The community manager

THE

COMMUNITY MANAGER REPORT

Produced by Jason Keath CEO, Social Fresh

I. Introduction
One year ago, Social Fresh conducted a survey to get some basic information on community managers. The response yielded great data that we enjoyed sharing with the Social Fresh community. This year we gathered more information from more community managers. We surveyed 304 community managers betweenJanuary 5th and January 20th. All numbers specifically attributed to “community managers” exclude other job titles and community managers not working more than 20 hours per week on community management, unless otherwise stated. To see higher resolution versions of the graphs included within this document, please view them on the Social Fresh Flickr account here: http://sofre.sh/06F.

II.Demographics
1. Gender: The community manager role is still dominated by female professionals. In 2011 we found a 68% female to 32% male ratio. We saw slight change this year to 65% female and 35% male. However, the size of the audience surveyed this year was twice as large, so the difference between this year and last year is more likely an improvement in the data and sample size, and not an industrytrend.

2. Age: The average age for a community manager in 2011 was 30 years old. We found the exact same result in 2012. The range in age of community managers is still quite large, from 18 to 54.

3. Geography: We saw a large range in geography this year. As a result we expanded the top cities list from five cities in 2011 to ten total cities for 2012. The 2011 top cities list included: 1.New York City 2. San Francisco 3. Boston 4. Denver 5. Austin Notably, 8% of community managers surveyed lived outside large metropolitan areas this year, up from 4% last year. 17% live outside of the United States. And two cities, London (5th) and Toronto (6th), were in the top 10 cities listed by those community managers surveyed. Other cities new to the top list since 2011 include Los Angeles(4th), Chicago (7th), Washington DC (9th), and Miami (10th). The northeast region of the United States still dominates with the most community managers. New York City (18%) alone claims almost one in every five community managers surveyed. NYC, Boston, and Washington DC combine for 31% of all community managers surveyed.

III. Community and Industry
We explored some of the communitydemographics: B2B vs. B2C, agency vs. brand managed, and top industries. 1. B2C vs. B2B Community managers are three times as likely to be working on behalf of a consumer focused brand (B2C) than a business customer focused brand (B2B).

2. Brand vs. Agency: Community managers are twice as likely to be working directly for the brand as compared to an agency on behalf of said brand.

3. Industries: Wecategorized all the community managers surveyed into their corresponding industries. Software, marketing, and retail were the most common industries listed.

Industry
Software/Tech Marketing/Communication Retail Philanthropy Healthcare/Pharmaceuticals Media/Publishing Gaming Food & Beverage Entertainment & Hospitality Education Travel Finance Consumer Goods Government/Municipal AutomotiveElectronics Services Real Estate Beauty Advertising Website Energy Telecom Ecommerce

Community Managers
40 27 25 15 15 15 14 14 13 11 10 8 8 7 7 7 7 6 6 4 4 4 3 3

IV. Compensation
Before we dive into some great numbers on average compensation for community manager roles, we wanted to find out how the community managers were measured. How is their success determined? The two top factors thatdetermined success were engagement metrics (50%) and community growth metrics (25%).

1. Age How does age impact the compensation of a community manager? More professional experience does equate to a larger average salary, to a point. We found that a ceiling is reached near $55,000.

2. Gender Does gender have a significant impact on the salary of a community manager? Yes. The average male...