How To Become A Marketing/Social Media Manager: What It Is and Career Path

What is a marketing/social media manager and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted experts

Tobias Sellier,

Richard Tate

Social media managers are responsible for making the most of the ample marketing opportunities social media platforms have to offer. They plan and carry out social media marketing strategies for their clients and monitor the results of the operations.

You will be responsible for increasing sales for your clients by increasing awareness of their brands and products. As is usually the case in social media marketing, you will most likely do this by disguising promotional activities as entertainment.

Your job will be to create content that draws as much attention as possible. In your ideal case scenario, your content goes viral. But more often than not, you just have to use some serious elbow grease and create a massive amount of daily content, sometimes posting 15-20 times a day, and hope your content gets picked up by your target customers.

What general advice would you give to a marketing/social media manager?

Tobias Sellier

Senior Director, American Public Power Association

There are exciting opportunities to work for community-owned, not-for-profit, hometown public power. From engineers and customer service representatives to lineworkers and administrative professionals, there are many opportunities. And utility employees, being essential workers, even during these challenging times, there are still many jobs that will need to be filled.

ScoreMarketing/Social Media ManagerUS Average

Salary

4.1

Avg. Salary $52,613

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.5

Growth rate 10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

3.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.23%

Asian 8.15%

Black or African American 3.04%

Hispanic or Latino 8.67%

Unknown 5.32%

White 74.58%

Gender

female 60.05%

male 39.95%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

7.5

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.5

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a marketing/social media manager

Explore marketing/social media manager education requirements

Most common marketing/social media manager degrees

Bachelor's

81.4 %

Master's

9.2 %

Associate

6.1 %

Start to develop specific marketing/social media manager skills

Skills	Percentages
Social Media Marketing	17.02%
Instagram	7.68%
Facebook	6.71%
Twitter	6.08%
Digital Marketing	5.81%

Complete relevant marketing/social media manager training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-3 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New marketing/social media managers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a marketing/social media manager based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real marketing/social media manager resumes.

Research marketing/social media manager duties and responsibilities

Access how to effectively drive traffic, generate leads and sales and boot ROI as efficiently as possible.
Manage the company Facebook page; promote inventory through Pinterest
Update Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest daily to engage target college student consumer.
Create an organic Instagram following from scratch.

Prepare your marketing/social media manager resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your marketing/social media manager resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a marketing/social media manager resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable marketing/social media manager resume templates

Build a professional marketing/social media manager resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your marketing/social media manager resume.