Currently available for select engagements

Hire Head of Social Media — channels run daily, community grown

A Head of Social Media runs your social presence every day: the content calendar, the community management, the trend-jacking, and the steady audience growth across platforms. They know each platform’s culture — what works on TikTok dies on LinkedIn — and they keep the brand active, responsive, and growing. The hire for when social needs a dedicated daily owner, not an intern with a login.

Start a Project WhatsApp Get in Touch

15+

Years Experience

100+

Projects Delivered

Countries Served

$25M+

Revenue Enabled

I'm Omer Muneer Qazi, a Dubai-based Fractional CTO & Solutions Architect with 15+ years of experience and 100+ projects delivered across 6 countries. I vet social operators on platform-native fluency and community instincts — reviewing actual accounts they have grown, not just strategies they have written. For strategic social ownership, see social media director.

What You Get

Social presence, professionally run

Content calendar execution

Daily and weekly posting run on a real calendar across platforms, each with native formats and tones. Consistency without the robotic sameness.

Community management

Comments, DMs, and mentions handled promptly and on-brand. Community standards enforced; crises spotted early and escalated properly.

Platform-native content

Content shaped for each platform’s culture: short-form video where it wins, carousels where they work, threads where they travel. No cross-posting laziness.

Trend & moment participation

Relevant trends and cultural moments joined quickly and tastefully — the reactive layer that keeps a brand feeling alive.

Audience growth programs

Growth tactics per platform: collaborations, series formats, engagement loops. Follower counts that represent real audiences, not bots.

Social reporting

Weekly view: growth, engagement, reach quality, and what is working. Monthly deeper dives with recommendations.

How It Works

From dormant accounts to daily presence

A structured engagement with no surprises — you’ll always know what’s happening and what’s next.

Channel audit

Each account assessed: content quality, engagement honesty, audience makeup, and competitive standing.

Voice & calendar

Brand voice documented per platform, content pillars set, calendar built. The operation gets its playbook.

Daily execution

Posting, community management, and trend response run daily. The brand becomes consistently present.

Grow & refine

Formats and tactics adjusted on performance data monthly. Audience compounds; engagement deepens.

Why Omer

Why hire a head of social media through a Fractional CTO

Social execution is pure craft and I evaluate it as craft: I look at accounts candidates have actually run — the content, the community handling, the growth curves. Platform fluency cannot be faked for long, and I check for it directly.

Contact me to find the social operator your brand deserves.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What does a Head of Social Media cost?

Full-time $80k–$130k. Fractional or contract heads suit brands that need daily presence without a full-time salary.

Do they create content themselves?

They usually direct creators and freelancers while handling strategy-adjacent execution personally. Expect them to be able to shoot, edit, or write in a pinch.

First 90 days?

Audit, voice and calendar set, daily posting live, community management responsive, growth tactics running. Engagement and follower quality should improve visibly.

How is success measured?

Audience growth rate and quality, engagement rates, share of voice, and traffic or revenue attributed to social. Vanity metrics reported honestly or not at all.

Head of Social vs Social Media Manager?

The head owns the channels and community strategy day to day and usually manages others; a manager typically executes a narrower scope. If social needs an owner, hire the head.

The operator's view

Before you hire a Head of Social Media, get the mandate right

When a founder tells me they want to hire a Head of Social Media, the real need is almost always an operator who can own channels end to end, not simply a prolific poster. So the first thing I do is write a one-page mandate. It names the channels the role actually owns, whether paid social and influencer sit inside the remit or beside it, the budget authority that comes with the title, and what stays with freelancers or an agency. It also fixes the reporting line, because a Head sitting under performance marketing behaves very differently from one under brand or comms. Most hiring regrets I see trace back to a vague mandate: you recruit a creator when the business needed an owner.

The measurement spine has to exist before the person lands, or they inherit excuses instead of a scoreboard. I set up UTM governance so every link is tagged consistently, wire platform exports and GA4 into a single Looker Studio or Sprout view, and add social listening through Brandwatch, Talkwalker or Sprout for genuine share of voice rather than follower counts. Scheduling and approvals run through one tool, usually Sprout Social, Later or Buffer, with a digital asset library and clear UGC rights tracking behind it. What good looks like is a weekly operating rhythm built on leading indicators, saves, shares, reply rate, qualified clicks, not a tidy month-end deck that nobody acts on.

Then the hire itself, which I treat as forensics rather than interviews. I read the accounts a candidate genuinely ran: how they handled a live crisis in the DMs, the actual shape of a growth curve and whether it survived an algorithm change, retention versus a one-off viral spike that never compounded. I run a short paid trial brief, two weeks, where they produce a content thesis, a 90-day plan and their response to a plausible crisis scenario. The signal I care about most is whether they can say no. A Head who chases every passing trend has no thesis, and without a thesis the calendar becomes noise that costs money and earns nothing durable.

The mistakes I spend most time undoing are predictable. Reach reported with no line to pipeline. Dangerous dependence on a single platform the business does not control. Posting cadence with no underlying point of view. Bought followers and engagement pods that quietly poison the data. And, almost always, no escalation ladder, so a weekend incident waits for the founder to wake up. I install a RACI, an approval SLA (say two hours for reactive posts, twenty-four for planned), and a crisis playbook with named legal and PR escalation. The aim is a function that compounds and survives the individual leaving, documented well enough that the next hire is onboarding, not excavating.

Who it's for

When clients hire me for this

The founder is the bottleneck

The founder still writes or signs off every post, so growth has quietly plateaued and nothing ships at weekends. I define the role properly, build the approval SLAs and content pillars, then recruit and onboard a Head who can run it without the founder in the loop.

Big following, no revenue

A large, flattering audience that produces almost no attributed pipeline. I rebuild the measurement stack, tag everything, and refocus the content thesis on the segments that actually convert, so the team can finally prove what social contributes.

Bringing social in-house

A company wants to retire a retainer agency and own the channels directly. I scope the in-house role, map what the agency really did versus what it billed for, stand up the tooling, and hire the operator who can carry it forward cleanly.

A crisis exposed the gaps

A post or a pile-on escalated because there was no playbook and no one empowered to act. I put the escalation ladder, legal and PR triggers, and response templates in place, then hire or install a Head with real crisis judgement rather than just content flair.

Questions buyers ask

Can you act as interim Head of Social while we recruit a permanent one?

Yes. I regularly run the function fractionally for two to four months while the permanent search runs, so momentum and the measurement rhythm do not stall. I keep channels moving, stabilise reporting, and leave a documented operating system the permanent hire inherits on day one. It also means I can write a sharper job spec, because I have seen your accounts from the inside rather than guessing.

How long does it take to hire a Head of Social Media?

From a clear mandate to a signed offer, realistically six to ten weeks for a strong permanent hire, longer if you insist on a specific sector background. The slow part is never sourcing; it is the trial brief and reference-checking that separate operators from portfolios. If you need someone live sooner, I bridge the gap fractionally so you are not forced into a rushed decision you regret.

Do you cover paid social and influencer, or only organic?

I scope all of it, but I am deliberate about what the Head of Social Media role owns versus what sits beside it. Organic, community and creator partnerships usually belong to the Head. Paid social often works better owned by performance marketing with the Head feeding creative and audience insight. I define that boundary explicitly in the mandate so budget, metrics and accountability do not blur between two teams.

What is your actual process for vetting candidates?

Forensics, not vibes. I audit the accounts they genuinely ran, read growth curves for durability through algorithm changes, and probe how they handled a real crisis. Then a short paid trial brief: a content thesis, a 90-day plan, and a live crisis scenario. References confirm ownership versus participation. It is more work than a normal interview loop, which is precisely why the hires hold up.

Head of Social Media versus Social Media Director, which do we need?

Scale and span decide it. A Head typically owns channels, voice and a small team hands-on, still close to the work. A Director sits a layer up, owning several functions, bigger budgets and more people, further from day-to-day posting. Most companies searching to hire a Head of Social Media need the hands-on owner first and only grow into a Director once the team is three or four people deep.

You are based in Dubai, can you support a US or UK team?

Yes, and I do routinely across the UAE, US, UK, Canada, Pakistan and Malaysia. Social is asynchronous by nature, so I structure the operating rhythm, approval SLAs and crisis escalation around your timezone, not mine. I keep a few hours of genuine overlap for live decisions and reviews, and the documented playbook covers the hours I am offline so nothing waits on me.

Currently available for select engagements

Get social run daily

Share your social accounts — I will tell you what professional management looks like for them.

Explore more

Related ways to work with Omer

Not quite the right fit? These closely related engagements solve adjacent problems — browse a few before you reach out.