Executive Director, Audience Development & Content Strategy

Responsibilities

• Lead audience development and social promotion efforts in a fast-paced, digital newsroom publishing dozens of stories daily, in addition to bespoke newsletters, podcasts, and vertical video products.
• Partner with editorial leaders to drive subscriber growth and identify opportunities to convert engaged readers into paying subscribers and deepen engagement among existing subscribers.
• Develop and optimize subscriber-focused editorial experiences , including subscriber-only newsletters, exclusive content and programming, and other premium benefits designed to strengthen WIRED’s value proposition.
• Build strategies for growing direct relationships with WIRED’s most engaged audiences across newsletters, the WIRED app, podcasts, events, and other owned platforms, with an emphasis on increasing loyalty, frequency, and subscriber value.
• Provide high-level audience development strategies and guidance for WIRED across the website and app , and off-platform destinations like TikTok and Instagram. Consistently iterate on these strategies to ensure that WIRED meets its KPIs across global editions.
• Work with WIRED’s social media leads to develop enterprising social media strategies, emphasizing a mix of O&O referral and bespoke platform brand identity as appropriate. Get in the weeds with editors on packaging, visuals, and more, to ensure that WIRED is maximizing its audience reach and impact on every single story.
• Work with WIRED’s analytics team members to identify new content opportunities for brand growth and deliver meaningful, unvarnished feedback to editorial teams, in both day-to-day ways and bigger picture ones.
• In collaboration with WIRED’s editorial leadership, develop and oversee newsletter strategy and newsletter products, and work with WIRED’s editorial team on testing and optimization on a rolling basis.
• Provide ongoing and iterative guidance to WIRED’s audience development, social, and editorial teams around SEO best practices, including trainings; constantly evaluate the search and online landscapes to future-proof WIRED vis-a-vis AI and other related impacts to O&O traffic and audience reach.
• Hire, onboard, and develop top talent

Requirements

• Extensive experience in fast-paced digital news publishing; the ideal candidate has worked as a reporter or editor in addition to audience development functions
• Professional experience in working with stakeholders to optimize for different kinds of revenue, including subscriptions, commerce, and sponsored editorial.
• Experience creating and optimizing content for SEO, social platforms, and newsletters; this content should be both existing content that WIRED wants to promote, and content that’s bespoke for a given platform.
• Professional experience with publishing and analytics tools including SocialFlow, CrowdTangle, Facebook Insights, Parse.ly, and Google Analytics.
• Experience working with product/engineering teams to make changes that improve traffic, retention, and revenue opportunities.
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal; the ability to clearly deliver difficult feedback and insights to writers, editors, and producers, with diplomacy and finesse.
• A love of news and a sense of urgency to get high-impact stories in front of an audience; the ability to instill those qualities in a global team.
• Experience managing teams and training people; given the changing landscape of audience development and social media, specific experience helping employees navigate shifting priorities and imperatives is also a must.

Benefits

• In addition to salary and a generous employee benefits package, successful candidates may also be eligible to receive discretionary bonus compensation.