Did you know that 64 percent of community managers work more than 40 hours each week, earning an average salary of $57,732.77?

The role of the community manager as it’s defined today is reactively new, but the history of the position can be traced back to the early days of the internet, when system operators, or “sysops”, developed, grew and managed communities online. Today, this role is often the responsibility of the social media manager, or their team, but it’s very much par for the course for Fortune 500 and other larger companies to hire one or more individuals to focus exclusively on this increasingly-important work.

Today’s community manager is likely to be female (61 percent are women, although this has dipped from 68 percent in 2011) and their average salary continues to rise, with some very lucky individuals now commanding a six figure income.

More than half (54 percent) of all CMs cite Facebook as their biggest success story, ahead of Twitter (20 percent) and LinkedIn (8 percent).

(Source: Social Fresh. Social media image via Shutterstock.)