Audience Engagement Producer

Position description

Are you an outgoing professional who loves storytelling through digital platforms? Do you have experience building an audience through newsletters, social media, websites and other engagement tools? Do you have a background in non-profits, newsrooms and/or other B2C industries? If yes, please read on! 

About inewsource:

inewsource is an award-winning, nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing comprehensive, data-driven journalism to the San Diego and Imperial counties. With a deep commitment to investigative reporting, inewsource shines a light on critical issues, holds institutions accountable and empowers citizens with unbiased, reliable information. The organization has built a reputation for uncovering stories that have a meaningful impact on the lives of individuals and the broader community.

Job Summary: 

As the Audience Engagement Producer, you are a critical part of our audience engagement team. As a “bridge role” in the organization, you work primarily with the editorial team, but also work regularly with the other departments in our efforts to engage audiences at all stages – from new or occasional readers to loyal supporters.

You are a local San Diego news consumer excited about the opportunity to share it broadly. You have experience collaborating with content creators and department leaders to determine the most exciting and effective ways to engage with multiple audiences. You stay up to date on social media best practices and are eager to learn and experiment with the latest successful engagement trends.  

Your top priorities are to help shape our brand identity and drive our engagement strategies for our editorial content with the goal of attracting and retaining readers. As a key part of inewsource, you’ll collaborate with reporters, editors and other audience team members to plan the best strategies for sharing our work and engaging audiences. You’ll then support the editorial team in web production and execute our plans for sharing and driving engagement with our work on the website, in emails and across our branded social media accounts, producing organic content, including video, for our platforms. 

Part of your job will also include providing the Product Manager with backup support in managing third-party vendors/partners and being a key collaborator in our organization’s efforts to increase engagement with our work throughout the community through events, pop-up newsrooms and other forms of targeted institutional marketing. 

You are creative and comfortable testing and iterating, and you understand the importance of setting reasonable, measurable goals for growth. You will collaborate with leaders across the organization to set and track success toward our audience goals. 

Key responsibilities: 

Support the editorial team directly as they publish stories and special projects by:

• Providing timely web production, technical and other support through publication. 

• Collaborating with the team to design, then execute engagement strategies for each story or project with specific audiences in mind, including plans for outreach to potential audiences before and after publication.

• Designing social media content and posting on branded accounts for each story and project. Follow through by monitoring comments and engaging with readers, whether responding directly yourself or bringing comments to the attention of editors/reporters when appropriate for them to respond.

• Helping editors prioritize file photo requests and assess needs for additional visual assets, including illustrations from our staff cartoonist/illustrator. With editors, enlist visual journalists and reporters to gather needed materials such as cell phone video and photos. 

• Collaborating with reporters and editors on building backout schedules that define expectations for deliverables for team members and assist editors in managing publication workflows toward backout schedule goals.

Support the organization directly by:

• Working collaboratively with various departments, designing and posting creative social media content promoting our journalism, events, milestones and more to drive engagement with our work, grow our brand identity and encourage reader retention and conversion to supporters. This includes writing copy for and designing audience growth campaigns, such as newsletter widgets and website pop-up campaigns. 

• Work collaboratively with senior leaders to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) and performance goals to evaluate and optimize the effectiveness of our content and audience engagement strategies.

• Work with the Product Manager to produce periodic insight reports to offer editorial and other departments insights on campaign, product and content strategies. 

• Ensure all content is consistent and optimized for search and user experience across all platforms.

●   Coordinate with the Product Manager to execute special project tasks such as building custom landing pages and coordinating with design vendors on marketing/outreach materials.  

●   Create and post organic content relevant to our news coverage to build and drive engagement across social and native channels. 

• Assist the Product Manager in managing 3rd party product partnerships ensuring support, functionality and implementation. (Wordpress, Newspack, etc.) 

Required skills: 

• A deep interest and fluency in social media, including how different social media platforms work and can be leveraged to target audiences and drive engagement.

• Experience executing successful audience engagement and growth campaigns, for example, building a subscriber or membership base or increasing traffic to a website, followers on social media and the number of shares or comments. 

• Some graphic design skills and experience designing creative posts with text, images and video directly on the platforms themselves or using tools such as Canva or other design tools. We use the Adobe suite. 

• Excellent oral and written communication skills, including the ability to write for different audiences across platforms and for different purposes, such as newsletters promoting our journalism and other programs and appeals to donors and readers that appear on social media or on the website.

• A deep interest in accountability journalism and a desire to understand and connect with audiences that journalism serves. An unfailing commitment to accurate, fact-based, unbiased reporting.

• A willingness to collaborate and seek meaningful input from colleagues on your work. Yet, the ability to be a self-starter and self-manage workday and flow.

Bonus skills, but not required: 

• We work in Newspack, a Wordpress-based content management system. Experience working in a CMS, including an understanding of basic html and plugins, is helpful but not necessary. We will train you.

• Experience building audiences for local newsrooms or public service organizations that serve local communities.

• Familiarity with analytics tools, Google Analytics, Parse.ly, Chartbeat, etc. and the use of them in newsrooms to measure success toward goals. 

• Experience editing audio and/or video. 

Who you’d be working with:

inewsource is a newsroom that has spent the last 14 years dedicated to holding public leaders accountable, watching out for taxpayer money, provoking a search for solutions to governmental and societal problems, and strengthening democracy in our region. Our content is published on the web, aired on radio and sometimes TV.

Right now, we are a team of 18 people, including full-time reporters, editors and a handful of people on the business side. You would work with all departments to promote our news content and our brand identity in an impactful and engaging way to our readers and donors. 

What we’ll give you:

We pay a wage that’s commensurate with your experience and competitive with other similar job descriptions. We have a range of benefits, including health, dental, vision and life insurance for you and dependents, matching 401K, vacation, sick leave, holidays, professional development stipend and more.

Our goal is to serve our community and meet our mission everyday and that means helping you do your best work in a place that makes you feel welcome and valued.

Posting Date: March 12, 2024

Deadline to apply: April 9, 2024– but applications are being reviewed on a rolling basis. We recommend you apply early.

Location: San Diego, CA 

This position is full-time and based in San Diego. We have a hybrid workplace; This role will be a combination of “in the field” work, WFH, and in-office collaboration at our downtown location.

Application instructions

Please be sure to indicate you saw this position on tendersglobal.net