Social Media Careers: 8 Money-Making Opportunities

Simon Orgulan
7 min
read
Business
January 12, 2024

In the early days, social media networks were mostly used by ordinary people looking for an easier way to stay in touch with their friends and talk about what’s going on in their lives. Nowadays, businesses are slowly but surely waking up to the marketing and growth potential of communicating with their customers directly, thus creating numerous job and collaboration opportunities that never existed before.

Simply put, various companies from all around the world are looking to outsource some of the work to talented individuals like yourself so they can free up the time necessary to concentrate on other aspects of running their business. If you fancy the idea of being able to work from home managing their social media channels, this is a massive opportunity to make some money on the side or perhaps even turn your side gig into a full-time occupation.

Can you imagine yourself filling the role of a customer support agent, social media manager, social media consultant, and a myriad of other remote social media jobs that you can do from the comfort of your home? If this is something that resonates with your skillset and personality, it’s a wonderful time to be alive.

Below, we’ll let you in on what work from home social media jobs are available today, provide a brief description for each, and give you the rundown on what skills you should possess to secure it.

1. Social community management jobs

Since most brands have a following on social media, they need someone to manage the community that’s built up around their products or services. The community manager they’re looking for could very well be you. In essence, the job demands you to foster relationships with the brand’s audience and make sure that everyone is having a great time.

Not only will you be responsible for growing the brand’s social media channels but also for keeping everyone engaged and making sure the vibes are right. Another good way to describe a social community manager is someone who warms up the atmosphere and helps create a community where people are learning and growing together. It’s kind of like watering a plant, but in this case, you’ll be watering the entire forest.

Since these are paying social media jobs with a lot of responsibility, you’re going to need to demonstrate excellent written communication skills, so this is a fitting choice if you’re a people’s person. Every once in a while, tensions may arise, so you should study up on how to resolve the matter with as little conflict as possible and see to it that everyone plays nice.

Social community managers earn roughly $57,000 per year.

2. Social media content creator jobs

Every social media channel needs fresh content on a daily basis. That’s where you come in. If you’re a creative soul with a knack for writing (graphic design is always a plus), you should consider becoming a content creator for social media.

The best part is, there’s no need to show your face on camera unless you want to! We’re talking about written content after all. The only exception to this might be if you’re applying for a TikTok role or similar in which case you are likely to be asked to film yourself doing various job-related things such as presenting the products, etc.

To increase your chances of getting hired, you should present an enticing social media content creator portfolio that showcases the work you did for other clients. Ideally, it should be social media posts, but it could very well be blog posts (if you’re a writer) or images (if you’re a graphic designer). The good news is that there is plenty of overlap between different skillsets here, so if you excel at any form of content creation (whether it be based on graphics, text, or video), you’ll have a natural advantage over the other candidates.

Entry level social media jobs like these are perfect for those who are looking to get their feet wet in creative crafts that involve making something out of nothing in the digital sense of the word. As far as social media content creator salary goes, expect to earn roughly $45,000 per year.

3. Social media intelligence jobs

Being a social media intelligence expert is kind of like being a private eye… except it’s for social media. If you don’t mind researching what’s going on behind the scenes and looking at concrete numbers to uncover the latest social media trends, you’ll find it’s one of the most well paid social media jobs that you can do from the comfort of your home.

To give you an example, at any time someone mentions a keyword (in this case, it’s going to be the brand name), you want to be the very first to know. Are they having an issue with the product or are they recommending it to one of their friends? Your employer may also require you to produce a report outlining the context in which the brand was mentioned and analyze your findings to see if you can spot a pattern.

Another example of what your daily workflow may involve is finding potential social media influencers to partner with, the kind that would be a great match for the brand you’re associated with. Keep in mind it’s a very data-driven profession, so out of everything social, this might be the most antisocial social career choice on the list (see what we did there?). Nevertheless, this kind of job is a natural fit for the nerdy analytical observer type that fancies the idea of crunching the numbers and identifying patterns and trends.

Social media intelligence analyst salaries are in the ballpark of $70,000 per year.

4. Social media consultant jobs

For those with plenty of social media experience, you might want to consider taking up this profession. So what is a social media consultant? In essence, you’ll be working with multiple businesses to advise them on the best possible social media strategy to follow.

In addition, a typical social media consultant job description also involves providing clients actionable tips on how they can grow their social media channels and increase their follower count. In the end, businesses are looking to increase their website traffic, and they need an expert like you to outline the best way to get there.

People looking for a social media consultant near me want to see an experienced individual with a problem-solving mentality. Ideally, this would be someone who owns and manages their own social media channels, thereby being able to give solid advice that’s based on strategies that are proven to work. Since no two businesses are exactly alike, you’ll often need to bring your thinking hat with you and devise an inventive solution on the fly. That’s how to become a social media consultant business owners would be more than happy to hire.

The average social media consultant salary is roughly $52,000 per year. Depending on your level of experience, typical social media consultant rates can be anywhere from $15 to $120 an hour.

5. Influencer marketing jobs

If you’d like to laser-focus on finding the most relevant influencers to promote your company’s brand, look no further than influencer marketing jobs where you’ll be spending the vast majority of time identifying and establishing mutually beneficial business relationships with them.

The fact of the matter is that most small businesses simply cannot afford to pay for a promoted brand mention on social media if it were to come from a famous football player or a big-time celebrity. However, there are more than plenty of smaller influencers that won’t charge an arm and a leg for a paid post and their following also tends to be a better fit for what you’ll be promoting anyway.

An influencer marketing role involves setting the right marketing budget, managing multiple social media accounts, establishing and maintaining professional relationships, organizing the campaigns, etc. As part of the onboarding process, you’re also going to have to convince them that your products and services have merit and that their audience will love them. After all, social media influencers have a reputation to uphold, so they are unlikely to say ‘yes’ to any paid promotion deal just for the sake of making a few bucks.

On average, influencer marketing managers make around $84,000 per year.

6. Social media customer service jobs

When requiring assistance, experiencing technical difficulties, or filing a complaint, people would typically turn to one of the company’s customer service departments for help. Having the freedom to choose between multiple communication channels like live chat, e-mail, or telephone is very much industry standard, but now, being able to get in touch through Facebook or Twitter is also becoming the norm.

In turn, this has given birth to social media customer service jobs that involve helping the customer out and addressing their complaints, with the only difference being that the work is being done via social media rather than traditional customer support channels like the ones mentioned above. Keep in mind that a customer may reach out to you via a private message or even publicly on Facebook’s wall or via comments, so you’re going to have to be constantly on the lookout for new requests.

On average, a social media customer service representative makes $36,000 per year.

7. Social media manager jobs

As a social media manager, you’ll either be in charge of coming up with engaging content that fits the company’s brand or oversee the work of your team. In the case of the former, you’ll need to demonstrate an excellent command over English, be capable of doing research on the latest social media trends, as well as possess some kind of a creative talent. In the case of the latter, supporting your team members, providing direction, and possessing excellent leadership skills will look great on your social media manager resume.

Keep in mind that, as you progress through the corporate ladder, you may eventually want to consider joining the company’s in-house management crew (since senior social media management roles tend to offer a bigger salary, it’s definitely worth considering). In addition, higher-end positions may also require you to analyze various data and reports to pinpoint what’s working and what isn’t, so having an analytical mindset is certainly a plus.

As a senior social media manager, earning upwards of $80,000 per year is not off the table.

8. Social media specialist jobs

As an entry-level applicant who’s looking for social media jobs from home, you’ll most likely be applying to social media specialist job roles that involve everything from social media marketing, and all the way to content creation, scheduling, keeping the followers engaged, etc. Basically, the most cookie-cutter social media job there is.

Although your typical day will mostly look similar no matter what company you’re working for, note that there are slight differences from one industry to the next. In practice, this means that some roles may have a greater emphasis on handling customer care and support duties, while others will be more focused on keeping their followers engaged. Either way, you should get comfortable doing both, because it’s always better to have a skillset and not need it than need it and not have it.

Social media specialist jobs pay around $50,000 per year.

If the thought of being able to create content for a living sounds great to you, you should probably apply to one of these jobs. Although there are certain industry and even company-specific differences, most of these roles will require someone who can brainstorm content ideas and create marketing campaigns months in advance. The great thing is, we’re no longer in the dark ages of social media, which means there’s plenty of social media automation and scheduling solutions like Ocoya to help you on your way to becoming a social media genius.

We’ll show you how straightforward it is to use. In this example, we’ll be creating a social media post and scheduling it to go out on a later date. To get started, navigate to Ocoya’s main app page.

Schedule a new social media post with Ocoya

Find the 'Create new' section and click it.

Compose a new post with Ocoya

Populate the body of your post just like you normally would.

What do you want your social media post to be about?

Choose what social media networks you'd like it to be posted to. Ocoya can also post to multiple ones simultaneously.

Ocoya lets you choose from multiple social media channels to post to

Find the 'Schedule' button to the right and click it.

Schedule a new social media post with Ocoy

Picking the time and date that suits you.

Ocoya lets you choose any time and date you pref

Finally, schedule your post and you're done! It will go out at the exact time and date you've chosen inthe previous step.

The final step of scheduling your post with Ocoya

For those who fancy the idea of being able to spend their entire working day on social media and get paid for it, the world is ripe with numerous career and money-making opportunities, some of which are work-from-home arrangements. If you’re the type of person who enjoys interacting with others online and you happen to have a knack for brainstorming and content creation, now is a fantastic time to get your foot in the door.

Join 100,000+ businesses using Ocoya