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I'm looking to hire a experienced professional on a part-time contact basis to manage the online marketing of my smartphone app. Our focus will be social media. I've found many qualified people on Elance.com but their salary requirements are anywhere from $25 to $100 per hour. I don't want to cheap out but I don't want to overpay either. I am a small business with currently limited resources but lots of potential.

What does a good social media contractor earn these days? Duties will include:

  • Reaching out to influencers and creating a positive impression of our product
  • Building a base of relevant followers on Facebook, Twitter and email
  • Gathering as much user feedback as possible to help direct our development path
  • Generating useful, relevant content for our social accounts, blog and mailing list
  • Developing and managing promotional campaigns

Thanks in advance...

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You seem to be making the common mistake of confusing efforts with results.

If Bill Gates were to stand up at SXSW and say "I just discovered this great new app for my smartphone that I just couldn't live without." what would it be worth to you? Now if you met a marketing guy in the elevator and he said "I'm good friends with Bill, I can get him to pitch it at SWSX with a 5 minute phone call" would you say "Lets see, 5 min is 1/12 of an hour and the top guys get $100 per hour so I guess I could pay you $8.33 to do that?

If someone claims they can get a key influencer to blog about your product, ask to see their track record. What have the got someone like David Pogue of the New Your Times to review?

Measuring the effectiveness of a social media campaign is not rocket science or black magic. Setup compensation based upon proven results, not efforts. For example offer to pay so much per positive mention in a major publication like Huffington Post, New Your Times for example. The list of publications should be the list that is important to you. (You have put together a list of key influencers and publications you wish to target haven't you?)

You will quickly separate out the wanna-be applicants from those that can truly bring the heat.

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Great insight. Thanks. – Barry Fruitman Mar 17 '12 at 18:13

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