Social media manager salary

What It Means

Social media manager salary is the pay of the person who runs a company's social media accounts. PayScale describes the job as managing the company's pages, profiles and sites and communicating with customers and vendors through them. No government wage survey reports the job on its own in the sources checked, so the figures here come from two salary data companies: PayScale puts the average base salary at $60,881 (data updated June 22, 2026), and ZipRecruiter puts the average at $64,845 (September 2026).

How People Say It at Work

• "I run the brand's Instagram and TikTok for them."
• "They want someone to manage all our social accounts."
• "Is that role in-house or freelance?"

The Breakdown

The numbers, with their sources

PayScale also reports average total pay of $45,496 for social media managers with under a year of experience and $57,111 for 1 to 4 years. Its figures rest on 2,595 salary profiles.

Worked example. An offer of $55,000 a year (an example) works out to about $26.44 an hour at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks. It's $5,881 under PayScale's average and $9,845 under ZipRecruiter's, and above both sites' lower-end figures.

What the result means. The two sites land about $4,000 apart on the middle figure, so a single number is a rough guide. An offer below both averages gives you two figures to point to in a pay conversation.

What moves the number

• Experience. PayScale's figures rise from $45,496 for under a year to $57,111 for 1 to 4 years.
• Which site you ask. Each company draws on its own data, so the same job reads differently on each.

Good to Know

Both sources are private salary data companies writing about their own data, which is why they're named on this page; no government survey checked here reports social media managers as a separate job. PayScale's percentiles are shown rounded to the nearest thousand on its page. Compare offers on bonuses and benefitsBenefits packageEverything an employer offers on top of wages, such as health insurance, paid leave and a retirement plan, which can be worth thousands of dollars a year. See more as well as base salary.

Related Terms and Categories

• Salary negotiation

  Discussing pay and other terms with an employer before you accept a job offer, to reach a starting salary that fits the role and your skills.

• Total compensation

  The full value of what an employer pays for your work in a year: base pay plus bonuses and the employer's spending on benefits such as insurance and retirement.

• Remote work

  Doing your job from somewhere other than your employer's workplace, most often from home, for some or all of the workweek.

• Freelancing

  Working for yourself, selling your skills to different clients by the project or the hour instead of holding a long-term job with one employer.

• Asking for a raise

  Requesting higher pay from your current employer, usually backed by your results, your role's market pay and what you plan to take on next.

• Benefits package

  Everything an employer offers on top of wages, such as health insurance, paid leave and a retirement plan, which can be worth thousands of dollars a year.

Pay, rates and costs