Earning money for a livelihood has been a primary staple for every individual in this century. The path to earning a good living has many forms, such as taking the conventional route of getting formally educated and doing a job or starting a business. However, since the late 2010s, the trend has now diverted towards more ways than ever imagined, and one of those ways is through social media management.
In this blog, we will delve deep into how much social media managers earn. The statistics are taken from a survey conducted in September, which received 2,280 responses from 350 different cities and over 35 countries.
But first, before getting into the earnings, it is essential to share the respondents' background for deeper clarification since social media influencing management depends on several social factors.
Median Salaries Relation to Working Experience
Being experienced in social media management significantly affects how much a person will earn, as there is a direct proportionality between the experience years you have under your belt and the amount of money you make.
The median salary for social media mangers are $80,000 with a benchmark ranging from $52,500 to $101,400.
For different employment types have no major difference in the median salary between them as freelancers earn $83,704.40, working through an agency get a median pay rate of $85,000 and in-house employees make $81,000. Although, there isn’t any difference in the salary of employment variation but they working style and the format are highly different.
 |
With working from home being the most popular choice since the COVID-19 era, 71% of the respondents belonged to this category.
Median Salary Per Industries
The highest-paying industry for social media management is the finance industry, with a median salary of $119,111. Then, in second place comes the tech industry, which has a median salary of $108,000. Following that, in third place is the entertainment industry, with a median salary of $99,041. Fourth place goes to the fashion industry, with a median income of $98,000. Fifth is taken by beauty and self-care as its social media managers earn $95,000.
Industries like freelancing pay a median salary of $89,770; similarly, for the video games industry, it is $88,500.
The least-paying industries with median salaries are mostly not-for-profit and sports-related companies. In contrast, the highest pay recorded in the survey was $500,00 for tech coming working in-house.
Company Size and Median Salary
It may be surprising to many readers about the connection between company size and the median salary. As it turns out, there is a deep connection between the number of people who work for a company and the salary they get.
Companies with over 1,000 employees have the highest salaries at around $102,000. For companies with 500 to 1,000 employees, the median salary is $90,000. Similarly, small companies with 50 to 100 workers earn around $75,000. Newly started with low employees, around 1 to 10 people, have the lowest median salary of $60,320. However, self-employed people earn a salary of $87,213.
Salary Negotiation and Layoffs
Regarding negotiation, the average starting salary of the people who don’t negotiate is $86,307, and those who negotiate are $100,950. Furthermore, 51.3% of social media managers negotiated for an increase in their salaries; out of those 51.3%, 76.4% were successful. Additionally, the companies with more employees, such as more than 1,000 workers, have the highest layoff rate of 35%. In contrast, those companies with less than ten employees have a layoff rate of only 2%.
Study/Charts courtesy of: Link in Bio / Rachel Karten
Read next: AI Job Growth Accelerates: Top Industries Seeking Skilled Professionals
