Digital Communications Strategist

Job Title: Digital Communications Strategist

Position Status: Full time, salaried, exempt

Work Location: Negotiable within the U.S. We have an office in Washington, D.C. and are open to remote work from various geographic locations within the United States.

Posting Date: 6/8/2022

Position summary:

Free Press and Free Press Action work to amplify the voices of people and communities in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what’s actually happening in their communities. We work at the intersection of media and technology to strengthen our democracy.

The digital communications strategist works across teams to develop digital strategy for advocacy, fundraising, and messaging campaigns. This includes using digital tools to creatively reach campaign goals, and increase online engagement, growth metrics and long-term memberships. They set and meet ambitious metrics around fundraising, growth and engagement to fuel successful digital communication campaigns. They are responsible for developing and implementing winning strategies that meet or exceed our goals, supporting campaign wins on programmatic priorities and advancing data driven best practices throughout our digital communication program. They develop content for our email campaigns and other digital communications as needed and must be a strong writer.

The digital communications strategist reports to the senior digital director. This job requires flexibility in work schedule, generally aligning to U.S. East Coast business hours. This job requires evening and weekend work during peak campaign cycles or in the lead up to special events. Regular local, regional and national domestic travel is required, including to events or meetings hosted by others.

Free Press is composed of two separate organizations, Free Press and Free Press Action Fund. Both entities share the same overall mission and employees will have time assigned to one or both entities. This job description refers collectively to the two organizations under the name “Free Press.”

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead digital strategy & oversee digital campaigning: Provide digital strategy across advocacy, fundraising, and messaging campaigns. Collaboratively develop and implement winning digital strategies and campaigns across multiple channels (website, email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, etc). Identify creative opportunities to use digital communications to advance or support our campaign and programmatic priorities. Discern and advise campaign and programmatic staff when digital assets or strategies are not best suited to advance programmatic or digital goals. Lead digital communication campaigns and be in regular conversation with the campaign and program teams about what these campaigns are and when they might need more than just digital capacity.

• Content Creation: Draft, create and edit compelling content. Work with the campaign and program teams to ensure digital content is using digital best practices.

• Manage the email program: Oversee the outreach calendar, create engaging messaging arcs for our members, manage email queues, targeting, testing, sending and scheduling emails. Report on the performance of the email program and make data-informed decisions to guide digital efforts. Facilitate the daily digital huddle

• Grow our base of supporters and increase engagement. Meet annual growth and engagement benchmarks for membership, online fundraising and actions. Increase engagement among members, donors and the general public through impactful digital components

• Conduct analytics and testing: Conduct regular testing to analyze content and messaging effectiveness. Actively engage with real time data about what boosts engagement and growth, and consistently apply that knowledge to our digital campaigns. Provide regular analytic reports that indicate engagement and growth metrics, learning and impact across platforms and campaigns for the digital team. Conduct regular A/B testing and evaluate results and propose adjustments based on the data.

• Lead and learn: Keep up with the latest advocacy tech, maintain relationships in digital advocacy circles, track digital best practices and make recommendations for new tools, tests, and other innovations to Free Press’ digital program. Serve as spokesperson for Free Press, speaking to allies and at conferences about our digital campaigns and practices

• Vendor coordination: Work closely with consultants, vendors and contractors to advance digital goals, strategy and to support ongoing learning.

• Advance race equity:  Clearly and consistently articulate an understanding of racial equity and structural racism and the centrality of this analysis to the work Free Press does and how we operate. Integrate that knowledge into work projects and interactions by addressing structural implications and disproportionate impacts of policies, activities and decisions on race, class, disability, gender and other group identities within the context of job responsibilities and projects

Desired Skills and Attributes:

• Demonstrate excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills

• Expertise in a range of digital tools and tactics, with a sharp understanding about the different ways they can be leveraged in different campaign contexts to win

• Experience with ActionKit; including building mailings, pages, running reports, setting audiences and more

• Commitment to racial equity and experience working with communities of color

• Creative self-starter, able to work independently and with limited oversight to accomplish agreed upon objectives and to evaluate results

• Able to work under tight deadlines, navigate competing priorities, and effectively adjust work plans to respond to emergent challenges or opportunities

• Able to remain positive, tactful and composed under pressure

• A team player with a low-ego approach to collaboration with both internal and external colleagues

• Able to develop and maintain relationships with a wide range of external organizations

• Demonstrate excellent interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills

• Spanish language fluency is a plus

• Value and respect differences of race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, ability and socioeconomic circumstance

• Dedication to Free Press’ mission of fighting for everyone’s rights to connect and communicate, in addition to the overall success of the organization

Experience and Qualifications:

• No minimum education is required, a bachelor's or graduate level degree may be an indicator of ability with required job duties
• 3 or more years of directly relevant experience in a nonprofit public interest organization or similar setting is required
• Strong interest in media and technology issues and demonstrated experience working on those or similar issues
• Ability to work across teams and the entire organization to help problem solve, triage competing priorities, and generate ideas that will innovate existing or create new projects, campaigns, and programs
• Experience supervising employees, volunteers and interns
• Excellent digital writing skills, with the ability to condense information and convey it clearly and concisely.
• Demonstrated ability to use online tools to communicate with and motivate target groups to take action via email, text messages, social media and paid marketing.
• Enthusiasm and experience in data and testing content.
• Proficiency using Excel to compile analytics reports.
• Experience with basic HTML
• Ability to design basic digital and social media content using programs like Photoshop and/or Canva.
• Skilled in the use of common CRMs or fundraising platforms. Ability to quickly learn new tools and CRMs.
• Experience with effective use of SMS in advocacy and fundraising campaigns. Experience using Mobile Commons is preferred.
• Experience with email acquisition buys with vendors like DailyKos and Care2, and via advertising platforms such as Facebook
• Ability to train staff with varying skill levels on the use of digital tools.
• Experience liaising with colleagues in allied organizations.
• Attention to detail, flexibility and demonstrated capacity to operate in a fast-paced environment
• Must have ability to succeed in a predominately telework/remote office environment, including working with an off-site manager, adopting and maintaining strong digital security practices, and fostering connection and community with colleagues located throughout the U.S.

Covid-19 Vaccination:

All Free Press employees must be fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus or have an approved medical or religious/ethical/moral accommodation.

Compensation:

Free Press is committed to offering competitive pay and generous benefits, including group medical insurance, short- and long-term disability insurance, retirement benefits, health-reimbursement accounts and paid family leave. Annual paid time off is a total of nine weeks, including vacation, health-care leave and holidays.

We provide a home office and cell phone stipend, a computer and other needed equipment and furniture as applicable.

This position is categorized as a tier 2 manager position, in the context of five possible functional classifications at Free Press, ranging from coordinator (tier one) to executive (tier five).

The starting salary at Free Press for a digital strategist who meets the above qualifications is $73,000 - $80,000. Starting salary is based on the selected candidate’s qualifications and experience. To counter pay inequality and uphold internal parity, we use a nonnegotiable starting salary system, while benchmarking our pay to competitive markets in the nonprofit sector.

Free Press Is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

We value excellence and diversity in our workforce. People of color, women, people with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender, gender-nonconforming and formerly incarcerated individuals are strongly encouraged to apply.

If you meet some of the qualifications above, we encourage you to apply or to reach out for more information. We know groups subjected to systemic oppression– including people of color, women, people from working class backgrounds, and people who identify as LGBTQ+ – are less likely to apply unless and until they meet every requirement for a job. Therefore, we strongly encourage applications from people with these identities or who are members of other communities who are marginalized.

How to apply:

Complete our online application.  Fully answering the application questions is an important part of the application process; 4-5 sentences in response to each question will help us understand your thinking.

Our hiring process includes an initial 20-30 minute interview with one staff person, one or two hour-long interviews with 3-4 staff members, and reference checks after the final interview.

We provide reasonable accommodations for the application, interview, or any other aspect of the employee selection process to applicants with disabilities. Please email amartyn@freepress.net to request an accommodation.

Key dates:

Applications submitted by July 22, 2022 will be reviewed with priority; applications submitted after that date will be reviewed on a rolling basis.   This search will remain open until the position is filled. The ideal candidate will be available to begin work in August 2022.