Guide to A Social Media Manager Cover Letter That Gets You Hired

Brands hand social media managers something incredibly precious: their online presence and reputation. It’s no wonder they want to make sure they hire the best of the best for the job. How do you convince them it’s you? By attaching a killer social media manager cover letter in addition to your CV and social media portfolio.

In this post, we’ll show you examples of cover letter snippets, packaged into a guide of the perfect cover letter structure. We’ll also share some tips to polish your writing to perfection, making sure you’re the candidate who gets hired in the end.

How to write a social media manager cover letter: the ideal structure

You don’t have much space when it comes to cover letters, so you need to make the most of it. Let’s go through the essential sections or topics you should cover, each in a short paragraph or two.

Greetings

This won’t take a whole paragraph but don’t forget to start with the greetings (or salutations if you prefer). Take some time to look up the recruiter who posted the job, and address your cover letter to them. Otherwise, you can write it to the team or department you’re looking to join —or simply the company, if you really have no more information.

Or in case you’re applying to a more formal organization, the good old “To Whom It May Concern” also always comes in handy.

Which position are you applying to?

Yet again not a whole paragraph, but make sure to state what position you’re applying for. Hiring managers might be going through applications for multiple positions, so make their lives easier.

Hint: It doesn’t have to be the typical “I saw the job post for XYZ position and that is what I am applying for now” type of thing. You can add it to the header of your social media cover letter, or incorporate it in a more creative way.

Combining these two would look something like this:

Dear Copyfolio Marketing Team,



Your latest LinkedIn post says you’re looking for a social media manager to take care of content creation and management, and I think I’d be the perfect fit.

What makes you excited about it - personal interest or super relevant previous experience

In an age where people often mindlessly hand in applications left and right, it’s a breath of fresh air, when an applicant seems truly interested in that specific job opportunity.

You already know that you should tailor your social media manager resume and cover letter to each application. But we’re here to make sure that shows in this particular part of your writing.

You can connect it to either a personal interest that matches what the company does (e.g. kayaking every summer for a sportswear company) or a previous, super relevant work experience. If you’ve done exactly what they’re expecting from their new social media manager, make sure to include that here.

My main expertise and passion lie in social media, but I’ve inevitably dipped my toes into the fields of copywriting and marketing too. Other than that, in my previous workplace, we targeted writers with our SaaS creative writing tool. Because of these, I know Copyfolio’s audience like the back of my hand and could create content that’d really resonate with them. And have fun at the same time.

Which skills of yours could you use? Where did you pick those up?

Painting the picture of you working and excelling as their next social media manager, tell the company about the skills you have and would use in your job. Tell the readers the story of how you picked these skills up, what you’ve achieved with them, and how you’d utilize them in this new position.

Which area/responsibility would you excel at the most + what results would you expect?

Following up on the skills, talk about the social media manager tasks and responsibilities you’d excel at the most. Go through the job description and pick out the responsibilities you have the highest expertise for. Write shortly about how you’d approach them and what business results you’d expect from your work.

Because don’t forget: a cover letter is just another marketing material. One, where you’re marketing yourself towards your future employers. And as such, based on copywriting principles, it should be about them and what they can gain from this —and not about you.

My favorite campaign in the past year was an integrated marketing campaign where I was responsible for the social media part, in terms of both strategy and content. We aligned our social media posts with our email marketing and PPC advertising materials and they came together wonderfully, growing our paid user base by 35% that month.



Extending Copyfolio’s social media presence with a new strategy and more posts, tying it all together with the existing SEO and email marketing strategies could bring similar, if not bigger growth for this product too. I thrive on engaging with people using our product and hearing their feedback on how we helped them learn and grow —and would be honored and thrilled to experience that with Copyfolio too.

7 tips to distinguish your social media cover letter from the rest

1. Match the ToV of the job/company

People tend to write cover letters in a very formal tone, following all the social media manager cover letter templates they find on Google. But as an SMM you should know that all copy you write should be tailored to its target audience in its tone.

So before you sit down to write, go on the company’s website and look up their existing social media accounts. Check what their tone of voice is like and try to adjust your cover letter to match.

You wouldn’t want to be too casual with a governmental agency, yet a dry and formal tone might land your cover letter in the “No” pile at a youthful startup.

2. Get inspiration from portfolios

But when all the templates and examples out there are written in that same formal tone… How do you get an idea of what else a social media manager cover letter could sound like?

An unexpected but great place to look at for writing inspo is social media portfolios. Although what you see on there won’t be tailored to one specific company or job and it shows, you can still catch a few phrases and sentences that can do wonders for your cover letter copywriting.

To save you time with looking for examples, here are a few snippets from about pages and sections of portfolios that could help you out.

Sarah Farnam

Valeriia Ivanova

Hannah Beck

Adriely Costa

Simona Rais Abin

The social media portfolios we’ve taken the snippets from were all made with Copyfolio. Check it out if you want to create a professional-looking portfolio website quickly and easily.

3. Don’t just say you’re a good fit —explain why

We touched on this above, but it can’t be emphasized enough: don’t just say you’re a good fit, show them why.

Bring examples from your previous work experience and explain what skills you gained, and the results you achieved. Then go on to show them how you can translate these to bring them the business results they’re looking for.

4. Treat it as an extension of your CV

People often think of writing a cover letter as a hassle. When in reality, it’s an amazing opportunity for you to write down everything you couldn’t fit onto your social media manager resume.

Not having enough space to fit everything onto your resume is a common struggle. But it really doesn’t have to be, when you can just add everything else to your cover letter and portfolio. The CV is for the basic facts: what education you have and where you worked before. All the explanations and extra tidbits can go on the cover letter.

5. Include numbers when you highlight your achievements

Saying you did well in your previous job is nice, but bringing specific numbers is impressive. Or at least can be, if the numbers themselves are chosen well. How do you know they are?

• Choose numbers that are relevant for the position you’re applying to. If your target company only does organic social media, then PPC numbers won’t impress anyone in the team.
• Only include numbers when they’re actually impressive. Your posts gained 17 new followers in a month on one account? It’s better not to even include that. But when your work brought a 30% boost in engagement? That surely has a spot in your cover letter.

6. Write with the company’s values, vision, and mission in mind

Adapting your target company’s tone of voice is one thing, but your cover letter resonating with their core values and vision is another level.

Especially if they’re the kind of company that does everything in tune with their mission, reading the same sentiment in your cover letter will make a big difference for them. Showing passion towards the things they care about will signal that you’d be a great team fit, in addition to your qualifications.

7. Don’t forget that it’s a letter

Lastly, keep in mind that it’s a letter that an actual human being is going to read on the other side. Keep it short and sweet, no more than a page, and make sure it’s easy to read. Because whoever is going to be reading it, they’ll probably have quite a few more waiting for them.

If you’re not sure whether you checked that box, ask a few friends to read it when you’re done. If they seem to be dozing off after a paragraph or two, it’s a great indication to shorten or rewrite the cover letter.