Digital Content Director, ParentsTogether (Anywhere in the U.S.) -- $65-80k/year
Matt Lockshin
This role would be a great fit for a metrics-driven digital storyteller with keen editorial judgment who'd be passionate about dreaming up and planning an inspiring, effective stream of content to support parents of children ages 0-5.
Job Opportunity: Digital Content Director (Flexible Location)
Drive early childhood content for a creative, new parent media platform; run rapid experiments that grow our community of parents
WHO WE ARE
ParentsTogether is a start-up social change organization, formed four years ago to support diverse parents and drive progressive, family-friendly policy change.
We use a “functional organizing” model. First, we provide creative and thoughtful parenting resources via SMS and Facebook Messenger bots that address daily parenting challenges and help people become better, happier parents. Then, we use those same messaging channels to mobilize parents and folks in their social networks to take action on urgent issues.
As a national association, our goal is to engage millions of parents to protect and improve public education, fight for affordable childcare, defend kids’ healthcare, and stop cruel anti-family immigration policies. Over time, we hope to create a self-sustaining funding model, where we generate revenue from our mobile content via ads, contributions, and brand partnerships.
Our strategy is based on lean startup principles. We try out ideas quickly, see what works, and iterate.
As a team, we are collaborative and generally solve challenges together. We have a positive, low-ego, low-drama work culture. All of us love our work and are driven to help this new organization succeed.
ABOUT THE POSITION
A year ago, ParentsTogether shifted our strategy to multi-channel mobile messaging, focusing primarily on SMS and Facebook Messenger bots.
Since then, our small but mighty team has built a diverse 250,000-member community by offering a compelling mix of advocacy and parenting content, including parenting information and support (check out some samples here). We currently offer three primary verticals of parenting content: 1) Q4KIDZ – creative questions for elementary age kids; 2) Bilingual Kids – resources for families raising children in English and Spanish, and 3) Simple Parenting – support and information for parents with children under the age of five.
During this time, we’ve learned a ton about how (and when) to reach parents via SMS and Messenger, and how to support them with relevant, easily-consumable content.
But there’s still a lot we don’t know, and millions of parents we’re not reaching. We need more capacity, so as our third hire for the content team, we’re bringing on the Digital Content Director to lead our early childhood editorial and content strategy. Our goal is to create amazing parenting content (especially aimed at parents of young children) and grow this vertical of our parent community to scale.
Are you a digital storyteller with keen editorial judgment and a passion for supporting parents? Do you have the ability to dream up and plan an inspiring, effective stream of parenting content? Are you a driven, accountable self-starter who can run experiments and use a data-driven approach to engage and grow an audience? Then read on!
RESPONSIBILITIES
In this role, you’ll focus on using a data-driven, experiment-oriented approach to developing a robust stream of parenting content for our early childhood vertical that helps grow our subscriber base to scale. This includes the following areas of focus:
- Strategy: Work with the Co-Director to design and implement our overall content and editorial strategies for our parent audience, especially parents of children 0-5 years old.
- Editorial Direction: Come up with editorial calendars and great on-brand ideas to engage parents with useful, engaging, actionable, and highly shareable content. Ensure our parenting content matches our organizational voice and tone.
- Content Management and Curation: Establish workflow for requesting, creating, testing, editing, reviewing, staging, publishing, and repurposing content developed by ParentsTogether and partner organizations. And make sure that all our early childhood content is expressed in a voice and format that fits the SMS or Messenger mediums.
- Running Acquisition, Engagement, and Retention Experiments: Gather, analyze and interpret marketing and audience engagement data to speed our learning and growth. Answer key questions like: What are the most cost-effective ways to acquire new parents? What kind of content has the strongest uptake? What community engagement strategies drive retention? What frequency and formats keep our audience engaged and subscribed?
- Customer Discovery/Audience Research: Conduct customer discovery interviews and surveys with diverse parents, including (but not limited to) current parent subscribers.
- Creative Use of Tech: Come up with new ways to leverage the unique features of Messenger and SMS to reach and support parents. And keep abreast of audience and platform trends to get ahead of what’s next.
QUALIFICATIONS
You might be a great fit for this role if you have:
- Advanced expertise with digital media platforms, including digital content creation.
- The ability to dream up and plan an inspiring, effective stream of parenting content.
- The ability to a) identify critical questions regarding a product model, b) design and run experiments to validate hypotheses about what strategy works best, c) isolate the key results and learnings, and d) apply them.
- An analytical mindset – you don’t need to be a data scientist, but you do need to understand how to measure and analyze data in order to evaluate audience growth and content performance.
- A talent for writing in a compelling voice on Messenger and other social/mobile channels.
- The aptitude to quickly figure out tech platforms or web apps (a technical/coding background is not required, but you should be able to quickly learn new tools, and you can’t be allergic to technology).
- Strong attention to detail and great project management skills, and generally have an awesome ability to make s*** happen.
- A creative streak and deep curiosity about how to take our work to the next level, and excitement to try new things to figure it out.
- An entrepreneurial spirit: You’re an exceptional problem solver who is thoughtful and has a bias towards action.
- A passion for, and understanding of, parenting issues.
While not required, a strong candidate might have one or more of the following:
- Experience leading and managing innovative content marketing programs.
- A deep understanding of customer acquisition via social media advertising and viral marketing.
- A track record of scaling a digital product, building a loyal and engaged audience of tens of thousands of users.
- Corporate experience working in the parent consumer market, or health care or nonprofit experience working with parent populations.
POSITION DETAILS
This is a salaried, full-time position – with a flexible location.
The salary range is $65,000 – $80,000 depending on experience.
ParentsTogether is deeply committed to building a sustainable and family-friendly work culture, where we all feel supported given other obligations in our lives.
We have a virtual workplace, which gives us lots of flexibility, and this role can be done from anywhere in the U.S. While we all overlap during East Coast midday hours on key days of the week, many of us shift our work schedule around based on the rest of our lives. For example, team members routinely go offline because they have a personal appointment or a parent-teacher meeting.
The benefits package includes health insurance (with cost-share for dependents), three weeks of vacation (plus the week between Christmas and New Years off), sick leave, retirement match after one year, and a FSA account. This position is considered exempt for overtime purposes.
HOW TO APPLY
Application Deadline: Sunday, May 13, 2018 at 11:59pm Pacific Time.
If you’re interested, please submit the information below as a single document here.
Your application packet should include your resume and a cover letter that answers the two questions below. In addition, feel free to attach a snapshot of your writing (two pages or less).
Questions for your cover letter (thank you for not exceeding two pages):
- What do you see as some of the greatest challenges facing parents today? How would your previous experience contribute to your ability to develop compelling digital content that supports parents in their day-to-day needs?
- Tell us about a time you had a new idea (for a content stream, digital or media product, an initiative aimed at serving parents or families, etc.), and you iterated to develop it from concept to implementation. Please describe a bit about the idea, and explain how you experimented to test your idea, any pivots you made, and what you learned from the experience.
At ParentsTogether, we have an intersectional analysis and believe that building a multiracial, cross-class parent movement is non-negotiable. We are actively working to build a diverse team and people of color, people from poor and working class backgrounds, LGBTQ folks, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply. We are an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate based upon gender, race, national origin, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, or gender expression.