Monitoring. Social Media Headhunter. ReadWriteWeb does an anecdotal survey of what social media folks are making these days, and the spread is as varied as a Vegas buffet.
There are no surprises, but I can tell you that consulting fees range from $20 an hour to $400 an hour, salaries range from $24,000 a year to $170,000, and the difference is based almost entirely on your non-social media employment background. That's good and bad news - good for experienced types that want to use social media to move their careers along, bad for entry-level and college graduate salaries who want to learn social media, but lack the business background to truly be effective. The survey was based on 10 responses from social media types, ranging from bloggers to social media consultants, and it's fair to say that Marshall got it right.
It doesn't pay that well for most people, but then again, it's hard to compare salaries without knowing what they've accomplished. For the in-house blogger, expect 40-50's. The Building Blocks of Social Media for Business. Where do you start?
That’s the question I get often when I’m asked how to help a company market using social media tools. The people who contact me are smart. They tell me things like, “Yeah, they said we should start with a blog, and we said, ‘like the blog we already have?’” But what comes next is rarely a simple choice. I wanted to take you through some thoughts on what the basic building blocks of social media might be for a business (in the context of marketing, but then stretching a bit further out).
Remember, roadmaps don’t work really well until you have a solid goal or destination in mind. Grow Bigger Ears Most social media plans start with how you can talk. Make a Friendly Base In the past, we used the web strictly to collect information or transact one-way business like shopping. With the tools of the social web, we can offer so much more: a two-way place where information can be started by one person, and then augmented or refuted or discussed by others.
Extend into Outposts. Community Building Insights. Thought I’d just give a glimpse into what I’ve been up to lately. I recently had the challenge and pleasure of participating in a companies foray into the world of Social Media. It was a great experience for me as well as a paying job, which is always nice to have these days!
I was given the title Community Advocate that came with responsibilities very similar to what is discussed here in this post about Community Management. It’s very interesting when working with a company who has not used a Social Media strategy before. It’s a big leap of faith for them to say, “Here is my business, now please go represent me on the internet.” It takes a huge amount of trust for this to work. In this case the company had a website where they were successfully selling a product to a very loyal following. It was not difficult to attract followers.
Bi-weekly reporting showed a slow steady increase in our numbers. What I learned from this experience is: Was this a failure? Updated Community Manager Job Description.