report.

“Five years ago, it was common to see one or two generalists managing social under comms,” Gustav Lindell, founder and CEO of Pixly. “Today, that model is breaking.”

Whether social media professionals are overworked or poorly-led, a lack of clear boundaries can leave the channel siloed from broader business goals. In response, many marketers are redesigning their team structures.

Adding to the social stack

A social media manager’s job often spans multiple tasks, including strategy and planning (92%), content creation (92%), video editing (73%), graphic design (72%), and community management (70%), according to the Metricool report.

“If I had to prioritize roles for a CMO today, I wouldn’t start with more platform specialists,” said J. Brooks, founder and CEO of Glassview. “I’d start with people who can connect signals across the system."

More brands are bringing content creators in-house, who were accustomed to managing social strategy and production on their own. Hiring people with multiple skills makes it more likely for a brand to respond to social trends quickly, said Derek Goode, managing director at M+C Saatchi Sport + Entertainment.

“There’s been an evolution from the traditional agency approach of staffing individual specialists for each skill set…to nimble, integrated teams,” he said.

The case for specialization

Some marketers advocate for generalists, while others build specialized teams.

Some generic social media manager job listings are being replaced by TikTok Shop managers, in-house content creators, cultural strategists, and community managers.

Every social platform operates differently, making that specialization necessary, said Lindell.

“The most effective teams recognize that platforms are not interchangeable,” he said. “YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram operate as entirely different ecosystems, with different content

mechanics, audiences, and performance dynamics.”

When social does it all

A common point of friction is whether social media is a brand awareness or sales engine, and how to invest in one without compromising the other.

The danger of specialization is that it creates silos, and “optimizing for different signals at the same time” is especially common for social, said Brooks.

“You can have one group chasing short-term attention, another focused on brand storytelling, and another focused on conversion, without a shared understanding of what the business actually needs at that moment,” he said.

Marketers are now considering how content that starts on social can extend elsewhere, which lends itself to new workflows.

• A majority of brands reuse creator content across websites (58%), paid social/digital ads (55%), and organic social (53%), according to a July 2025 CreatorIQ and Sapio Research survey.

Strong internal structures can support the cross-campaigns that are becoming increasingly important to marketers, said Lindell.

“From a roles standpoint, prioritizing platform expertise and creator strategy is critical,” he said. “But just as important is bridging the gap between social and paid media. That intersection is where a lot of the untapped opportunity sits today.”

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