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.”

© 2010 – 2012, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: advanced use of RSS, average annual salary, communication, Community, consulting, education, high-quality social media consulting, marketing, media consultant, media marketing, PPC professional, salaries, salary, search engine optimization, sem, SEM professional, SEO, SEO professional, six figures, SMO professional, Social Media Consultant, social media manager, social media marketing

SocialMediaHeadhunter.com – June 1, 2008

“I love my space…”

7) A lot of people look at social media as an opportunity to escape their industries or start a new career path. Is knowledge of social media sufficient to get hired, or do [they] need specific business experience? If so, what do they need to know?

Well, just because you have a MySpace page and read blogs doesn’t make you qualified to work in social media. But, if someone is, say, a real estate agent and they’re all over the place with blogs, podcasts, social networking activity and so on, they wouldn’t be eliminated from consideration because what they’re doing is marketing themselves through social media. So, no, knowledge of social media isn’t sufficient to get hired. Understanding how to use social media to communicate messages to an audience is.

8) How did you decide on a salary range for this position. Would you compare it to similar positions (Account executive, SEO consultant, copywriter), or is it made up out of whole cloth? Any suggestions for salaries for different social media jobs a) Community Manager, b) Director, Social Media Marketing, c) Social Media Consultant (entry-level agency). ?

We based our salary more on our company structure than anything else. Relative to our client services team, our PR account team and our media department — all of which parallel our social media effort — an account manager makes a fairly predictable range. For the Louisville market and in very general terms, I’d put a $40K-$75K bracket around it, with senior account managers meeting and exceeding the high end of that. Understand that the salary would probably move up in different markets. I’ve heard of positions I would consider at a slightly lower level than what we hired for in Silicon Valley paying almost twice as much. But they also pay 3-4 times as much to just have a place to live. We did have several candidates from larger cities decline pursuit of the job because of the salary, which is understandable. But the cost of living in Louisville, our agency’s revenue model and thousands of other factors make what we were offering quite fair in our minds. We certainly did not see the average level of the talent pool drop because of the salary.

One thing I would add on salaries is that we don’t really have a strong grasp on what the value of social media really is. For now, that means we have to compare it to parallel positions. At Doe-Anderson, we see social media as a sister discipline to public relations, so we have a benchmark. Other organizations may see it falling more in line with interactive and digital marketing disciplines, but how can you adequately compare an ASP.net developer to a social media strategist? (I know, apples-to-oranges, but that’s really the point.) As the field matures, we’ll start to see long-term impacts of social media programs, tie-ins to bottom lines for revenue and, I think, a C-level awareness and understanding that, like public relations, you can’t be very successful without it. Then the salaries will become better defined.

a) A community manager (forum, message boards, blogs) is a customer service agent to me, but a specialized one. In the Louisville market, I can see these positions starting in the mid-30s and moving upwards of 60 or 70K, depending upon the size and scope of the community or brand.

b) Director of social media marketing is going to be akin to a director of public relations or marketing, in my mind. Again, in Louisville, this person would probably command a salary of 40 to 100K with non-profits and very small organizations on the lower end of that spectrum. The larger the brand or company, the higher the salary. There would even be a few in that position in Louisville that would make more than 100K as we have corporate headquarters for several very large companies here (Yum Brands, UPS, Humana, etc.) You could even make the argument that, for those large corporations, 150-250K wouldn’t be out of the question.

And a c) social media consultant, entry-level agency person I’m assuming would be an account manager or assistant account manager. Right out of college, I would think low to mid-30s to start. Temper that with the fact that I haven’t set salaries for more than a couple of positions in the social media field, however. That said, it’s probably two more than most people have.

[More...]

— Jason Falls is the Social Media Explorer, and can be reached on his blog.

© 2010, 1SocialMediaManager.com. All rights reserved. The format and presentations here are creations by this Website owner: ©1984 - Leanne C Boyd. All people and products reviewed here own their respective copyrights.

© 2012 1SocialMediaManager.com. All Rights Reserved.

Technorati Tags: Brands, business experience, career path, Community, company structure, cost, Jason Falls, media consultant, media marketing, MySpace, networking activity, salaries, salary, salary range, social media job, social media job opportunities, social media manager, social media marketing, social networking, strategist