In a recent issue of Marketing Mag they published a salary guide for the Canadian AD industry (side note: Did you know that a top tier Creative Director can make up to 600k a year but an Art Director tops out at 250k) and was interested to read that a Social Media Strategist with under 3 years experience can look forward to earning around 25-35k a year and with 10+ years experience you max out at 90k a year.

First off, does anyone really have 10+ years experience in Social Media? and secondly, reading this I am reminded that in all positions there are kids and adults and in the social media market place this seems even more evident because your choices in hiring people for projects seem to be either the shiny social media kid who have lots of followers on social networks but perhaps are missing the skill set of understanding how to match a campaign to the actual goals of the client (Customer Acquisition, branding, PR, actual sales, Community building and Customer Service are all possible goals and all accomplished in different ways online) or you can hire a seasoned person for a lot more money but may lack the sizzle that the shiny person has and charges a lot more.

So what you are left with is the shiny people are bringing the price of the market down and the seasoned people are pricing themselves out of the market on the other end and all that is really happening is that projects may not be getting the right people and because of this the results turn the client off of social media and putting the cause back a bit.

My solution to this, and it may be a silly one, is for the kids and the adults need to be partnered together in an apprentice like program where both sides benefit from the nuance and speciality that both sides posses with the ultimate goal of doing greater work for more money and actually building trust with companies so that they may loosen the reins to do some innovative projects.

We could even start a group and call it Nasmbla. The North American Social Media Benevolent Love Association.

What Says You?