What It Takes to Retain Top Social Media Talent – Our Take

Based on our conversations and data, this is what Social Media Marketing talent sees as essential, what needs to be on offer to retain top Social Media talent.

Top 10 factors in retaining Social Media talent are:

With the number of roles skyrocketing in this sector, employers are under more pressure to compete in areas outside of salary. Using your own company social channels to highlight your unique culture and working environment will help. It’s no secret that staff love being recognised for the hard work they do. Even a passing comment or an email to notice where someone has worked particularly hard makes a big difference!

We find that within reason, salary varies in the level of importance to each candidate, however, it always ranks highly. For a strong candidate, you might need to lean closer towards the top end of your budget and conduct regular salary reviews to retain talent.

Wide-ranging benefits do help – we have a number of clients with flexible benefits packages where candidates can pick and choose what’s important to them. With the increased pension contributions coming in, schemes with higher % on the employer side can be particularly attractive.

The social media landscape is constantly shifting, and employees are eager to remain up to date with these changes to develop their own skill-sets, putting more emphasis on the need for training and opportunities to upskill. This gives employees the chance to progress within the company, so is hugely important when it comes to retaining staff.

Providing staff with current technology is crucial. Those that work in digital want to work quickly and effectively. There is nothing more frustrating than poor equipment and tools slowing you down, and impacting the ability for employees to perform.

Those that work in digital want to work quickly and effectively. There is nothing more frustrating than poor equipment and tools slowing you down, and impacting the ability for employees to perform.

People like to understand where a team sits within the wider business, so they know exactly what their role is and that this is clearly defined. Having support from wider teams (HR, IT etc.) allows them to work more efficiently too.

Linking in very closely to training and development, everyone wants to be managed by highly knowledgeable staff in their field. Having a fountain of knowledge to draw on in your day to day often beats any training programme out there.

Flexible working is becoming more and more popular as employees have to juggle increasingly complex schedules, allowing them to perform at their best without burning out. Offering flexible start/finish times and working from home can really help you stand out from the crowd.

Last but not least, having buy-in from the wider business to the value of social media goes a long way towards making employees in this space feel valued, as ultimately it means that everyone is working towards a common goal and respecting each specialism within a digital team.

Here, a snapshot of Social Media Employment today.