The Community Manager role is becoming more prevalent in organizations. Along with that comes the question of salary (or at least people are asking me about it & it’s one of the highest search terms hitting my blog).

Here are the trends – based on information from the Facebook Community Manager group (which I’d recommend participating in if you’re interested in this area). These are numbers for North America.

  • Some are viewing it as a professional position & asking the candidate what salary they’d like then negotiating from there
  • Some are placing the position under marketing & paying the going rate for that local area

From the Facebook group, seeing job postings & talking with my peers the salaries range from $60,000 to $110,000.

There are also other factors:

  • the role is personalized to suit the organization’s needs so it’s difficult to compare numbers across the board. I think the organization needs to consider what percentage of the position is tactical versus strategic. These positions generally aren’t managerial.
  • a factor that I think is very important is how much training does the new hire require? That will require an investment of resources on the employer’s part (even though they can start the person at a lower salary).
  • working remotely – I consider the cost to bring me to the home office every 2 months as part of my salary because it allows me to live at a locale with a much lower cost of living.
  • working as a contractor – in the US we need to add 15% to cover Medicare & the half of social security that the employer usually pays. That doesn’t really include health insurance costs.

In Germany – $95 k (avg provided by Tom Noeding, community manager extraordinaire)

In the UK I saw one advertised for $80 k

If you want to provide info let me know & I’ll update this post.