What Is a Social Media Strategist, and What Role Do They Play in Your Marketing? (Infographic)

Imagine this: It’s 2017 and you’re a bold young social media enthusiast who just got a job at Wendy’s. The fast-food chain needs a social content campaign that’s always fresh and never frozen — just like the beef. How can you translate burgers and fries into one of the biggest social media trends?

“Well,” you think to yourself, “I’m good at roasting strangers on the Internet, so let me give that a try.”

Five years later, you’re running #NationalRoastDay from a standout social media account on X (formerly Twitter). Rival fast-food chains, other brands, even innocent bystanders — no one was safe from your roasting rampage and your social media followers were eating it up (pun totally intended).

Okay, so I don’t know if that’s how it happened, but I do know this is a great example of how powerful a social media strategist can be. The role involves more than just posting; it’s about strategic thinking, understanding social media metrics and crafting content that resonates. A social media strategist is the person who runs your brand’s social media accounts, comes up with campaign strategies, manages content calendars and, occasionally, roasts your competition on X.

Here’s everything you need to know about this critical role in digital marketing and how it impacts your overall marketing strategy!

What a Social Media Strategist Looks Like

Like all marketing geniuses, social media strategists come in all shapes and sizes. There’s no specific person who fits the job description, which is part of what makes social media marketing — and marketing in general — such a diverse and fascinating field. Whether it’s a senior social media strategist, a digital marketing manager or a social media coordinator, these professionals bring unique perspectives to the table.

However, these folks do tend to have a few things in common — a very particular set of skills, if you will. Of course, that set of skills is probably not the same as Liam Neeson’s in “Taken,” but it’s impressive nonetheless. The responsibilities of a social media strategist require them to wear many hats, from content creator to analytics expert.

Here are five things that define a social media strategist:

1. A Passion for Social Media

This one might seem a bit on the nose, but it’s a big deal. That’s because a social media strategist needs to understand what makes each platform unique — and, perhaps more importantly, how to utilize those elements to make your marketing content stand out. They not only manage social media accounts but also strategize how to engage with the audience effectively. If you’re flustered by Facebook, taken aback by TikTok or stumped by Snapchat, you probably won’t have fun trying to come up with strategies to navigate all those social networks and more.

2. An Analytical Mind

On the surface, you might not realize how much of social media strategy is determined by data, measurements and problem-solving. In reality, analysis is the name of the game — and without it, a social media strategist would be forced to make guesses about which trends to follow, what audience to speak to and how to create a solid marketing campaign. From dissecting competitors’ TikTok ads to measuring social media metrics like conversion rates and reach, having the right data makes all the difference. That’s why these social media strategists working in digital marketing bring their sharp analytical minds and strategic thinking to the table every day, ensuring their social media efforts align with overall marketing targets.

3. Top-Notch Communication Skills

Social media is all about communication. In fact, it’s communication on a grander scale than anything the world has seen before: More than 5 billion people use social media across the globe, each spending roughly 2.5 hours a day browsing an average of seven different platforms. Just think of all those connections.

With so many of these interactions happening 24/7, there are all kinds of things to think about, from rapidly shifting meme trends to increasing privacy expectations. Luckily, a social media strategist has the skills necessary to navigate these new communication rules and make real connections, even if they only have 280 characters to make it happen. They collaborate with influencers, engage with followers and manage public relations through social media channels.

4. A Collaborative Nature

I know what you’re thinking: “Aren’t communication and collaboration kind of the same thing?”

Well, yes and no. Communication is about exchanging information, which is vital for collaboration. However, you can exchange information every second for the rest of your life and still get nowhere if you’re not aligning your goals and perspectives with the people around you. That’s what makes collaboration special. A social media strategist knows this better than almost anyone. That’s because these experts need to communicate and collaborate with marketing teams, content creators and other stakeholders to build campaigns that reflect the needs of the entire company and still create a memorable experience for social media followers. For this reason, a social media strategist is often a social problem-solver, a cooperative worker and an eager team player within the marketing team.

5. The Ability to Tell a Good Story

At the end of the day, social media is all about storytelling. Take Wendy’s and their roasts, for example. When you see their activity on X, their story is clear: “We aren’t just a fast-food chain. We have personality and attitude, and we’re bringing you into our world to have a little fun.”

In this way, a social media strategist needs many of the same skills as the bards and minstrels of old:

• A keen sense of character.
• A knack for capturing and creating emotion.
• An instinct for dramatic tension, irony and other storytelling tools.
• The ability to read the audience and understand their expectations.
• The confidence to build a personality around something as simple as burgers and fries.

They must create engaging content that resonates with the audience, enhancing the brand’s online presence.

The Roles and Responsibilities of a Social Media Strategist

Each post may look like the cheeky jabs of an everyday person, but you can bet that every Wendy’s roast is a carefully thought-out part of the brand’s X campaign — a way to boost engagement among followers and turn marketing content into the topic of household conversation. The people responsible for that strategy have to think about brand awareness, social media trends, target audience and more. These are the social media strategist’s responsibilities — encompassing various duties that drive the brand’s online success. It’s all just a day in the life of a social media strategist.

Here are a few key roles and responsibilities that fall into the job description of a social media strategist:

Developing a Social Media Strategy for Every Platform

Here’s the thing: What works on X isn’t necessarily going to fly on Facebook and what your TikTok followers want is not the same as what Pinterest users are looking for. That means a social media strategist must come up with a unique strategy for every platform you use. On top of that, they need to build an overall social media approach that maintains your brand story and voice, even if the approach changes between channels.

When creating these frameworks, a social media strategist must consider things like:

• Media type: Are you communicating through images like on Instagram or videos like on TikTok? Media type shapes and informs the stories you can tell on each social media channel, which means it’s a vital consideration for social media strategists.
• Audience demographics: Age, geographical location, occupation, income level — these key demographics help social media strategists understand who they’re speaking to and how those audiences shift across platforms.
• Current trends: Did you know that some estimates say the lifespan of a meme is only four months? Social media trends go out of style almost as fast as updog — this is the part where you say, “What’s updog?” And I say, “Not much, what’s up with you?” That means a social media strategist has to keep up with audience preferences to avoid making outdated jokes or references, which is what the kids call “cringe.”

Social media strategists need to align these strategies with the overall marketing and content strategy, ensuring consistency across all social platforms. Part of their role involves strategic thinking to determine the best ways to reach marketing targets and drive engagement.

Identifying Key Performance Indicators

Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are the metrics you use to measure the performance of your social media campaign. KPIs are determined based on your definition of success and can shift between each social media campaign.

For example, say you want your brand to become a household name. That means brand awareness would be one of your KPIs. A social media strategist would take this information exporting Instagram analytics or other platforms and build a campaign around buzzworthy content — like Wendy’s roasts. (Hint: They generally do this in concert with a content marketing strategist, who helps develop and execute content tactics.)

Here are some examples of other KPIs for social media marketing:

• Net promoter score (NPS).
• Customer lifetime value (CLV).
• Follower count.
• Qualified leads.
• Conversions.
• Sales.

Basically, a social media strategist tracks social media metrics, analyzes data to refine strategies and improve performance. All it takes is collaborating with other marketing efforts and the digital strategist to make sure that social media efforts support marketing campaigns.

Leveraging Your Brand Voice

Brand voice is the way your content “sounds” to your audience. Some companies want to sound professional and formal, while others want to use Internet slang and roast their competition. Different strokes for different folks, right?

You probably already have your brand voice figured out — at least partially. It’s the tone you use for landing pages, email marketing, product descriptions and more. However, because every social media platform has its own rules, community and expectations, you’ll have to change things up a little. Your X voice can’t be exactly the same as your landing page voice.

Of course, you still have to be consistent enough to create a cohesive experience for an audience that’s likely to interact with your brand across multiple channels. A social media strategist makes this possible by keeping track of your brand voice in all its forms. They also know how to leverage that voice in different ways depending on the medium — like using meme images in social media posts but using written slang on more text-heavy channels like landing pages.

The social media strategist collaborates with content creators and the marketing team to ensure the brand voice is consistent yet adaptable across all social media content. This kind of coordination is important to talk to your audience and keep them interested.

Here’s an example of how Wendy’s remains fun and cheeky across all audience touchpoints but switches up its approach:

Communicating With Followers

Most social media networks aren’t designed for one-way communication. Instead, the key to true audience engagement and an unforgettable customer experience is to respond to the community. This doesn’t just make your company seem approachable — it creates memorable moments, connections and interactions, allowing you to feed off of and encourage your audience’s interest in your content.

A lot of this back-and-forth can fill practical needs, like answering product questions or boosting positive feedback. However, it can also give you room for more personalized interactions — like gently roasting your audience when they choose the competition. You also have the opportunity to engage in industry-wide conversations, teaming up with other brands to discuss key topics or, of course, start a rap battle like the one between Wendy’s and Wingstop.

Speaking of Wendy’s, here are two examples of top-notch responses from the chain:

Responding to Followers:

When adding milk makes you taste better, you’re doing it wrong. #NationalRoastDay

— Wendy’s (@Wendys) January 12, 2022

Monitoring Brand Reputation

Let’s say you’re not Wendy’s (which you probably aren’t). You have a unique social media strategy and a voice all your own, both of which are key to a formal, professional reputation among followers.

Then you decide to pull a Wendy’s, roasting a customer in a social media post.

Remember, this hasn’t been part of your brand voice up until now — so your audience might see this as a 180-degree turn. They could start interpreting your content as disingenuous, inconsistent or mean, and they might even label you with the dreaded “trying too hard.”

You’ve just shifted out of your established voice and your brand may be impacted.

There’s good news, though: A social media strategist can help you avoid these embarrassing incidents. By monitoring your brand’s reputation through mentions, comments, audience engagement and more, a social media strategist learns how your audience sees you. With this information in mind, they can make the right moves to stay “in character.” That means you can avoid taking customers out of your brand story with an ill-phrased tweet or an insensitive reply, all because you know what you mean to your audience and how to continue portraying that image.

On the other hand, reputation monitoring can also help you change up your strategy or even reinvent your brand voice. Wendy’s wasn’t always the queen of roasts, which goes to show that change can be good if you base it on your audience’s expectations, social media trends and more. You also should consider doing this gradually or having a “rebrand announcement,” but that’s a blog post for a different time.

Somehow not the worst clown based fast food restaurant.#NationalRoastDay

— Wendy’s (@Wendys) January 12, 2022

Uniting Marketing Experts of All Kinds

Social media is really a collaborative effort. Think about all the things that go into a single post: search engine optimization efforts, content creation, graphic design — the list goes on. That means a social media strategist must be able to unite marketing experts across all disciplines to create something that will earn likes, shares and comments from followers.

The key is to know what people need, according to our own experience. That doesn’t just mean consumers — a true strategist should understand the perspectives of copywriters, SEO experts, animators, graphic designers, sales teams and more. It’s all about finding a shared language and for many marketing experts, that language is storytelling.

In larger organizations, the social media strategist may coordinate with the social media director, marketing manager and other key roles. They might even lead a team of social media specialists and coordinators, ensuring that all social media efforts are aligned with the overall marketing campaign and company goals.

Why You Need a Social Media Strategist

So, now that you know what a social media strategist looks like and what they do, why do you need one on your team? Here are just a few good reasons:

• There’s a lot to keep up with: Social media trends are always changing and so are the platforms themselves. Without a dedicated social media expert, you probably won’t be able to keep up with everything — if you even want to. (Some of us are perfectly happy with one meticulously maintained Pinterest account, thank you very much.)
• Your brand needs to stand out: Remember when we said more than four billion people use social media? Imagine if all of those people posted just once per day. That’s four billion posts competing for your audience’s attention. A social media strategist can help you stand out from the crowd, giving you a chance to occupy space on a user’s social media feed and in their minds.
• Social media is all about consistency: Have you ever been researching a brand on your favorite social media channel, only to realize they haven’t posted in months or even years? Your audience expects you to be consistently present on social media — not just when you attend an industry event or launch a new product. That means it’s helpful to have a social media strategist who can help you decide what to say — even when it seems like there’s nothing to say at all.
• Other marketing experts might not have all the answers: Although social media marketing is an ode to collaborative storytelling, it can’t be done by just anyone. For example, put a content writer in charge of your social media and they might end up penning Facebook essays, while a graphic designer could get so caught up in the art that they forget to use even a single word. Neither approach works independently, which is why you need a social media strategist (or even a social media manager) to help bring everyone together.

Having a social media strategist who understands the specific requirements and duties of the role can make a help you achieve your marketing targets.

Facebook, X, TikTok — Oh My!

The thing about social media marketing is that we can’t all be Wendy’s. As much fun as it would be to turn your entire social media strategy into one big roast, you probably couldn’t get away with it — not just because the Wendy’s X account may come after you.

The good news is with a social media strategist on your side, there are plenty of other ways to navigate the wide and wonderful world of social networking. Even if you shudder at the thought of Facebook, X, TikTok and all their friends, a social media strategist has your back.

With a skilled digital marketing manager or social media strategist on your team, you can create a marketing strategy for all your social networks and enhance your brand’s online presence. Whether you’re looking to hire a senior social media strategist or foster your own in-house talent, understanding the social media strategist position is important for your business.

Remember there’s always a fun new social media trend to catch up on — so subscribe to our newsletter to get them all delivered right to your inbox.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out what happens when you click on this Wendy’s CTA:

Editor’s note: Updated February 2025.