Are Social Media Managers the Future CMOs?

Social media managers are already doing the job of connecting with a wide range of your customers/users.

Before now, social media was seen as a role for unpaid interns and entry-level marketers, you could get along well without a social media strategy to support your brand marketing goals.

Modern social-media management requires some key skills such as charisma and negotiating capabilities, fantastic copywriting and community-building/management, and the availability and drive to be nearly always on.

These skills are what most companies look out for in chief marketing officers (CMOs), so are social media managers the next CMO managers?

There isn’t a straightforward answer to this but here are some of the reasons why you may want to consider your social manager as your next CMO

1. Social media professionals already understand your company’s Marketing, communications plan and strategy. This is key as it helps to answer the WHO, WHAT AND WHY of your marketing campaigns.
2. Social media managers are well-rounded marketing generalists in roles like creative direction, content creation, copywriting, strategy and even paid media.
3. Social media managers are usually up-to-date with Industry trends because they are the early adopters of the platforms who grew up with apps.
4. They are great with Customer service and crisis management, which is important to help protect the brand, survive any crisis and increase customer’s trust.
5. They also understand user insights and brand perception. users/customer insight doesn't just tell you what your users do but also explains why they do what they do which goes to determine how they perceive your brand.

CMO role has also evolved and continues to grow. Unlike before, It’s no longer dependent on traditional media success alone, but more on how creatively you can communicate with multiple generations residing in different apps. Such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and other social channels.

Who else has this critical and extremely important knowledge than a social media manager?

But does this alone qualify social media for the role of a CMO?
Absolutely Not.
There are a few more skills that are needed to really make a social media manager stands out as the next CMO,
This includes and is not limited to

• Basic finance management skills
• annual planning and working with the business development team.
• knowledge of offline marketing channels.
• short- and long-term ROI on marketing spending.

Final Thoughts

The future of CMOs isn’t tied to just being good at social media management alone, but it can be a good starting point based on the above-mentioned skills they possess.