The next big revenue role: social media manager

Curtis Midkiff Jr. knows what customers want.

As the director of social media marketing at SproutSocial, Midkiff and his team spot client concerns before they become a crisis, identifying trends before they go viral. Roles like Midkiff’s have evolved from the backwater of orgs to revenue- and C-suite adjacent positions.

“Social teams used to be slide 26 on the document, like ‘Good job on Instagram!,” Midkiff told Revenue Brew. “Now, you’re coming in with something that nobody else has because you have real-time voice of customer insights. The question becomes: Do you understand how to leverage them?”

While traditional social media teams were tasked with building a digital footprint, tech advancements have provided access to the comprehensive data executives need. Brand and social media leaders told Revenue Brew that AI and shifting platform dynamics are making it easier to track consumer behavior, and it’s changing the game—moving brand awareness from a nice-to-have to an essential arm of topline growth.

Social data informs strategy

As platforms like Instagram gained traction in the 2010s, social media teams were assigned to make sure the public—and potential customers—were aware of brands. Now, social feedback is vital to crafting predictable business growth: understanding what people are browsing for, buying, and craving for the future.

According to a June 2026 ZoomInfo report, an “analysis of 14 million businesses shows a 30% correlation between above-average social following and above-average revenue within the same industry. The correlation varies by company size: strongest for small businesses (40%), weakest for mid-market (18%), and recovering for enterprises (35%).”

“Social intelligence historically has never been viewed as business intelligence,” said Christina O’Reilly, chief marketing officer of the social media management firm Hootsuite. “Now, organizations are really leaning in.”

Liquid Death, for example, built an identity as a cool hydration brand, especially for younger buyers. The canned water brand has 6.8 million followers on Instagram alone. Dan Murphy, the business’s senior vice president of marketing, said in an email that social metrics have become a key part of the company’s predictive business models, alongside shopper data. “Our campaigns are also built for social and understanding the high bar—you’re competing with everything in the feed, not just other brands,” Murphy said.

Social metrics can offer revenue KPIs (key performance indicators) like engagement rates, profile-to-website clicks, and purchase intent signals.

In a 2024 Deloitte report, the consultancy found that social-first brands in 2022 had an average revenue increase of 10.2% as a direct result of social strategies.

His team tracks three specific categories of interest to drive a company’s bottom line. Brand awareness is typically measured by user impressions, while interest is measured in likes, comments, and reposts. Action, like a sale, “is whatever your organization deems as a quantitative contribution to revenue.”

“Strangely, if you were to diagram it, it looks like the funnel,” he said.

Social teams are uniquely positioned to gather this information, he added. With a deep understanding of internet culture—and the scrolling patterns of fly-by and loyal customers—Midkiff and his colleagues can help decide if a message is best delivered by a creator, paid advertisement, or the brand itself. Content creators, especially, can be an effective organic growth engine, à la the Clay approach. Platform strategy also matters: The audience on TikTok is different from the one on LinkedIn.

Meeting the (AI) moment

AI is changing the landscape for social media teams, too.

Real-time data is increasingly en vogue for B2B and B2C brands. Revenue Brew has covered the rise of intent signal tracking and Salesforce’s recent acquisition of Braze, an AI-powered customer tracking platform.

Alli McFadden, vice president of brand for the marketing and social media firm Agency Habitat, said social teams are actively helping executive teams rank content on agentic search—a task that didn’t exist a few years ago. In short: AI systems will conduct research and verify information to ultimately tell a story about your brand; the more control you have over it, the more you control the messaging.

In 2020, her social team primarily produced viral, scroll-stopping content. Six years later, she said, “The topics and the social strategies that we’re building, and the conversations we’re having with our clients, is that half of your content has to be something that helps somebody find you.”

A 2026 Nielsen Media Attitudes study found that 52% of US consumers use AI for content discovery once a month or more. McFadden added that consumers often use platforms like Instagram and TikTok as search engines, not just for content.

Consumer desires are evolving almost as quickly as tech. Midkiff said it leaves social media managers with an opportunity—and a likelier invite to the boardroom.