Social strategist (12 month maternity cover)

Closing date: 20th May 2025

Salary: Basic salary starting at £43,094.00 dependent on experience

Reports to: Senior content strategist

Department: 4Studio

Team: Channel Team

Job Grade: P1

Location: Leeds/Manchester

Craft publishing and content strategies that define, elevate and consistently innovate Channel 4's programming across social media platforms, from YouTube and Tiktok to Instagram and Snapchat.

4Studio is the driving force behind C4’s digital acceleration strategy, with the objective to create, adapt and distribute brilliant content across our social and digital channels, building engaged audiences that deliver digital views at scale. Channel 4 is a world class entertainment brand. The Social team within 4Studio is responsible for further building our world class social media presence.

We are looking for industry-leading Social Strategists to help us achieve our objective; you will be the key conduit between your Channel Team to Press to Sales and beyond, you’ll use data and editorial insight to help drive key decision-making around how our output lives and breathe across all social platforms. You will work across a portfolio of themed accounts across multiple social platforms, including, but not limited to, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Snapchat.

Working as part of a team which includes Social Media Managers and Social Producer/Editors as well as alongside Analysts, you will craft publishing and content strategies that define, elevate and consistently innovate our programming across social. You’ll be able to conceptualise and then articulate bold and cohesive social strategies, and get a kick from thinking over doing.

From using platform-specific insight to help super-serve existing audiences as well as identifying new ones, through to identifying opportunities for digital extensions of our TV shows (spin-off series, companion pieces etc) and advising on digital-first original series and branded content opportunities, you’ll advise the Senior Content Strategist on what we should and shouldn’t do to ensure our content is consumed by the biggest and most engaged audiences possible.

Key responsibilities

Defining content and publishing strategies

• You will be responsible for developing, implementing and managing data- and editorially-led strategies for our TV shows, across multiple platforms. From the volume of content to produce, through to what platforms it should appear on and why, you’ll be the bastion of social knowledge for your social accounts.
• Working closely with your Senior Content Strategist and our Production Hub, you’ll devise strategies for your specific social accounts that are in line with 4Studio objectives – constructing comprehensive plans for output and giving recommendations to the Senior Content Strategist around when and recommend where to deploy additional resource, when and how to work with Production Partner and Talent accounts and if certain activity would be eligible for strategic paid support.
• You’ll be responsible for crafting clear, strategic briefs for every social account within your remit, working out the best way to ensure the accounts hit their KPIs.
• You will often serve as your team’s representative at cross-business kick-off meetings, responsible for convincing the Senior Content Strategist and fellow team members on strategic rationale behind distribution platforms and content focuses.
• You will need to be able to understand the different brand purposes, tones and behaviours of Channel 4, E4 and their shows.
• You’ll be ahead of the curve when it comes to social media trends, platforms/products/tools and content innovation, and adept at working with analysts and community managers to assess the landscape, perform competitor analysis, utilise social listening tools, and ensure our accounts are always one step ahead of the competition.
• You’ll be responsible for agreeing and communicating social best practice across the business

Autonomy & judgement

• You will be given a large degree of autonomy and you’ll be expected to recommend key strategic decisions to the Senior Content Strategist.
• We are a multi-city business: you need to be confident and assured working in a small team physically, but electronically feeding into the wider team with all key updates.
• You will need to be able to use data to feed insights back to key stakeholders.
• Lead innovation.
• We want to be seen as a cutting-edge brand. You will be at the vanguard of social innovation, establishing close relationships with our platform partners, networking at key industry events, and constantly identifying new ways to evolve our presence on social media.

Promote diversity

• Our target audience is diverse and Channel 4 exists to promote diversity. You will need to be empathetic towards a variety of audiences and understand how to connect with them in ways that feel natural to them.

People skills

• You will be required to manage the sometimes competing demands of key stakeholders. Cool under pressure and excellent powers of persuasion are required.
• You will need to be able to explain both problems and solutions in layman’s terms.
• This will be important when “managing upwards”.

Measurement & reporting

• You will be required to work with Analysts and Social Media Managers to produce regular updates for your Senior Content Strategist that will be shared with senior management and the executive team.
• You will work closely with Social Analysts and Social Media Managers to use data and historical performance to inform all new insights-driven strategies, and provide comprehensive wrap-up reporting on a campaign basis.
• You’ll serve as the key conduit to Consumer & Insights to experiment with new qualitative and quantitative audience insights tools and methodologies, familiar with and excited by using social listening, publishing, and competitor-based tools.
• Whether something has gone well or badly, you will be required to learn lessons from what has been done and be able to apply those lessons, so we keep on improving.

Knowledge, skills and experience

• Demonstrate excellent experience in the ability to devise impactful strategies whilst inspiring and taking others on the journey to enable streamlined workflow and empower their sense of shared success.
• Demonstrate excellent experience of using insights (both data-driven and editorial) to affect content and revenue success across social platforms.
• Demonstrate excellent experience in utilising social measurement, reporting and competitor analysis tools to identify and super-serve audiences (preferably for organic and paid campaigns).
• Demonstrate multiple times you have convinced key and senior stakeholders to embrace content innovation, adapt content/publishing strategies, and seen tangible success as a result.
• Demonstrate strong experience working across a broad content spectrum – Channel 4 and E4 have diversity of content and audiences at their heart.

Conditions

• 4Studio is a fast-paced environment and we adapt our priorities and strategies. In line with various internal and external factors, so whilst the accounts referred to are specific to this role currently, they are subject to change should the business require a change in strategic focus.
• While we embrace agile working, you will be primarily expected to work from the office 60% of the working week. There may occasionally be some out of hours working.
• You will be eligible for all Channel 4’s employee Benefits.

More on the Social Team

• Mission – distribute extraordinary, engaging diverse content that delivers massive and tangible results, and grabs communities across the spectrum... and enjoy doing it
• You will find yourself at home in the team if you like the sound of doing the following…
  • Keep on talking to each other (plus have weekly 1-2-1 and team meetings)
  • Very collaborative to make things bigger and better (but not making decisions by committee)
  • Keep it simple (do a few great ideas really well)
  • Be brave and ambitious
  • Keep focussed on what we are trying to achieve
  • Move quickly
  • Be really honest (about the work we are doing and how you feel)
  • Create a supportive, encouraging environment

Hybrid working

From September 2023 employees will be working minimum 3 days per week in their office location. The other 2 days should be working from home. This is to create more time for collaboration, creativity, learning and feedback. We also have a working from another location policy for up to 10 days. This pattern is subject to future changes which would be communicated in advance to provide employees with adequate notice of any change. If you need any additional support or workplace adjustments upon joining, please speak with your manager or our workplace disability lead.

We welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.

Please state in your application that you found this role through Creative Access.