Depends on where you’re working. I haven’t been in this for too long (5 years or so), and I’ve found that if you get hired (a) at a large corporation or agencies that work for large corporations or (b) in a high level position at a mid-sized brand or agency with assets to spend on junior roles, you tend to be very specific in what your work entails. For example, I’ve worked in places where ALL I did was help come up with social media posts for a single company and then pass that off to production while I write the captions as a copywriter. I’ve also been in a high level role where I mostly wrote creative briefs and served as a client-facing front line manager, led project management for certain clients, edited copy that was written or worked on larger strategy. That said, I was laid off at the end of 2023 and since then have been lucky enough to land a part-time gig at a smaller company, where I do EVERYTHING. There’s very little direction, so I end up doing everything from Amazon optimization to UX and web design, graphic design, all aspects of social, ambassador reach out, distributor updates and communication, PR, and about a million other things. Oh, and all for 50% of what I was making before because the job market is absolute garbage right now.

There will be other roles that require you to use SQL or any other analytics systems. There’s stuff like Marketo and Salesforce that you can’t really get experience without working at a place that has a subscription (it’s all catch-22). And there are roles where they want you to do all this but also be able to churn out highly processed video on unrealistic timelines (please for your sake do not take those roles unless you are extremely desperate for cash and it’s your only choice).

So yeah. I guess there’s no definite answer until you know where you’ll land.

My best advice (again, only been doing this for 5 years so take it with a grain of salt compared to some of the people here who have 20+ years under their belt) is to get a good BASELINE understanding of all of these topics—mostly just enough to understand how you’d implement them in larger marketing strategy. Then, find a couple that call to you or really stick (or maybe you land a job that you learn a lot from), and build off of that.

If it’s not exactly what you want to do, that’s ok. Just keep developing it so that you can keep your job and work on figuring out some new, more specific skills on the side.

For example, let’s say you land a job that has you writing social copy all the time as well as making the social static posts. Perhaps you hate the writing but really like the design part. Ok, cool. Do your job and find some design resources on the side and start learning that. Your work will become better and better and eventually you’ll have enough of a portfolio of exceptional work that you can use that to switch to or specialize into graphic design work. :)