6 myths about social media pros

About half the people I talk to think social media is a dream job. Others openly express they’d rather spend their days scrubbing toilets.

Regardless of which camp you fall into, these six misconceptions about social media professionals often dominate career-related conversations:

1. We spend all day tweeting.

I can’t count how many times I’ve been asked, “How long can it take to write 140 characters?” The answer is not long—once you have your strategy down. Social media professionals spend a small portion of their time—probably less than 10 percent—writing posts for different channels.

The majority of our time is spent on strategy and keeping abreast of a landscape that’s continually changing.

We communicate with our teams to improve new initiatives for social platforms, audit our channels to see what our audience talks about and responds to (and then respond to them), watch our peers, competitors and their audiences, scour our organizations (and the Internet) for any form of appropriate media, read about the latest digital trends and plan how to shift our strategy accordingly.

Let’s not forget about analytics, metrics and numbers—lots of numbers. That’s just the beginning.

2. We live and die with Facebook and Twitter.