How to Write a Great Social Media Manager Job Description (and Hire a Top Social Media Manager)

Source: Social

Writing a great social media manager job description is not an easy task.

The job description is one of the first few things potential applicants read and a well-written job description can increase the chances of you hiring the best social media manager for your company.

We’re thrilled that you’re looking to hire a new social media manager and would love to help you as much as we can!

Here’s everything you need to know about writing a great social media manager job description (and more).

How to write a great social media manager job description (and hire a top social media manager)

There’s a lot that goes into writing a great job description, and we hope to cover everything you want to know. If we’re missing any information, feel free to ask your questions in the comments section below.

Here’s what we hope you’ll learn from this guide:

What to include in the job description

A detailed job description helps you and the candidates set the right expectations about the role. So what should go into your job description?

Here’re the common key sections of a job description:

1. About Your Company or Team
2. General Information (Title, direct reports, and location.)
3. Job Purpose or Scope
4. Responsibilities and Accountabilities
5. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
6. Requirements or Challenge
7. Expected Salary
8. Perks and Benefits

(Hat-tip to Digital Marketer who has shared a great job description in their post on hiring a marketing team, which I referred to for this post.)

1. About Your Company or Team

This section is a brief introduction of your company or team. This is helpful especially if you intend to list the job description on external job boards where potential applicants might not know your company.

Some of the things you can include in this section are: what your company does, how it’s like working at your company, what your company culture is like, and what your company values are.

Here’s how Airbnb describes itself in their social marketing manager job listing:

Airbnb is the world’s largest community-driven hospitality company. Every day, we connect thousands of guests and hosts online, leading to meaningful travel experiences in the real world. From treehouses to castles, Airbnb gives access to the most interesting places to stay around the world, putting you in the local scene and connecting you with unforgettable characters that become part of your story. Travel inspires the some of our best and most memorable stories, and travel with Airbnb facilitates even more interesting experiences and stories that are worth sharing.

While it’s possible that applicants already know your company, this is a great opportunity to promote your company and entice them to want to work with you.

What are the unique characteristics of your company that will get your applicants excited about working with you? Is it your great company culture and team? Or amazing growth and investor support?

2. General Information

This section contains general information about the role such as the title, the team lead that they would report to, any direct reports, and location of the job.

Title

The title is a fun one to think about. Depending on your company culture, it can be as straightforward as “Social Media Manager” or as creative as “Social Media Ninja”.

I’d recommend keeping the title straightforward as it can help set clear expectations for the role. A creative title is perfectly great, too, as long as you have a clear job description.

Social Media Today has written a fun article on three groups of common social media job titles — Traditional, Modern, and Hyper-Modern. If you are stuck with naming the title, you might find the article helpful.

Team Lead and Reports

If the new social media manager will be reporting to a team lead or will be managing a team, it’ll help to mention the title of the team lead or the roles on the team respectively.

I personally think that adding the name of the team lead or the team members will add a nice personal touch to the job description. Also, if the team lead or any of the team members are well-known in the industry, it can help to make the job even more desirable.

Location

Will the new social media manager work in your office? Or can she work remotely? Or perhaps a mix of both?

The location can matter a lot to applicants, especially if they have to move their families. If the new social media manager has to relocate to where your company is based, will the company sponsor the relocation or help in any way?

Being clear about this helps people decide if they’d want to apply in the first place. It can save both the applicant’s and your time when people who don’t want to relocate and wouldn’t be able to work remotely, don’t apply.

3. Job Purpose or Scope

This section gives the applicants a high-level view of the job. Usually, it’s tricky to list all the responsibilities of the role, especially when the list could change over time. Having a high-level description of the role helps applicants understand what’s generally expected of a person in the role.

Here’s an example from Slack:

The idea here is not to be too specific about the role such as mentioning all the day-to-day tasks (such details will be covered in the next section).

4. Responsibilities and Accountabilities

This section is where you’d want to be more specific about the requirements of the job. While you might not be able to list all the tasks for the job, this section will give the applicants a sense of what they’d do in the role on a day-to-day basis and what skill sets you’re looking for.

Here’s a snippet from our social media manager listing when we were hiring:

Here is a breakdown of where we’d love some of your expertise to help us improve:

• Create, schedule, and analyze all the social media updates that are sent to the Buffer social media profiles
• Create paid marketing campaigns on social to help us reach more customers and interested people in improving their social media strategy
• Embody the Buffer voice and tone in every tweet, update, and conversation
• Be data-informed about what’s working on social and what’s not
• Experiment with new growth strategies and ideas
• Help us explore new social media networks, apps, and tools
• Work together with the crafter team to share insight and strategies on the Social blog

As you might have noticed, the responsibilities of the role all start with an action verb as they are meant to be actionable. The Human Resource department of the University of Pittsburgh has come up with a great list of action verbs…

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