Help win pitchs worth millions—for $25 an hour.

Aka, another thing wrong with this business. Check out this ad below:

NEEDED IMMEDIATELY: INTELLIGENT SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT

So when major PR firms write articles and appear at seminars talking about how PR needs to do a better job, and that they should take the lead on a brand’s social media initiative, is that job listing what they mean? When you scan the ad, it sounds great. Until you get to the bottom and see what they’re offering as compensation.

Now, I’m not trying to assign any alchemy to social media and say a only select few know how to do it properly, nor am I saying all you need is a Radian6 account and Powerpoint. But the ad points out the need to be able to do a lot of other stuff that simply having a 3-month old Twitter account won’t qualify you for.

Assuming that you were to put in a minimum of 10 hours a week, *still laughing my ass off* but okay, whatever. Their $1,000 a month divided by a 4-week average nets you basically $250 a week, or $25 an hour. While it offers additional commissions based on wins, I’m assuming it’s peanuts if all they’re offering is that monthly grand. And there’s no way that’s all the time you’ll end up spending either, not when faced with writing multiple proposals or showing up to review stuff.

There may be a few new social media metrics apps out that help anyone grab a snapshot of a brand these days, (I’m trying viralheat.com a test run this weekend in additon to having used Radian6), but so much of what goes into a proposal and pitch will not be found in the number of followers someone has on Twitter. You need to understand the core strategy behind what will work for a brand, not just whether they have a Facebook or not.

If PR wants to clean up its name, it can start by paying someone what their time is really worth. It can also leave a URL to a legit agency name. If Wieden, Crispin or Edleman can do it, there’s no excuse for any other agency in the industry to hide behind a gmail.