A Comprehensive Guide to Social Media Manager Resumes (with Examples)

“Every young person with a Snapchat account considers themselves a social media manager these days.” -Reddit And you know what? They are right.

Any other job posting gets 200+ resumes on average, and that’s a lot. But a social media manager job is another kind of beast.

The entry barrier is so low that sometimes your social media manager resume competes with thousands of others.

Fear not. Not all of them read this guide, and even fewer of them took time to update their resume.

This social media manager resume guide will teach you:

• How to land more and better interviews with your social media manager resume;
• How to stand out from thousands of SMM applicants without looking fake;
• How to present your diverse experience and win over recruiters at the same time;
• Why choosing the right resume layout for your experience is vital for the best resume results.

Social media manager resume examples

We selected the following resumes from successful candidates. Browse below what makes them worthy of an interview invite, and, if you want to use them as a base for your resume, just click the button.

Creative social media manager resume example

1. Stand out in the context of your job. Creativity is a common trait these days. Anyone can use Canva or watch a couple of motivational Youtube videos and call themselves creative. Show how you used your creativity in achieving business results — that’s the best way to stand out from the crowd.

2. Feature skills that put you above the crowd. Skills like visual psychology, design for millennials, and SMM automation grab the recruiter’s attention. But don’t stop there. Once again, prove that you have these skills by showcasing context and tangible results. Use custom sections to make these skills pop out.

Entry-level Social Media Manager Example

1. Show them the money. Anyone, except your closest relatives (strange, right?), can set up a Twitter or Facebook account. But people who can use SMM skills to bring business money are in a league of their own. So don’t even consider bragging about completing 14-day SMM courses. Go and help some local businesses to launch a Facebook campaign. Apply for Fiverr gigs. Find some clients for your uncle’s flower business through Instagram. Weave real business outcomes into a resume, use bold text and action verbs to emphasize these results, and get that job you’re after.

2. Put your skills in a real-world context. Listing skills is not having skills. But listing skills in a context is a different story. Sharing how you talked your way into a prestigious internship or sold all local theatre tickets two days before the premiere — that carries some weight.

Senior social media manager example

1. Use a targeted resume. There aren’t that many senior social media managers jobs there, and companies looking to fill these know EXACTLY who they want to see in this position. Tailor your resume to the specific job description. Emphasize required experience and most relevant results. Study company social media, websites, PR, and blogs to learn how they execute their marketing. Study their employees’ LinkedIn profiles and learn what results they are most proud of. Find ways to organically frame your experience to the job and you’ll increase chances of successful application tenfold.

2. Experience working with cross-functional teams. The stakes in large companies are always high — a tweet gone wrong becomes a PR nightmare for weeks. You’ll be working with market researchers, developers, business analysts, and creatives every day to ensure your campaigns are both bulletproof and spectacular. That’s why companies that hire senior SMM need someone who can work within a cross-functional team and manage it for results. Combine your team results with solo achievements to create firm traction with recruiters.

Looking for related resumes?

• Social Media Specialist Resumes
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• Brand Manager Resumes
• Copywriter Resumes
• Marketing Intern Resumes
• Public Relations Specialist Resumes

How to write social media manager resume that gets more interviews

Put your SMM skills and business outcomes in the same context

Social Media Managers who achieved business results through their work are the 24K gold of marketing. Anyone can post on Pinterest or schedule weekly tweets in Buffer. But share how your Pinterest knowledge landed new signups for a local tire business and you’re in the top 1% of the bunch.

Bad example: I use Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook to grow the business community.

Good example: Launched a Pinterest “Tire or Tired” campaign that landed 320 new inquiries for a local tire business and increased monthly revenue by 170%.

Feature skills that put you above and beyond the competition

Increased social media engagement. Configured Facebook ad campaign. Wrote an onboarding newsletter. A hiring manager will see something like that in every second SMM resume. How about user behavior studies, audience psychological evaluation, real-time engagement data visualization? Prove you have these skills via context and you’re golden.

Bad example: Used Buffer, Twitter Manager, Pinterest to launch social media campaigns

Good example: Developed real-time dashboards to track engagement and brand mentions during viral SMM campaigns, helping the outbound sales department to increase conversions by 15%.

Use resume format and layout to guide the recruiter’s attention to your best bits

Make your resume scannable by combining headers and custom sections. Use white space and color to direct recruiters’ attention. Use bold text to emphasize your results. If you’ve been working as a social media manager for years, a classic reverse-chronological resume works best. Your work experience should be front and center, as it’s going to show you’ve got what it takes. On the other hand, if you’re like many applicants and your social media experience has come from lots of formal and informal work over time, a hybrid resume might be better. This is when you emphasize your skills while also including your work experience.

Either way, one truism applies:

These are the sections we find are most effective for showing social media management experience and skills:

Social Media Manager resume header: don’t miss these details

As a social media manager, you’re expected to be meticulous. Those 100 flawless posts don’t mean very much if the 101st has an embarrassing error in it.

That’s why your resume should be flawless, starting with the header.

Put simply, you need your name, contact information (phone and a professional email), and location (the city is enough) as a baseline. But a great header also has websites that show your social media skills and certifications.

In other words, before the hiring manager even gets past the header, they can already see that you’re confident and qualified.

Right there you have two resume headers from the same person, but each one leaves a very different impression.

Learn more about crafting an interview-winning resume header section from our Perfecting Your Resume Header guide.

Social media manager summary: how to establish expertise in two sentences

If your social media management experience is spread out through many different jobs, nonwork experience, etc. a quick objective or summary can help tie it together.

Also, you need to show that you can write well and a compelling professional summary or resume objective is an ideal place to do that on a resume.

Here are two examples to illustrate how to do it well and poorly:

This summary focuses on hitting the pain points most people hiring a social media manager have. It specifically mentions saving them time (by working independently), increasing engagement, and boosting revenue. Throughout, it avoids “I” statements and uses specifics when possible.

Now compare that to another version:

This summary commits several cardinal sins of social media management. First, it promises to increase subscribers by a specific amount without mentioning engagement (usually a red flag for fake accounts). Next, it’s vague about where the applicant’s actual skills lay.

To most hiring managers, this reads as “pay me and I’ll build you a fake audience”.

Need more summary templates? Here’s our Resume Summary Guide with 30+ ready-to-use summary examples.

Social media manager resume experience: getting hired via business storytelling

In a discussion on how to get hired as a freelance social media manager, one experienced professional put it this way:

That’s the goal of your work experience section: show you’ve gotten results so the hiring manager has a reason to hire you. Figure out what the needs of that person and the company in general are and frame your experience around showing you can meet those needs.

Below are two examples describing the same exact work experience, look at what a difference the framing makes:

Those three bullets tell you that this person:

• Brings revenue
• Saves time
• Is self-motivated enough to learn new skills and develop new more efficient processes

In other words, in three short bullets, this candidate has shown that they can check all of the major boxes most hiring managers have for a social media manager.

Now look at that same person with the same experience but phrased differently:

This one falls flat, it doesn’t definitely prove a single one of those three critical points mentioned above. They “increased leads” but by how much? They automated activities, but to what end? They used photoshop, but what does that tell us about them?

Social media manager resume education: Do you need this section?

There’s no BA in Social Media Management out there, so a college degree usually isn’t a prerequisite. A hiring manager is far more concerned with your proven experience than education.

Still, if you have a related degree in something like marketing, communications, or business management, it’s worth mentioning. If you graduated recently, include some details about what you learned or accomplished during your education. Otherwise, simply listing the school, dates, and degree is sufficient.

Social Media Manager resume skills section: what skills land job interviews

The best skills to include are always going to be the ones requested in the job offer.

However, not all skills are equal. One social media manager put it this way:

Skills that can’t be learned quickly are more valuable. You should also try to demonstrate that you have those skills as much as possible. Anyone can say they’re a good writer or are well organized, giving examples is going to make that skill stand out.

Wherever you list your skills, try and include examples of instances when you demonstrated those skills.

Here are 18 social media management skills you should consider including:

Social media manager certifications: which one to include?

If you have just one or two relevant certifications, you can simply include them in your header (as was demonstrated above). However, if you have more it makes sense to create a dedicated certification section for them.

While certifications generally aren’t a requirement, they are a great way to concretely demonstrate skills in a particular area. If a job requires, for example, extensive work on LinkedIn but you don’t have experience there, certification is also a great way to quickly build up a basic skill level.

Key takeaways:

To get hired as a social media manager, you need to:

• Show you can save time by automating work and being efficient;
• Demonstrate that you can build engaged social communities, not just wastelands of fake accounts;
• Show that you can translate social media success into revenue (or whichever ultimate metric is most important for that organization);
• Make it clear that you’re independent, ready to try new platforms and software when needed, develop new skills, and generally operate without someone looking over your shoulder all the time.