Social Media Consultant Job Description, Fees, & Rates. What Does a Social Media Marketing Consultant Do?

Intro: Social Media Consultant Job Description, Fees, & Rates

Why is the “social media consultant” role rapidly becoming an imperative position to fill for most companies? And what does a media consultant do?

Digital Trends reported in 2015 that Americans spend an alarming amount of time checking social media: an average of 4.7 hours a day. That’s a third of the time we’re awake (seeing as we sleep for an average of eight hours and 42 minutes every night).

In this day and age, a company’s social media presence is one of the most important parts of its business. When your potential customers are engaged in social media at a constant rate, it’s important to make sure your company’s presence is a strong one.

A social media marketing consultant will play an integral role in actualizing this goal.

Social Media Consultant Job Description

The job description of a social media marketing consultant is pretty straightforward. The social media consultant will be in charge of administration of the company’s social media marketing and advertising. This role is integral to marketing success in this age of technology.

Image source: Pixabay

According to Kruse Control Inc., one of the more well-known social media consultant companies, the social media consultant’s administration should cover:

Deliberate planning and goal-setting
Increasing brand awareness and boosting online reputation
Management of content
Search engine optimization (SEO) and generation of inbound traffic
Cultivation of leads and sales

A social media marketing consultant should be driven, creative, and have experience and passion for customer engagement.

Don’t Miss: This 27-Year-Old Gets Paid $12 Million a Year Based on His YouTube Account

A Day in the Life of a Social Media Consultant

How do these actions look played out in a practical way by a social media consultant? Obviously, being a social media marketing consultant is more than just sending out a few tweets and posts to Facebook. Social media consultancy requires a full load of work. Here’s what the average day for a social media consultant might entail.

Monitor and Respond
Social media consultants must help with customer service and PR crisis communications. You’ll be in charge of influencer outreach, any inquiries, observing trending topics, monitoring competition, and building community.
Oversee Employee Social Presence

As a social media marketing consultant, it’s important to outline a code of conduct for company employees. Social media consultancy also includes management of executive accounts and establishing a review and approval process.

Content Creation

This area is what usually comes to mind when you think of a social media consultant. This includes writing social media posts and blog posts, designing banners and memes, and taking and editing photos and videos. Social media marketing consultants should also repurpose content from one channel to another in addition to inviting guest contributions.

Keep Current

It’s important for social media consultants to stay current. Staying on top of new trends and topics will help make your campaigns culturally relevant and more appealing.

Collaborate

Social media consultants spend time in meetings with content marketing, demand gen, PR, executives, HR, sales, and service in order to create campaigns and social media marketing that everyone is on the same page for.

Build Campaigns and Promote Content

Ad buys and paid promotion are the key parts to this part of a social media consultant’s job.

Measure and Prove ROI

Clients who hire a social media marketing consultant want more than just supposition—they want clear results that their return on investment was successful. As a social media consultant, you should build your dashboard and set measurable goals for each channel and campaign.

After he or she analyzes and interprets the results, a successful social media marketing consultant will use that information to optimize programs. Media marketing consultants should also create presentations and report weekly, quarterly, and yearly on their progress and outreach.

Set Strategy

This part of the job is where the social media consultant will align business goals, coordinate content calendars, and manage influencer and advocate programs. Being able to see to both the minute details and big picture perspective are signs of a good social media marketing consultant.

Account Management

Being able to set permissions and secure passwords is a big responsibility; however, under the right social media consultant, this information will be kept confidential.

Cover Live Events

Social media marketing consultants are frequently in charge of the online coverage of live events. Promoting speakers and hashtags, taking photos, live tweeting, responding to attendees, and summarizing the event are all key ways in which a social media consultant can engage a customer base with an event.

This maximizes the return that a company will receive from hosting a relevant live event.

Other Qualities to Look for

Whether you’re looking for a social media marketing consultant or considering becoming a media consultant, there are certain qualities that you should possess.

Successfully engaged in personal social media accounts

It’s important as a social media consultant to be able to establish yourself on your personal social media accounts.

Most social media consultant companies will look at your pages before hiring you, as you will need to know how to market yourself in order to market a larger company. Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner and host of the Social Media Marketing Podcast, says this is one of the key things employers should look for.

Stelzner suggests following media marketing consultants on well-known sites, like Facebook and Twitter, to see how promptly they reply and how regularly they share valuable content. Red flags that might come up at this time are offensive messages, photos or other inappropriate content – all undesirable traits in a potential online media consultant.

Understanding of the company’s specific market

It’s extremely vital as a social media marketing consultant to understand the company you’re working for. What is their target demographic? Does the media consultant display knowledge of the industry? As social media consultancy requires an intimate understanding of products, services, potential problems, and infrastructure in a company’s business, this quality is essential for a social media consultant to have.

Connections to influencers in the industry

As with any job, it helps to have connections as a social media consultant. Your online presence and web of influence can make or break your success as an online media consultant.

List of existing and past clients

Most companies want to know who you have or are currently working for, as this indicates your success as a social media marketing consultant. If you’ve done your job well as an online media consultant, you will have no qualms about referring potential new customers to those you’ve helped in the past.

Current and past examples of your work as a social media consultant

Sara Sutton Fell, founder of telecommuting job site FlexJobs.com, advises companies to ask for current online examples of work in addition to past portfolio samples. This is your chance as a social media consultant to showcase the successful campaigns you have worked on previously.

Possess knowledge of tools to measure ROI of your campaigns

Any legitimate social media marketing consultant will be able to quantify in clearly presented data the return on investment (ROI). Beyond just presenting a number of likes or re-posts, a social media consultant should use other tracking methods to determine the full extent of his or her outreach.

Potential ideas for social media campaigns

You don’t have to reveal all your ideas for free as a potential social media consultant, but you should be able to discuss some campaign possibilities that fit the company you’re applying to work for.

Specialization in a specific social media platform

It’s not necessarily just about how many platforms you can use as a social media consultant (though that can be important), but rather the quality of your specialization in a few key areas. Any social media marketing consultant can create accounts on various social media platforms, but it takes a great social media consultant to understand the intricate workings of a few specific platforms.

Know how to handle a social media crisis

Sometimes campaigns don’t go the way you might have expected, but a good social media consultant will know how to resolve the situation quietly and delicately.

Understanding your personal payment terms

Every media consultant has differing social media consultant rates, and the social media consultant fees from person to person may make or break your hireability.

Usually, a social media marketing consultant will get paid a retainer, charge by the hour or charge by project. If you’re interested in hiring media marketing consultants, figure out which payment structure best fits your needs.

All-in-One Change Management Tools

Top Rated Toolkit for Change Managers.

Get Your Change Management Tool Today...

Social Media Consultant Rates

So, you may be a company owner who has recognized your need for social media consulting services. What type of social media consultant rates should you expect? Or maybe you’re considering becoming a social media consultant. How much should you expect to earn from your social media consultant fees?

Image source: Pixabay

Hourly Rates

Social media consultant rates that apply on an hourly basis are optimal for smaller projects or troubleshooting issues. If you just need to hire a social media consultant for a short time, this could be a good option. Miles Herndon, a popular social media marketing consultant firm, reported, “As a rule of thumb, most consulting fee rates should double, or in most cases triple, the actual wage of the position being covered. That means that the $50 per hour strategists should charge $100-$150 per hour for his services.”

Project-Based Rates

This requires the social media consultant to know what he or she wants to make and what other media marketing consultants are charging as well. Mack Collier developed a master list with the average cost of various projects that a social media marketing consultant may ask to do. This list can be a helpful reference point for knowing what social media consultant fees should be.

Monthly Retainer Rate

This type of fee is appropriate particularly for a social media consultant who is growing an online community for a client. It’s common to pay a social media consultant an upfront setup fee for a project that includes strategizing and creating social media profiles and then paying monthly retainer social media consultant rates for the media consultant to maintain the networks and grow quality followings.

This monthly fee varies by the job, such as a charge of around $1000–$2000/month for managing a Facebook page, or $1000–$3000/month for writing and editing a few blog posts a week.

Alexis Grant, a successful social media consultant, advises, “No matter how much you decide to charge, some people will think you’re charging too much and others will think you’re charging too little. The challenge, then, is figuring out how much you need to earn to make it worth your while, and finding clients who will pay what you decide you’re worth.”

Social Media Consultant Companies

There are many social media consultant companies out there that have become well-known for their successful social media campaigns and experienced social media consultants. Here are a few to begin your search, whether you’re looking to work for them or hire from them:

Meltwater.com is one of many social media consultant companies that has guaranteed results. Its clients express great satisfaction and overall increase in profits and market awareness after working with media marketing consultants from Meltwater. Meltwater allows interested clients to request a free demo from a social media consultant or request pricing of social media consultant services to match their specific needs.

The Marketing Nutz focuses on giving clients help with marketing and strategy through the use of website and mobile development. The social media skills of its social media marketing consultants have helped it serve clients such as IBM, PlayStation, Chick-fil-A, and other well-known companies.

If you head over to Thumbtack.com, you can input “Social Media Marketing” into services needed. After you enter information about your business and location, a list of relevant social media consultant companies will be created for you.

Next Steps

So why is social media consultancy so important for businesses today? In the current age of technology, a social media presence is key to a company’s success. Any good marketing campaign must be implemented where the customers are: online. Due to this, social media consultant services play an important role in company growth.

If our social media consultant job description and qualifications sound like something you could fulfill, you should consider becoming an online media consultant. If you’re a company looking to hire a social media marketing consultant on a long or short-term basis, hopefully you have a better idea of what to look for in your potential media consultant.

AdvisoryHQ (AHQ) Disclaimer:

Reasonable efforts have been made by AdvisoryHQ to present accurate information, however all info is presented without warranty. Review AdvisoryHQ’s Terms for details. Also review each firm’s site for the most updated data, rates and info.

Note: Firms and products, including the one(s) reviewed above, may be AdvisoryHQ's affiliates. Click to view AdvisoryHQ's advertiser disclosures.