Senior Social Media Manager
Location: Arlington, VASchedule: Onsite Mon – Thurs, remote Fri
RELO NOT OFFERED
social + editorial + audience development + growth.
This person needs to understand how to take journalism and turn it into platform-native content that ultimately drives audience growth, site traffic, newsletter acquisition and subscriptions.
We are seeking a strategic, creative, and data-driven Senior Social Media Manager to grow our digital audience and strengthen engagement across social platforms. This full-time role will lead organic social strategy, transform editorial work into compelling platform-native content, and connect social activity to meaningful outcomes including website traffic, newsletter growth, and subscriptions.
The ideal candidate combines strong editorial instincts with a growth mindset and a demonstrated ability to build audiences in a fast-paced publishing environment.
Key Responsibilities
- Develop and lead an organic social media strategy across priority platforms.
- Expand reach among new audiences while deepening engagement with existing readers, subscribers, and followers.
- Translate journalism, analysis, podcasts, video, and newsletters into timely, high-performing social content.
- Create clear pathways from social platforms to the website, newsletters, podcasts, and subscription products.
- Partner with editorial, creative, growth, and marketing teams to align social programming with acquisition, conversion, retention, and revenue goals.
- Manage daily publishing calendars, platform-specific messaging, community engagement, and breaking-news coverage.
- Identify opportunities for short-form video, graphics, clips, live coverage, and other social-first formats.
- Monitor platform trends, algorithm changes, cultural conversations, and competitor activity to inform strategy.
- Establish, track, and report on KPIs including reach, engagement, referral traffic, newsletter acquisition, and subscription conversion.
- Use analytics and testing to optimize content formats, headlines, posting cadence, calls to action, and audience targeting.
- Maintain editorial standards, voice, and brand integrity across all social channels.
- Collaborate with paid media partners to identify opportunities for organic and paid social efforts to reinforce one another.
What We’re Looking For
- 5+ years of experience in social media, audience development, digital publishing, growth marketing, journalism, politics, or a related field.
- Demonstrated success growing audiences through organic social media and translating performance into measurable business results.
- Strong knowledge of major social platforms, evolving algorithms, audience behavior, and platform-native content formats.
- Excellent writing, editing, headline-writing, and editorial judgment.
- Experience working in news, media, politics, public affairs, or another fast-moving content environment.
- Comfort analyzing performance data and using insights to make strategic decisions.
- Experience developing or managing short-form video, graphics, and other visual social content.
- Ability to manage competing priorities, respond to breaking news, and collaborate effectively across teams.
- A highly organized, analytical, experimental, and results-oriented approach.
