What are the responsibilities and job description for the Freelance Social Media Manager position at EBONY Media?
The Role
The Social Media Manager is responsible for elevating, expanding, and innovating EBONY’s digital presence across all social platforms. This individual owns strategy, execution, team leadership, and audience performance, and will play a critical role in shaping how EBONY shows up in culture every day.
The ideal candidate is digitally native, deeply fluent in multicultural storytelling, and has a proven track record of building high-engagement communities on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and emerging platforms. They understand cultural currency, audience behavior, and what it takes to scale reach and impact through intentional, authentic, and highly shareable content.
This role also requires strong video expertise, especially vertical formats, along with creative direction and on-site capture experience at events, red carpets, and cultural moments.
What You Will Do
Audience Growth and Content Strategy
The Social Media Manager is responsible for elevating, expanding, and innovating EBONY’s digital presence across all social platforms. This individual owns strategy, execution, team leadership, and audience performance, and will play a critical role in shaping how EBONY shows up in culture every day.
The ideal candidate is digitally native, deeply fluent in multicultural storytelling, and has a proven track record of building high-engagement communities on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and emerging platforms. They understand cultural currency, audience behavior, and what it takes to scale reach and impact through intentional, authentic, and highly shareable content.
This role also requires strong video expertise, especially vertical formats, along with creative direction and on-site capture experience at events, red carpets, and cultural moments.
What You Will Do
Audience Growth and Content Strategy
- Build a growth plan that increases reach, engagement, and meaningful community
- Develop daily and weekly social content that aligns with EBONY’s POV, brand identity, and cultural impact.
- Identify cultural moments, trending conversations, and opportunities to elevate EBONY’s voice.
- Collaborate across editorial, creative, and video to develop socialfirst franchises, series, and recurring content formats.
- Produce and direct vertical content at events, red carpets, photo/video shoots, and live moments.
- Review and approve social concepts, captions, and final output
- Develop with internal creative team on brand visual formats that strengthen the digital presence across platforms
- Manage and support mid level Social Media Managers
- Set standards for creative excellence, platform performance, and workflow.
- Lead daily standups, content reviews, and weekly planning processes.
- Maintain a high bar for communication, collaboration, and accountability.
- Oversees daily posting and engagement across all social platforms, including X, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIN, and Meta, ensuring consistent brand voice and performance.
- Use tools such as Sprout Social for scheduling, reporting, and publishing
- Maintain a comprehensive content calendar including planned and reactive content
- Manage comments, audience responses, and community guidelines
- Ensure content is optimized for each platform’s best practices
- Support paid social campaigns when needed
- Review analytics weekly and monthly to guide content decisions
- Identify patterns and shifts in audience behavior to strengthen performance
- Present insights and recommendations to leadership
- Work with teams across EBONY as needed to support brand activations, cover rollouts, partnerships, and major moments
- Bring digital insights into creative development and campaign planning
- Proven success scaling social presence for multicultural or culturally rooted brands, with measurable growth in followers, reach, and engagement.
- Deep fluency with major platforms (TikTok, YouTube, Meta, X, LinkedIn) and their distinct cultures, algorithms, and best practices.
- Strong experience in social video planning and execution—vertical formats, onsite capture, and creative direction.
- Demonstrated experience managing midlevel talent and supporting earlycareer creatives.
- Background in digitalfirst, creatorled, and communitycentric organizations.
- Strong analytical skills with comfort using scheduling, reporting, and insights tools.
- Excellent captioning and creative storytelling skills tailored to platform and audience.
- Experience authentically supporting Black audiences or diverse communities.
- Experience covering highprofile events, red carpets, or talent activations.
- Expertise in developing creator partnerships, influencer strategy, and platform relationship building.
- Ability to build digital franchises and recurring content formats.
- Creative vision and digital intuition.
- Leadership presence and cultural fluency.
- Strong communication and organizational skills.
- Ability to work efficiently and deliver highquality work.
- 5 years of progressive experience in social media management, digital content creation, and platform strategy (with at least 3 years in a managerial role).
- Deep expertise in major platforms and emerging social technologies.
- Demonstrated expertise with CMS platforms (WordPress and others) and a deep understanding of how SEO, metadata, and accessibility standards drive crossplatform discovery, engagement, and audience growth. Brings a socialfirst mindset and the ability to translate EBONY’s storytelling into highimpact digital experiences that lead the marketplace.
- Demonstrated experience in leading teams and building highperforming social media operations.
- Exceptional attention to detail, brand alignment, and cultural relevance in storytelling and design.
- Outstanding communication and collaboration skills, with the ability to influence and align crossfunctional teams.