Mary Lister — February 6, 2017 Social media is rapidly changing the way companies brand and market themselves as well as provide customer service. Though paid social continues to grow, organic social media management remains important as well! Since 2010, jobs with “social media” in the title tripled year over year, and the demand for these skills is not isolated to jobs with a social media title.
Being a social media manager requires a bit more knowledge than simply growing up friending your classmates on Facebook and tweeting puppy videos. The trick is creating the perfect social media resume—or spotting one—which identifies the skills needed to be a brand ambassador on social. When you find yourself needing to polish your resume, I’ve compiled a list of skills you should include—or brush up on before you interview!
1. Highlight Your Communication Skills
Social media is all about connections and communication. As more companies utilize social platforms for customer service, branding, and influencing, it is highly important to be able to present a branded persona to solve problems and communicate for the company. Even more importantly, communication is imperative to being part of a team! You’ll most likely be a member of a marketing team that will need you to effectively communicate what you need from them and how you can help them achieve their goals.
Your social media resume should also highlight your skills to appropriately choose a social platform for certain posts—i.e. Twitter for customer service questions, Facebook for larger company press releases and photos, LinkedIn for job openings and conference news.
An easy way to state this on your resume? Place this below in your “Skills” section:
- Proficient in Social Media Targeting and Communication
- Engage customers and target prospects on social platforms while leveraging influencers
2. Brag About Your Copywriting Skills
I am a firm believer that grammar and spelling knowledge go a long way in any profession, but if you make a living being a professional social media star, you better get it right! There is nothing more embarrassing than typos or grammar mistakes. Personally, I love using Grammarly—it’s a free plugin that spell checks as you go. When you’re dealing with an angry customer on twitter, you can make sure all your punctuation is in the right spot!
Moreover, copywriting should be exciting! You’re going to have limited space—or characters—to communicate an offer or witty update. Brush up on your vocabulary and be prepared to be a modern-day Hemingway on social media!
This should also take up residence in your “Skills” section on your resume:
- Excellent copywriting and editing skills, close attention to detail
3. Get Creative
Let’s face it, social media can be boring. Despite Facebook’s best efforts to make the Newsfeed show relevant posts, most people spend most their time scrolling to find something interesting in their feeds. As a social media expert, you should have the creative juices to make your posts stand out from the crowd, getting clicks and likes and retweets.
The easiest way to do this? Make your resume stand out! Check out these out-of-the-box resume examples:
4. Showcase Prior Success
The best way to make your social media resume stand out is to showcase your past success. Use metrics—maybe even graphs!—to show a potential employer that yes, you can be a great social media manager. Because you have grown Facebook likes by 200%, and your most popular tweet was retweeted 146 times, and your periscope received 5,000 views. Show that you have successfully built and engaged a community on various social platforms, because then you’ll be trusted to do it again.
How to place this on your resume? Like so:
- Increased social media engagement significantly by increasing Facebook likes 200%, growing Twitter followers from 2,000 to 8,000, and regularly engaging with followers.
5. Get Analytical
Though it should be assumed that, if you have identified your success, you know your way around Facebook Business Manager and Twitter analytics, make sure this is at the top on your list of skills. It is important to show that yes, you manage social media, but here is how you know you’re good at it.
Do you add tracking from Google Analytics to your links? Add that to the list. How do you judge the success of your campaigns? What was the most important metric for you—and how did you find it?
- Fluent in Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics
- Experienced in analyzing metrics, identifying trends, and optimizing performance
6. Know Your Social Platforms
Obviously, a social media manager should be proficient in the basics: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest. However, the most important weapons in my social media planning arsenal are HootSuite and IFTTT. Any social media manager knows how important planning is, because there is simply no way to set up all those posts in real time. Make sure that a potential employer sees this listed on your resume, so they know you’re the real deal. Even better, go into detail about how you use different platforms to bolster your strategy.
As a bonus, include any related platforms, too, such as Buzzsumo or SEMRush.
- Proficient in Buffer/HootSuite, IFTTT
- Planned and scheduled at least 10 posts per week through Buffer, set up 4 applets through IFTTT
7. Show Off Your Image Formatting
First things first, do you use Canva? Because you should! As most social media marketers know, any posts with images perform way better than posts without—which makes social media managers into experts at searching for the perfect meme, gif, or creating one of their own.
These are so important for driving positive brand sentiment and developing a branded persona. Show this skill off on your resume! Not necessarily the 50+ Beyonce .gifs stored away in a folder labeled “For Social Engagement”, but feel free to showcase your most creative and best-performing posts on your resume.
If you follow these resume guidelines, you’ll be set for your social media job search and interviews. Good luck!
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