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Is this normal? I’m a new social media assistant and I feel like I’m doing the job of an entire comms team
Hi all,
Brand new to this sub and this job. It’s my fourth week working at a non-profit/government-funded/education and HR organization as a summer student Social Media Assistant.
I have worked in social media before, and I’m a trained journalist, although I’m still fairly new to this line of work. But in my current role, I am absolutely drowning.
I am the sole member of the communications team. No one else does anything close to what I do – they are teachers, HR managers, coordinators etc.
So it is all up to me to post 3 times a week across all platforms, regularly do video interviews to edit into “success stories”/create other original content to post, write and edit documents (like an entire Participant’s Manual for an 8 week course), design social media plan proposals for business partners, create graphics on Canva, create presentations with voiceover (about 20 mins for an AGM coming up in a couple weeks), and .. well essentially handle ALL of their communications while building their social media from the ground up because they had like 70 followers and like 6 posts when I started. I just can’t keep up.
Is this normal? I was told when I was hired I might need to help out with other duties like “filing” so I was like yeah sure whatever? But this is not “filing” and I don’t think they realize just how much work goes into everything they’re handing off to me. Because none of them have any experience with this.
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9 Replies
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byu/JonODonovan insocialmedia -
Normal? Maybe. Fair? Hardly.
It’s pretty common for this overflowing of responsibilities to happen when employers don’t fully understand what they’re asking of an employee. But what matters even more than that is what the employee does about it. I’ve seen it on numerous occasions with social media managers in particular, and actually experienced the same thing myself.
So will you continue to press on, or bring it up to your boss?
Later down the road I realized I wasn’t being paid nearly enough for the multitudes of jobs I was performing.
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I was a media manager for the first time from January through April. I asked for 380 a month and I did everything you do, minus the writing and editing documents. I posted four to six times a month creating captions and stories, editing images, handling all communications, raising followers, handling promotions, hashtag optimization, post time optimization, taking photos and videos, and more for a small business client. He cancelled because he said I charge too much.
So based on my experience, I would say it’s probably normal. But if you are able to, have a talk with your boss with how you feel and changes you want seen to make sure you can do quality work on time.
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It is up to you to tell people how much work it is and what is possible. It’s extremely hard when you first start for sure, I get that, and you get trapped in doing way too much stuff for way to little money lest they just fire you or think you’re not doing enough.
The thing is we’re still at the stage of the industry where the average person has absolutely no idea what goes into managing social media. The time requirement and amount of effort – so it really is up to you to control and manage those expectations and establish the reality of what’s possible.
It’s only in the last year I’ve really felt able to do that, which means 6 years of being overwhelmed taking care of 1001 things alone and for terrible pay.
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That’s way too much. Start logging how much time you have to do each task. Write a report after two weeks to say, here is my weekly output, this is how many hours I have been working and this is not sustainable.
Make a plan and present it as what you can do in the time frame available. Start negotiating and asking how to prioritize when more stuff gets added. “Sure Bob, I can get that done in two weeks or I can move project X out to focus on this new shiny object. How would you like me to handle this?”
Here’s the truth. They are going to dump more and more on you and if that results in you working 70-80 hours a week and giving up a personal life, they won’t notice at all…until you burn out and quit.
Or, you will do this for 6 months or more, tell them it’s not sustainable and they will not understand because to that point there was not a problem.
The only one that can advocate for you is…you.
Now, having said that, we all need to sprint occasionally. Maybe a topical campaign rears it’s head and it’s a high revenue opportunity, always been willing to sprint and be a team player, but no one can sprint 100% of the time.
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It is somewhat common for businesses to exploit you so yes it is “normal”. At the same time if you are doing all of the content creation, posting, branding, etc… you are a lot more than a SM assistant.
What are your duties exactly?
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Welcome to the world of Slave Labor. It’s nice to meet you down here.
Really… This is REALLY common these days. You are, let’s say, a Photo-Editor, but then also a Marketing Professional, Copywriter, Client Communicator and what not.
I’d personally would run as fast as possible, If I weren’t Self-Employed.
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You must earn the value of your efforts. It is objective, don’t let the nonprofit component of the business you work for detracting anyway from you getting the dollar amount equivalent to the value that you put in and the effort that pushes your work over the top.
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Unfortunately, very normal, especially in the non-profit or small start-up environment. I myself manage social (multiple posts per day), all internal and external communications (every cold email sent to the company is filtered through me), IT, website, the list goes on. I enjoy it though and I’ve learned a lot about how to manage my time better. But, I do recommend you speak with your boss and clearly outline your capacity and present them with a plan for how you could approach your tasks going forward in a more manageable way. Coming forward with a problem or an issue is always better received when you have a solution!
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