How to NOT get a smm job

Welcome to Social Studies.

Today:

• Brought to you by…

• How to NOT get a smm job

Land a new job…

Today’s edition is about how to NOT get a social media manager job.

But first… how DO you get a smm job?

Enter Teal.

I used to Teal to land my current job as Head of Social at Benzinga.

Teal is an all-in-one, AI-powered career growth platform that helps you tailor your resume, track your applications, optimize your LinkedIn profile, and more, so you can land a job faster.

Over one million people (including me) have turned to Teal to navigate their job search—and you can, too.

Get started here.

How NOT to get a smm job…

This week I was doing some IG community management (as all good social pros do) and I saw this message:

The individual actually had a super impressive social presence with over 60k followers and solid engagement.

But sending this DM is about as useless as a screen door on a submarine.

90+% of the time, that message is read by… the existing smm.

Here’s what I’d do instead:

I’d build a body of work.

More on this down below…

I’d build a system.

-Set up a targeted job search on LinkedIn

-Save the search and get alerts when a new job drops

-APPLY

-Find the hiring manager and shoot them this message:

“Hey! Just applied to your open social media role. Big fan of what you guys are doing. Your short form video, on Instagram specifically, is really clever. The hooks are really powerful. I’m trying something similar on the account that I’ve grown LINK HERE. Would love the opportunity to chat and see if you think I’m a good fit!”

If you want to build a body of work, but don’t know where to start, Tommy dropped a masterclass in this thread:

Tommy also has a great newsletter btw. (Not paid or anything. I’m just a big fan.)

A while back I did a deeper dive on how to get a job:

Hey you’re still here!

o