Social Media Manager Resume

A professional social media resume is essential for the success of your job search, regardless of whether you are an experienced social media manager or looking to progress in your career.

This guide will show you  everything you need to know about creating a resume for a social media manager.

If you’re interested, you can purchase the social media manager resume template in this guide here.

About Social Media Manager Resumes

A successful professional knows the value they add to organizations and what sets their work apart from others. While you are aware of your strengths and know how to speak to them, it can be difficult to convey all this in a clear, organized, and compelling manner when you write a resume. Your next challenge is clear, but you don’t know how to make your resume stand out to potential employers.

First, take a look at your professional history and write a narrative to tell your story. What are your most important achievements? What makes you an asset for the success and culture of an organization?  You would then need to research the current industry trends, as well as what attributes employers are currently looking for. Are you considering a career change to another industry? Consider what transferable skills you have that can be used in your resume for this type of transition.

As a social media manager, you have a variety of marketing and content creation skills. Many marketing professionals start with internships or lower-level roles and quickly progress to management positions. It’s important you highlight all of this experience, as well as your achievements throughout your resume.

It’s important to be able to create a resume that clearly communicates your skills and distinguishes you from other candidates. While there are some general guidelines for professional resumes, certain industries have their own standards in terms of length, language, and the inclusion of additional information, such as publications. Our career advancement experts are well-versed in these idiosyncrasies. They can help you navigate them and create professional resumes that will establish your brand and maximize the presentation of your experiences.

After learning more about this process, you might consider using a professional resume writing service to save yourself time. By doing this, it will allow you to redirect your focus to reviewing job openings and building your network.

Learn more about the services we offer.

The Social Media Manager Resume in Context

Even for highly-skilled professionals, job hunting can be daunting. There is constant, dynamic change in many industries due to technological advancements and workforce changes, as well as a constantly changing job market. It is important to have a strategic approach in order to get noticed and be offered an interview. In addition, preparation, research, and the tactics described in this guide will ensure that you position your resume to pass the applicant tracking system (ATS) software, a program used by many employers for screening applicants.

After you have done extensive research into the job market, and gained a solid understanding of the expectations of potential employers, you can begin to plan how you will present your past work history. It’s crucial to think about how an outsider might read your resume. Make sure that there is a cohesive narrative throughout. Take a look at what roles each job has played in getting you to where you are today. What were your most significant achievements? What was the value these accomplishments brought to the company? This gives potential employers a clear picture of what you will contribute.

A compelling resume should be detailed and clearly show the progression of your accomplishments. It should be concise and clean. These are some general guidelines for a perfect resume:

• Aesthetic Appeal: Although content is always key, the design of the resume should still look attractive and grab the reader’s attention. You should ensure consistency in spacing and formatting.
• Captivating Introduction: In the first few lines, you should clearly state what your unique contribution is to the organization. This information is included in the executive summary at the beginning of the resume.
• Highlighted Achievements: It is important to discuss your noteworthy accomplishments in detail in the resume. You should support them with data-driven evidence that shows the contributions you have made.
• Attention to Detail: A document should not contain any errors in formatting, spelling, grammar, or punctuation that could be distracting the reader from the message. It is crucial to keep your resume concise by limiting the number of words. Therefore, articles like “a” or “the” should not be included. Avoid pronouns, as they add to the word count.
• Readability: It should be obvious that your resume may be seen by people outside of your industry. Avoid technical language and clearly spell out acronyms upon their first appearance.  Although it might go without saying that everyone understands what common acronyms are, this is not always the case.

A resume for a social media manager will not only highlight your skills and attributes, but also your qualifications. These include technologies, social platforms, and soft skills. When crafting your resume, it’s important to write in a compelling and concise way, much like you do when writing copy.

Social Media Manager Presentation

Resumes that are appealing and highly effective have simple, but elegant, formatting. You may be tempted to create a resume with fanciful resume designs; however, this can reduce the impact of the resume’s content. It is best to keep your resume short and sweet when it comes down to resume-writing. Resumes should not exceed 2 pages, and should contain no more than 1000 words.

It may be tempting to make your resume flashy in the hope that it will draw more attention. Although it may do just that, it might not be the attention that you actually want. In turn, this strategy can have the opposite effect. Busy hiring managers don’t have much time to review resumes and need to make an immediate decision about whether to move forward with offering you an interview. Potential employers may not be interested in reviewing your resume if it has overly complex designs or formatting that obscures key information.

Your resume should reflect your accomplishments. It’s important that your design is not only professional but well-organized and efficient. Instead of displaying your achievements in a distracting layout, let them shine through in an easy to read format.

When viewing a resume from an aesthetic perspective, it is important to remember what potential employers or recruiters will see. Strategic use of white space and a clean design with well-presented information is essential. This will allow the resume to be easily scanned and will showcase your achievements to the reader.

You should organize your document in a neat and organized manner, formatting with clearly defined sections, clear titles for section headings, clean fonts, bold job titles, bulleted achievements, and concise job descriptions. In addition, avoid using excessive color or graphics that can prove distracting when the readers should be focused on the content. Instead, use your creative energy to build your career success story and sell yourself by sharing your achievements.

We’ve covered the major considerations in creating a stellar professional resume. Now we can discuss how to present and optimize your resume’s content.

Your Contact Information

After a successful initial screening, it is important to have your contact information in an area that is easy to find. This will allow an employer to reach you quickly. This information should appear at the top of the resume, as shown in the below example.

Some important things to note:

• Only your state and city are listed.

• Please choose only one email address. This should be your personal email and not one that is associated with your current job.

• Add your LinkedIn profile URL for an additional way an employer can reach you. This will allow you to project yourself as a professional with a personal brand.

• Add your phone number as an alternative method of outreach.

Job Title and Summary

The job title located at the top of your resume should reflect the position you are applying for, not your current job. Keep in mind that this document is being drafted to target your next challenge. This section will need to be customized depending on the position you are seeking. ATS systems may likely deduct points if you don’t match the job description and the job title.

Numerous studies have shown that hiring managers read only the first few sentences of resumes before deciding whether they will continue to review them. This means that your opening lines need to be powerful. Your professional summary will follow the job title. This includes your unique value proposition (UVP) or your elevator pitch. Your unique value proposition is a description of your most significant achievements and how they have prepared you for the next opportunity. Use descriptive language that clearly defines you and sets you apart from the rest of your peers.

A sample UVP for a Social Media Manager is as follows:

Flexible and positive marketing leader with entrepreneurial spirit and deep desire to succeed on social platforms.

As a basis after creating your UVP, create 3-5 sentences outlining your other key attributes. These should be unique to you, as well as align with the target role. Use direct, active language that explains your contributions and the reasons they have made an impact on the success of the organizations you have been a part of. This communicates to potential employers the skills and accomplishments you have that they can use to support their organization’s growth.

Below you’ll find an example summary for a Social Media Manager:

Flexible and positive marketing leader with entrepreneurial spirit and deep desire to succeed on social platforms. Respectful and engaging communicator able to interact with brands and influencers to drive growth. Demonstrate hands-on leadership style in fast-paced environment, committed to development of each team member. Innovative and collaborative professional who defines priorities, manages outreach, and analyzes media analytics to ensure data-driven decision-making.

If you have trouble narrowing down the focus of your professional summary, look at the job descriptions and pick those that are most similar to your skills and scope. For your custom professional summary and UVP, find out what companies are looking to hire for your potential role. You should think about both the hard skills that you have and the soft skills that are part of your personal attributes.

Use industry-specific keywords when possible, and avoid using flashy or wordy language. This not only helps you to target your resume for the desired job, but also shows that you are well-versed in your field.

Keywords

When creating your professional summary, you need to be aware of the importance keywords have in aligning your resume to the specific job and industry. It’s important to understand that even the most qualified candidates may not get to the interview stage due to their resume not scoring high enough on the employer’s ATS. This can be avoided by optimizing your resume language. Read the job description carefully and pick the keywords and phrases that are relevant to the role.

A professional working in the marketing industry must possess certain attributes and skills. Below is a list of common keywords used in various sectors of this industry. This list should not be considered complete and should be supplemented by the list that you create from looking at job descriptions.

Hard skills:

• Social media strategies
• Social media advertising
• Social media marketing
• Advertising campaigns
• Brand awareness
• Corporate communications
• Audience development
• Targeting
• Sales growth
• Social media content
• Content creation
• Press releases
• Growth
• Outreach
• Analytics

Soft skills:

• Leadership
• Flexibility
• Written and verbal communications
• Relationship-building
• Decision-making
• Mentoring
• Coaching

Areas of Expertise (Skills and Competencies) 

Once you have created a list with keywords you want to include in your resume, you can begin drafting the next section by listing 6-10 bulleted areas that can showcase your expertise. These keywords should be matched with the job description. ATS systems will scan for verbatim matches. For example, if the job description mentions search engine optimization, you should not use SEO. The acronym can be spelled out as follows: search engine optimization (SEO). In addition, this list can also include both soft and hard skills.

Keep these areas in mind and think about how you can highlight them on your resume. You can also include a section highlighting notable achievements, which will be listed next to the areas of expertise. These achievements should not be duplicated in later documents if you decide to include them. Remember, less is always more in resumes!

• Achieved exceptional ROI for key go-to-market campaign by utilizing analytics to revise and change as needed.
• Infused compelling storytelling into digital content to promote services to prospective brands.
• Initiated robust partner program with many incentives to drive awareness, engagement, and promotion; onboarded 10 new partners and 15 new influencers within 3 months.

Employment History / Professional Experience

This section allows you to expand on your personal summary and UVP in order to detail your career history. Although it does include descriptions of your responsibilities position-by-position, it should be presented in a way that reflects the evolution of your career in a clear, concise way and in reverse chronological order. You should also limit the scope of your career to the last 10-15 years to avoid ageism and highlight the most recent, relevant information.

The positions listed should include the name, location, and years of employment. If you choose to list months, be careful as it can tend to look messy. When drafting the bullets, try to employ the C-A-R method (challenge-action-results) to phrase them: outline the challenge, the specific actions you took to address it, and the results that were achieved. Quantifiable data is a great way to increase impact. However, not all roles are able to measure results this way. If you have metrics, make sure to include them on your resume.

Keep the document short and simple to avoid repetition. Remember that you only have a few pages to tell your career story. You need compelling, active language, and detailed examples that will demonstrate your unique contributions to the various organizations of which you’ve been a part. Avoid phrases such as “responsible for,” as they don’t communicate the value of what you have achieved. Instead, use action verbs like drive, lead, or direct. Make sure you use only the present when describing your current role and past tense when describing your previous roles. This will help maintain consistency in each description. Bullets should always be written in the past tense as they reflect achievements that have occurred.

If you list jobs that occurred prior to 10-15 year ago, which can sometimes be important if the companies are large or highly relevant to the position you’re seeking, they can be listed in an Additional Experience section without any dates.

Education & Professional Development

Now that you have an overview of your career, it’s time to focus on your education. Here, you will need to list your degrees, as well as the universities you attended to achieve them. Don’t include the year you graduated or your GPA. Also, list any relevant professional licenses and certifications that you may have received in order of importance.

Additional Information

If you find you have remaining space, consider highlighting a few other sections, such as:

• Awards
• Professional Affiliations
• Publications
• Languages (if applicable to the desired position)
• Volunteer/Community Service

For many social media managers, they have awards and technical proficiencies to list. It’s important to include these if there is room. You should also list all the social platforms you have experience with.

It is not necessary to include any additional information unless it is relevant to the job you are applying for. Avoid listing extra information, such as hobbies, that could devalue your resume and take away from valuable real estate on your resume document.

Finished Social Media Manager Resume

Once you have finished creating your resume, take a look at it from both an aesthetic, holistic view and in detail. You can read the resume and think of it as if you were an outside reader. Ask yourself these questions:

• Do you think the resume is concise and clear? If so, would you be interested in hearing more about the candidate’s accomplishments?
• Are action words used to make the resume sounds more confident?
• Is the resume too wordy or long?
• Are there any typos, misspellings, or grammatical errors?

It is a good idea to have someone (preferably an industry peer), review your resume, and proofread it. Even the best writers need a second eye to catch errors, and you don’t want a typo to cost you your dream job.

Next Steps & Our Services

See Resume Writing Packages

This guide, hopefully, gave you an idea of how difficult it can be to write a complex and compelling resume. Professionals, such as yourself, commonly seek the guidance of  experts to write a tailored resume that will help them get that initial interview. A well-written and results-driven resume can mean the difference between getting a call back within a few weeks or a few months.

At PRW, we are a leading, full-service career advancement service that works exclusively with professionals to help them achieve their career goals. Our years of experience allow us to help clients negotiate better compensation packages and get hired quicker. We identify and enhance your talent brand to make you the most qualified candidate for your next opportunity.

Our proven resumes can assist you in landing that interview that will propel you into your dream job. If you’d prefer to draft your resume on your own but would benefit from the use of our sample resume, our social media manager resume template is available.