Digital Marketing Manager vs Social Media Manager

Looking to outsource your marketing, perhaps to a freelancer, a fractional marketing consultant, or a full-time employee? Don’t know whether to engage a Digital Marketing Manager vs Social Media Manager?

Before you hire, it’s important to understand the difference between a digital marketing manager vs social media manager. Let’s break it down:

What’s a digital marketing manager?

A digital marketing manager can be a broad role with responsibilities that are both strategic and on-the-tools (i.e. both the “thinking” and the “doing”!). They have a strong focus on performance and conversions; optimising different digital channels to get the best, most cost-efficient results.

Key responsibilities of a digital marketing manager may include:

• SEO – optimising the site for search engine and answer engine performance
• Search engine marketing (SEM) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, such as Google Ads
• Email marketing
• Website management and updating
• Content creation such as blogs, videos, case studies
• Social media management and paid social ads
• Analytics – data-driven analysis to see which channels and adverts are performing the best, and continuously testing how to get the best ROI and ROAS (return on ad spend) for the brand. 

As you can see, the responsibilities can be broad, and they can wear many different hats. That’s not to say a digital marketing manager can’t have a narrower focus, such as just on paid advertising channels.

What’s a social media manager?

Whereas a digital marketing manager may have social media management as one part of their role, a social media manager is a specialist. They can dive deeper into the world of social media and their key focus may include content creation (specifically for social media), community management, and paid advertising. 

A social media manager may offer services in just organic social media, or just paid social media, or both!

Key responsibilities of a social media manager may include:

• Post creation – such as carousels, graphics, reels, stories, polls, caption copywriting
• Videography or photography
• Paid advertising (such as Meta Ads Manager or LinkedIn Campaign Manager)
• Researching hashtags
• Researching social media trends
• Testing out different types of content formats
• Community management
• Engagement with other accounts
• Reporting on performance
• Keep up with industry and platform updates
• They may manage one platform, or multiple, such as Facebook, Instagram, X, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Threads, TikTok, or YouTube.

Which one does your business need?

It’s important to ask yourself: what are your goals with hiring this person?

Are you looking for more of a jack-of-all-trades who can manage email, web, PPC, and maybe a couple of social media platforms? Or do you want a person who can dive deeper into social media and give all of your channels the attention it needs?

Or, perhaps you’re only looking to have a couple or so of social media posts created each week, and that’s it! That’s totally fine, too. In that case, a freelance social media manager would suit you nicely.