Audience Lead

FERN, an award-winning nonprofit news organization, has been producing independent journalism at the intersection of food, agriculture, and the environment for fifteen years. Today, FERN is prioritizing its connections to readers, viewers, and listeners who want to engage with our content. 

We are currently seeking our first Audience Lead to be an integral part of FERN’s ambitious transformation of its audience efforts. In recent years, FERN has committed to finding audiences for its work in multiple formats — text, audio, and video, often in combination — and engaging with the public on social media in ways that support community. Our multiformat strategy has dramatically changed how we approach the distribution of our work online, and we are looking for ways to innovate, bringing our journalism to people who want it, in the ways that they want it.

The Audience Lead will help focus those efforts across social media, newsletters, podcasts, and beyond, as we establish, adapt, and execute a strategy that will meet FERN’s goals for audience growth, story promotion, and fundraising. We’re looking for someone who is both a strategic thinker — who understands branding, marketing, and where audiences are now, what they want, and where they’re shifting to — and a hands-on executor who loves creating content. We want someone who is fluent in digital content and obsessed with best practices on social platforms, keeping ahead of the curve as they change.

Responsibilities

• Manage the strategy, creation, and scheduling of social media content
• Manage the strategy, creation, and scheduling of email newsletters
• Collaborate with FERN partners, journalists, and other organizations to increase visibility for stories
• Work with leadership to establish, monitor, and continually evaluate FERN’s audience goals
• Establish KPIs defining desired audience metrics
• Track, produce, interpret, and present actionable audience analytics
• Manage and develop FERN’s journalistic impact tracking system
• Collaborate with team members to identify and reach new audiences
• Lead regular audience impact meetings to report progress and to discuss strategic adjustments
• Vet new technology as it relates to audience growth and distribution, including testing technology and platforms that will help FERN increase audience impact

Requirements

• 4 years in social media, in increasingly senior roles
• Experience building an engaged audience through newsletters, social media distribution platforms, and events
• An understanding of and enthusiasm for internet culture and communities, as well as the ability to write in a clear, engaging way
• Proficient with video production and editing for social media
• Proficient with GA4, MailChimp, and social media management platforms

Preferred

• Experience at a media organization or nonprofit
• Experience with corporate marketing and branding
• A journalism background is a plus but is not required
• Understands audience data and how to use it to communicate impact and trends to staff and potential donors
• Experience or familiarity with best practices for email marketing
• Has more ideas than can possibly be executed
• Experience in a remote work environment

This is a full-time (5 days, 40-hr work week) fully remote position with benefits. You will report to FERN’s editor-in-chief. FERN is a virtual organization and the FERN team is predominantly based in the Eastern Time zone. Internationally based applicants will not be considered.

Salary: $70,000–$80,000, commensurate with experience

FERN believes a diverse, open and inclusive environment is essential, and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law.