How Much Does Social Media Management Cost in 2024?

Social media is the new normal in today’s world. We can always debate how bad too much social media exposure can be for everyone. While most people hop on social media platforms to connect with friends, watch news, and check out viral content, some just sign up out of FOMO.

Social media has become an important source of attention and website traffic for businesses and individuals. Since all social media platforms are free to use, there is a social media management cost that businesses and experts have to pay.

Brands, influencers, entrepreneurs, and bloggers pay for social media content and social scheduling tools, hire social media VAs, and run social media ad campaigns – it all adds up to the social media management cost.

Let’s dive deep into this.

Significance of social media management

Before we get to the social media management practices and the costs involved in the process, it’s vital to comprehend why it’s so crucial to pay attention to social media management. Let’s do this:

Streamline social media content publishing

Social media management comes in handy when you want to post social media content regularly or you want to get more followers. Proper social media planning includes a strategy, a content calendar, and an effective social media management tool.

There is a ton of help available on the web to establish a social media content plan. Check out the social media content calendar for ready-made social media posts for the whole year.

It will significantly improve your social media management as you’ll be well-equipped for social media publishing at scale.

Get a competitive edge over the competition

One of the reasons why it’s essential to set up a social media management system for a business or organization is that it provides you with a competitive edge over the competition.

Most businesses don’t bother establishing a social media management strategy. No wonder they remain unable to post social media content consistently. Moreover, they lose attention, engagement, and clickability.

The easiest way to get a competitive edge over competition on social media is to engage. Just try to have simple yet effective communication. Here’s an example:

A social media user on X (formerly Twitter) mentioned ContentStudio, and the team at ContentStudio responded with a “thank you” tweet. It provided both parties a chance to get to know each other and start a meaningful relationship.

Related Read: Engagement Hacks On Social Media Platforms

Stay relevant in a fast-paced world

Social media management becomes crucial to your digital marketing campaign. It’s pretty much impossible to log in to your three to four social media platforms and post content daily.

Building an automated social media scheduling and publishing system does wonders. It’ll be possible when you pay attention to social media management. Once you develop a social media content publishing regime, you’ll stay relevant in the fast-paced social media world.

Getting second thoughts on building systems? Here’s the validation:

Matt Gray talked about the very thing in his tweet. He is a successful entrepreneur and CEO of Founder OS.

What do social media management services include?

Several social media jobs fall under the social media management services. Brands, influencers, and agencies pay attention to these services and hire experts in these areas all the time. Let’s explore those services:

Graphics/image designing: Almost all social media platforms require engaging and attractive social media images, for instance, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Social media imagery is crucial to putting out social media content. Any social media marketing campaign would be incomplete without designing compelling and creative social media images.

To pull off social media management for clients, you must hone in on graphics designing or hire a graphics designing expert to create highly effective social media images for different social media platforms. A graphics designer would cost you somewhere between $25 to $150 per hour.

Also, here are the 11 best online tools to create social media graphics for you to check out!

Video content editing: Video editing isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. One must be passionate about video editing or making YouTube videos to become a skillful video editor.

Furthermore, there are a variety of software, such as Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, iMovie, Filmora, and DaVinci Resolve – the video editor must be an expert in any of these software to do the job.

A talented video editor can turn out to be a great resource for a social media management team. Plus, you can hire someone between $50 to $150 per hour, depending upon the quality and expertise.

P.S. Heard about AI-Powered Video Marketing?

Social media marketing: One of the important social media management services is social media marketing. Usually, brands and agencies hire social media managers to oversee their social media content team and ensure that the social media content publishing continuous without any issue.

Social media managers are responsible for collaborating with content creators and providing a seamless content publishing environment. Their job is to publish or schedule the social content, keep track of the social media content performance, and engage with the followers to assist.

Often, social media managers hire social media VAs to scale content creation and distribution.

Social media management costs range between $35 to $350 per hour, depending on expertise, experience, and creativity.

Related Read: 10 Must-Have Tools for Social Media Managers and Businesses

Content writing and SEO: Content writers and SEO experts work side-by-side. However, they’re more on the content marketing and SEO side of the business, but they also closely work with the social media marketing team.

It’s essential to keep in touch with the social media team and other content creators to better understand the gist of the project.

The content writing cost depends on the model you choose. Typically, content writers charge somewhere between $250 to $399 per article.

Also Read: An Ultimate Guide to SaaS SEO in 2024

These are some of the common social media management roles and services that are crucial to a successful social media marketing campaign.

Social media management pricing in 2024

Social media management pricing may vary from business to business. It comes down to the content quality, expertise level, scale of content production, and affordability.

It’s crystal clear that the more you put in the effort, money, and sweat into social media marketing, the better results you’re likely to see unless you make disastrous mistakes in your social media content strategy.

Let us give you an estimated social media management pricing for different business entities. However, feel free to reach out to a social media marketing agency for the current pricing.

• For entrepreneurs: Entrepreneurs are mostly personal brands that operate as a one-man army. So, they can get a social media management tool (like ContentStudio) that would cost them between $25 to $29 per month. Moreover, an online graphics designing tool like Canva would cost them $7 per month. Now you can do the math!
• For startups: Startups usually don’t have a large team. The founders usually do the heavy lifting. However, if a startup can afford to bring a freelance social media manager or content creator on board, then it’s a huge plus. They would need a social media scheduling tool that would cost them somewhere between $25 to $29 per month and an online image maker that cost them at least $7 per month. Lastly, they’d have to pay the freelance content expert/social media manager, who may charge between $250 to $500 per month.
• For small businesses: Small businesses are always keen on cutting down on their expenses. Their cost might be slightly more than a startup. Small businesses are also keen on bringing freelance staff on board so that they don’t have to pay salaries when they don’t need the services. Small businesses might have to pay somewhere between $39 to $49 for a social media scheduling tool, between $5 to $10 for invoicing software, $7 for an online image maker, and between $500 to $1000 for articles and social media content.
• For agencies: Social media marketing agencies or content writing agencies have to spend a lot of money on salaries, social media marketing, and paid ads. Since they’re managing social media accounts and content publishing for clients, it’s unfair to compare their social media posts with startups or small businesses. The rough idea is that the agencies might be spending somewhere between $10,000 to $50,000 per month or even more on social media management.

Social media management prices change over time. Plus, the biggest pricing variables are experience, expertise, and quality – you can’t compare a beginner social media manager with someone who has a 10-year of experience in the field.

Top 7 tools for social media management in 2024

Social media management is incomplete without a powerful yet effective social media dashboard. Let’s explore some of the best social media management tools:

1. ContentStudio

ContentStudio is a state-of-the-art social media management software for brands, small businesses, marketers, and agencies. It provides users access to a complete social media marketing suite to skyrocket their social media reach. ContentStudio is an excellent tool for brands, bloggers, influencers, and agencies to publish, schedule, discover, plan, approve, and analyze content. Sign up for a 14-day free trial and experience a suite of features.

Features

• Social media scheduling
• Social content calendar
• AI writer (for hashtags, images, and captions)
• Workspace
• Influencer discovery
• Social media analytics
• Approval workflow

Pricing

The starter plan costs $25 per month, the Pro plan costs $49 per month, and the agency plan is priced at $99 per month.

2. Replug

Replug is an all-in-one URL shortener tool that comes with several link management features. Besides URL shortening, this tool has to offer a wide range of URL management features to boost your link strategy. Powerful URL management comes in handy in email marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising. Try the 14-day free trial!

Features

• URL shortening
• Bio links
• UTM parameters
• Deep linking
• A/B testing
• QR codes
• Retargeting

Pricing

The pricing plans start at $19 per month and go up to $79 per month

3. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is an advanced social media content analysis tool that provides insights into content popularity by analyzing different engagement signals across different social media platforms. This tool is known for its effective research, monitoring, and discovery of the brand’s popularity across social media. They offer a 30-day free trial.

Features

• Understanding content popularity
• Finding influencers
• Content discovery
• Niche research
• Outreach and pitching

Pricing

The pricing plans start at $199 per month.

4. Hashtagify

Hashtagify is a useful tool for social media users to analyze and track the effectiveness of social media hashtags. It provides users with an analysis of the popularity of a hashtag. It’s a great source for finding, identifying, and analyzing the top trending hashtags of the industry so that they can be used in social media content. This tool gathers intelligence on a hashtag’s popularity and reports back to the user.

Features

• Twitter hashtags
• Twitter account tracking
• Discover related hashtags
• Analyze the top tweeters
• Showcase top trends on social media
• Visual analytics reporting

Pricing

The pricing plans start at $29 per month.

5. Canva

Canva is an excellent image-designing and video-making tool that offers a wide range of image-designing options. Users can create social media images, banners, and covers for almost every major social media platform. Moreover, now Canva lets users create customizable videos for social media platforms.

Features

• Easy-to-use interface
• A whole heap of templates
• Thousands of graphics elements and photos
• Dozens of graphics design tools
• Bulk publishing for videos and images
• Seamless integration with other tools

Price

Canva does have a free plan to use. However, the Canva Pro plan costs $6.49 per month (for one person), and the Canva for Teams plan costs $12.99 per month (for the first five persons).

6. Biteable

Biteable is a powerful online video maker that allows marketers, bloggers, and agencies to create engaging, creative, and customizable videos. There are dozens of templates available to use that speed up the video creation software. Creating marketing videos, HR presentations, sales reports, operational briefings, and educational video content has never been this easy.

Features

• Drag and drop
• No editing skills required
• Collaborate with other tools
• Hundreds of pre-designed templates
• Dozens of video conversion and AI-powered tools

Price

The pro plan costs $99 per month, and the Premium plan costs $199 per month.

7. Restream

Restream is a popular live stream tool that lets users live stream across different social media channels simultaneously. The best part about this live streaming software is that it can live stream content to over 30 platforms. Since the live-stream feature is available on almost every major social media platform, this cutting-edge live-streaming technology can boost your social media campaign.

Features

• Studio dashboard
• Upload to live stream
• Multiple stream destinations
• Live stream chats
• 30+ social channels supported

Pricing

The free plan costs $0, and the paid plans start at $16 per month and go up to $249 per month.

Wrapping Up

The social media management cost does depend on the scale you’re working on or the size of the business you have. For instance, a company with multiple branches across the country and 50+ employees all over the company might have a different budget, strategies, and resource allocation as compared to a two-person startup.

A lot of entrepreneurs hire social media managers to manage all social media tasks, whereas small businesses rely on freelance social media managers to cut down on their costs. Eventually, it comes down to what suits you financially.

We tried to give you a brief overview of what to expect when it comes to social media management pricing. However, social media marketing rates vary from market to market. So, don’t rush into any decision before doing the due diligence.

FAQs about social media management cost

How much does a social media manager charge?

The charges of a social media manager depend on the experience, expertise, and quality, but as a general rule of thumb, the charges are between $35 to $350. Most experienced social media managers with a great track record charge more than beginner and intermediate-level social media managers.

What is the standard rate for social media management?

Social media management usually costs $20 to $50 per hour on average. However, it depends on the services you’re getting. Most experts bracket social media pricing between $35 to $350 per hour. It comes down to the offering, service quality, and past campaign experience.

What are the skills required for social media management?

A social media manager must first understand how social media works. Generally, skills required for social media management are social media content publishing and scheduling, social media content tracking, graphics designing, social media paid ads, community building, and team management.

Is social media management easy?

Social media management can be fun if you’re passionate about social media growth, tactics, and content. Otherwise, it could easily become an overwhelming job for someone who doesn’t have an interest in social media.