A social media marketing online degree can teach the theory of audiences, content and measurement. It cannot teach someone how your firm wins work. If you are an owner or operations lead deciding whether to fund a degree for a staff member, or whether to hire someone who holds one, this article answers a specific question. What does the person running social at a 10 to 250 person firm actually need to know, and how do you set up the levelpartner.ai platform so a capable but inexperienced person can run it safely from week one?
What a degree gives you, and what it does not
Formal study covers useful ground: how platforms rank content, how to plan campaigns, basic analytics, copywriting principles and the legal side of advertising. Someone who has finished a programme usually writes a clearer brief and understands why consistency matters.
What no course covers is your clients. Which questions they ask before they buy. Which phrases a regulator would object to in your sector. Which partner gets nervous about posts naming clients. That knowledge only comes from inside the firm, and it decides whether social produces enquiries or noise.
So treat a degree as a starting point, not a qualification for the job. A person with strong writing, good judgement and access to your senior people will often outperform a graduate who works in isolation.
Before you start
- A decision on who runs social day to day and how many hours a week they have for it.
- A senior person willing to spend thirty minutes a week sharing client questions and approving posts.
- Your social accounts connected in the Social Planner under a business login.
- A short written guide covering voice, banned topics and approval rules.
How to set it up for a new social lead
Create the new person's user with access to the Social Planner, Conversations and Media Storage, and put approved logos and photos in one shared Media Storage folder. Book a weekly thirty-minute session with the senior person, and for the first three months every post the lead writes follows the same short routine:
- Go to Marketing > Social Planner.
- Click + New Post > Create New Post.
- Select the accounts that should receive the post.
- Enter the caption, links and hashtags.
- Turn on Customize for Each Channel where networks need different versions.
- Review each platform in the Post Preview panel.
- Choose send for approval, naming the senior approver.
Approved images come from the shared folder through the composer's Image or Video icon; let each upload finish before switching on the per-network versions.
The skills that matter most at your size
Writing comes first. Someone who can turn a partner's rambling answer into three tight sentences will produce better posts than someone who knows every scheduling trick. Judgement comes second: knowing what not to post. Measurement comes third, and it only needs to answer one question, which posts led to conversations with buyers.
Formal programmes tend to weight these in the opposite order, with analytics and platform tactics first. That suits large consumer brands. For agencies, consultants, mortgage brokers and real estate firms, the order above is the one that wins work. Our social media manager article covers how to hire against these skills.
Suppose the agency's office manager wants to take on social. A part-time online programme might run two years and take study time every week. The alternative is a weekly half-hour with the founder plus drafts with approval. Over a year that is about 26 hours of the founder's time. The useful measure would be how many of her drafts pass approval without changes, and if that share climbed month by month, the founder could step back to a short weekly review.
When a degree is worth funding
Funding formal study makes sense when the person will stay long enough to apply it and when your firm plans to run paid campaigns, which reward deeper knowledge of targeting and measurement. It makes less sense as a substitute for internal knowledge. If the choice is between a programme and a weekly hour with your best salesperson, take the hour.
What the platform does for an inexperienced lead
The platform reduces the number of things a new person can get wrong. Drafts and approval stop unchecked posts. A shared media folder stops off-brand images. One inbox means messages do not get lost in personal notifications. A social media organizer setup with categories and naming rules keeps the work tidy as volume grows.
Hiring or training someone and then leaving them alone with the accounts. Without access to client questions, a new social lead falls back on generic posts about the industry. Those posts look busy and bring in nothing.
Weekly time it takes
Plan on four to six hours a week for the social lead at a firm posting three or four times a week, plus thirty minutes for the senior approver. Use how to plan a social media calendar to structure the monthly planning session.
Troubleshooting
Posts are polished but bring no enquiries. They are about the industry, not about client problems. Feed the lead real questions from sales calls.
The approver becomes a bottleneck. Approval is happening ad hoc. Fix a daily ten-minute slot.
The new lead overposts. Theory says more is better. Agree a sustainable cadence and judge it on enquiries.
Assets are scattered. People send images by email. Make Media Storage the only source and say so in the voice guide.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to hire someone with a social media marketing degree?
No. Look for strong writing, sound judgement and willingness to learn from your senior people. A degree helps, but it is not the deciding factor for a professional services firm.
Is an online degree better than short courses?
It is broader and slower. Short courses on writing and analytics often give a working social lead more practical value per hour, especially combined with internal mentoring.
How quickly can a new person run social alone?
Most can draft well within a month. Give it about three months of approved posts before you let them schedule without approval.