Social Media Salaries – Helping You Do The Research

To properly price your Social Media Manager services, you must keep an eye on “the stats” … and there is a LOT of information to keep up with. This page will give you a few hints for where to begin. On every Web site, you will find further links that will appeal to you… don’t be lazy! Track ‘em down!

Online Community Report | Tag Archive | Community & Social Media Research

The archive page will allow you to browse the history of this service. The information I found particularly useful is a bit dated, from late 2008… but I think that the findings of their survey are important, and most data will hold true today.

Key findings from the report:

* The majority of the respondents are: Female (55%) vs. Male (45%),
* The majority (61%) of respondents ranged in age from 31-50 years of age.
* Most of the respondents have more than 5 years of experience, completed a Bachelors Degree, and work 41-50 hours per week.
* The average Salary of the respondents was $81k with a median of $72.5k. There were peaks on both the low ($0-$25k) and high ends (more than $150k), and then also at $60-$65k.
* Women are earning only 91% of what men are earning; women averaged $77k, and the men averaged $85k. The average annual salary for all participants was almost $81k.
* Most participants are satisfied with their jobs with an average satisfaction score of 4.2 and a median score of 4 (on a scale of 1-5).

Report Components

* Gender
* Age
* Department
* Experience
* Salary
* Salary by Gender
* Satisfaction

Full Report

The full Online Community Compensation report [available for purchase on their site] contains a good deal more information on the topic, including:

* Community team size
* Respondent education
* Hours Worked
* Benefits
* Salary by Country (US, UK, Canada)
* Salary by Title
* Salary by Experience
* Salary increases in last 12 months
* Full write in comments from Survey

Source:
Online Community: Compensation Study
Posted on 26 August 2008

How Much Do Top Tier Bloggers and Social Media Consultants Get Paid? We Asked Them!
Written by Marshall Kirkpatrick / October 9, 2008
Source Web Site

“The media world is changing and its jobs are changing too. The rise of the blogger is an often-told story, but are the lucky few bloggers who do it for a living well paid? We did a survey to find out…”

Consulting – The Big Money

“Social media consultants, expert practitioners with multiple years of success in the kinds of positions discussed above and in some cases in traditional marketing jobs, are the ones making the most money.

“No one we surveyed named an hourly consulting rate below $150 per hour. $300 per hour was the most common rate named. Some listed monthly rates of $2k to $4k per engagement, which we assume probably means 20 to 40 hours per month.

“Social media (or in many cases Search Engine Optimization) consulting is probably making a fair number of people six figures. What are these people doing? They are advising companies on how to set up and run blogs, how to reach out to and relate to bloggers, how to use Twitter (seriously) and how to make advanced use of RSS. The SEO work is probably the most technical, but degrees of technical challenge are all relative. A lot of this work is about communication skills.

“It’s a new world online and people with experience succeeding in it are widely sought-after by businesses wanting to catch up fast. There’s a nearly bottomless need for and a strong demand for high-quality social media consulting – the big challenge is bridging the gap between living a Web 2.0 life and reaching out effectively to people.”

2009 Search Marketing and Social Media Salary Survey
Written by Ken Lyons
September 10, 2009
Source Web Site

“Search engine and social media marketing are industries that continue to grow even in the face of one of the worst economies since the Great Depression. Talented and skilled SEO, PPC, SEM and SMO professionals are still in hot demand, despite the grim economic backdrop. Recently, we conducted a survey of search engine marketers and social media marketers…”

To recap the results of our survey:

* The majority of participants have been involved in search engine marketing or social media for 1 to 3 years, so are relatively junior in the industry
* The vast majority reside in the Northeastern United States
* More marketers specialize in organic search engine optimization (SEO) than PPC or social media marketing
* It’s close, but more SEMs and SMOs in our survey work for an agency, though the number of in-house marketers isn’t far behind
* Most search and social marketers earn between $25,000 to $50,000 followed closely by those earning $50,000 to $75,000

“To me, the most intriguing stats are in fact the salary figures, which seem low. But that certainly could be a byproduct of the economy, where workers are earning less (forced to take pay cuts) and underemployed (forced to work fewer hours), as well as the fact that the majority of people taking our survey have 3 years or less experience and aren’t in their prime earning years yet. I suspect it’s a combination of both.

“In any case, this survey helps to illustrate that search marketing and social media are both still young industries, so the majority of the workforce is relatively inexperienced. The results may also indicate that even search engine marketing and social media salaries aren’t immune from the recession.”

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