Online Community & Social Media Compensation 2009

The Online Community and Social Media Compensation survey was initiated in July of 2009. The intention of the study was to get a broad look at online community compensation, as well as insight in to team structures.

We received approximately 370 responses. Participants represent a comprehensive sampling of organizations involved in building online communities, including: large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, platform providers, media & entertainment, retail and independent consultants.

A sample of the 300+ organizations that participated include (with their permission):
Answers Corp., Autodesk, Avid, Best Buy, Cartoon Network (Turner), Consumer Reports, Electronic Arts, hi5, IBM, KaBOOM!, Nokia, Quest Software, Sage Software, Seesmic, Sony Online Entertainment, The Knot, and Yahoo!

Overall, we were very encouraged by the level and quality of responses to the research questions.

Several key issues pertaining to online community and social media salaries surfaced during this report, including:

• The gap between the average male and female salaries widened, with male respondents averaging $86,644 (up from $85,423 in ’08) and Females averaging $75,624 (down from $77,319 in ’08).
• The majority of respondents reported a salary increase in 2009, but the percentage compared to last year was down, as was a significant increase in the number of respondents who took a salary decrease in 2009 compared to 2008.
• Average overall job satisfaction was down by a fraction, from 4.2 (out of 5) in 2008 to 4.1 (out of 5) in 2009.
• Several respondents mentioned feeling like they were being inadequately compensated because of lack of data available regarding community and social media salaries, as well as lack of understanding of community and social media ROI relative to their organization’s activities.