Social Media Strategist

About XPRIZE

XPRIZE competitions change the world for the better by accelerating innovation life cycles, catalyzing markets, and energizing stakeholders.  

The XPRIZE Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and incentivizing breakthroughs to the most critical challenges facing humanity. Since its beginning in 1994, the Foundation has been building and continues to build a vision of hope and abundance for humanity’s future by harnessing the power of innovators, technology, and resources.  

Through incentive prize competitions, XPRIZE enables people to create bold and transformative solutions that are scalable and drive real impact. XPRIZE competitions positively impact both the marketplace and humanity by addressing the market failures that have prevented significant breakthroughs across multiple sectors.  

An XPRIZE… 

sets an audacious but achievable goal that aims to overcome challenges deemed impossible. It tackles some of humanity's most pressing issues by redefining what is achievable and pushing the boundaries of human potential.  

defines and addresses a clear problem through extensive research, a design sprint, and a competition that catalyzes the development of the next breakthroughs to put humanity on the path toward a preferred future state for all. The desired outcome from an XPRIZE is clear and measurable, and the rules of the competition are transparent and easily understood.  

democratizes innovation by encouraging expert and nonexpert participation and multidisciplinary collaboration.  

catalyzes markets and revitalizes stagnant industries by increasing awareness of market failures and accelerating innovations to address them.  

is highly leveraged, with competing teams attracting and mobilizing investment capital, partner support, and new members in pursuit of the prize. Philanthropic dollars are thus magnified in support of a solution.   

Our first XPRIZE, the $10 million Ansari XPRIZE for private spaceflight, spurred an industry and created exponential breakthroughs. Since then we have provided over $140 million in incentives through these competitions. Each prize has created an industry-changing technology that brings us closer to a better, safer, more sustainable world.   

The use of incentive competitions, or prizes, to accelerate innovation goes back over 300 years, to when the British Admiralty launched the Longitude Prize in 1714 to find a better way to navigate our seas. In the years since, several well-known innovations have resulted from incentive competitions, including canning as a form of food preservation (a competition launched by Napoleon in 1795), modern plastics (the Billiard Ball Prize, 1863) and commercial aviation (the Orteig Prize, 1919).   

This is more than a job to us. When you work at XPRIZE, you’re making a positive impact on some of the biggest challenges facing our world. Whether you’re working in prize design or development, marketing and communications, stakeholder relations, business operations or any other department, you’re playing a critical role in turning the impossible into the possible.

Role Summary

The Social Media Strategist will develop, execute and manage XPRIZE’s Social & Community Strategy. This role is responsible for the complete day-to-day execution, analysis and optimization of the plan. This role will be XPRIZE’s de facto expert for all things social and digital.

Responsibilities

• Developing digital ecosystem strategy – determine which priority platforms we use, how they work in relation to each other, how they work together with PR, and how they contribute to overall business and prize objectives including raising awareness, team recruitment, advocacy, behavior change among multiple audiences – from technical to mainstream consumer, and social media engagement/interaction
• Spearheading digital content strategy and execution. From concept to delivery, working with production team to create a consistent flow of engaging and interesting digital content for the XPRIZE online audience
• Leveraging XPRIZE’s ecosystem of subject matter experts to deepen and extend relationships beyond participation in once-a-year in-person events, leveraging their subject matter expertise and audience reach to grow XPRIZE audience, deepen our credibility with them, and foster quality engagement and advocacy per overall marketing objectives
• Identifying key social influencers and bloggers and networks/forums, according to our verticals and marketing objectives, with whom XPRIZE should build ongoing partnerships and engagement.
• Staying abreast of the latest trends and best practices, and incorporate into XPRIZE’s overall digital strategy
• Partnering with brands to develop joint-content ventures for digital/social
• Creating and execute event-based social campaigns and strategies that position XPRIZE as an influential leader at major events
• Capturing live-content (photo/video) at XPRIZE events and post in real-time to social channels
• Developing social and community KPIs that are in line with overall foundation and prize objectives, while providing actionable and strategic insight into progress toward those objectives
• Ensuring continued growth of social footprint through content creation and publishing, brand partnerships, effective advertising spend, and creative engagement campaigns
• Community management across all owner channels
• Work closely with finance to manage and report on social spend across channels

Executing, analyzing and optimizing the day-to-day execution of the plan, including:

• Creating and maintaining weekly/monthly social and community engagement campaigns that expand audience reach and engagement over time; not just one-off executions each day
• Weekly analysis of social & community KPI’s with recommendations on areas for course correction, as well as acting as lead advisor on the tools we need for the monitoring and execution of digital strategy
• Partnering with creative team (graphic design, web, video production) to lead the development and production of content that appeals to our audience, and unique role, of each digital channel
• Writing majority of micro-content, with focus on ensuring technical information, storytelling and calls-to-action are target relevant (We have both highly technical/thought-leader communities, and also mainstream consumer/follower communities, each requiring distinct ways of conveying the same messages.)
• Producing simple imagery and GIFs, while functioning as a nimble, relevant digital producer working with the larger creative team on the more complex content
• Partnering with PR ensuring our earned placements work together with XPRIZE posts on our owned channels
• Developing paid social media campaigns as part of integrated Earned + Owned + Paid campaign(s), focusing on boosting owned content to amplify reach, and targeting potential competing teams with targeted, strategic Facebook and/or LinkedIn buys

Requirements

• 3-5 years’ experience in social media, community management and/or digital strategy
• Expertise executing specific content optimized to the unique audience and use of each channel (FB, Twitter, Instagram), vs simply reposting same content across all channels (This should include writing and editing short- and long-form content.)
• Proven track record of being a storyteller – with words, images and video
• Able to simultaneously manage multiple campaigns across unrelated Prizes, and juggle competing and changing priorities
• Demonstrated experience nurturing AND growing a fan base
• Experience identifying key influencers, building relationships and activating partnerships
• Experience with content publishing, social listening and analytics tools (ex. Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Social Flow, Facebook & Twitter native tools, Sprinklr, Google Analytics, Net Base, Nielsen, BuzzMetrics), with ability to quickly learn XPRIZE platform
• Proficient in HTML, with desire to quickly improve mastery
• Experience with paid social media campaigns
• Ability to create simple content (memes, GIFs, short video)
• Hands-on working style, with exceptional attention to detail
• Self-motivated team member who takes initiative with a positive, can-do attitude
• Photography, videography, design and production skills are preferred but not required

Come change the world with us. 

XPRIZE Foundation is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to having a truly inclusive workforce. We do not unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, national origin, marital status, age, disability, sexual orientation, political affiliation or on the basis of actual or perceived gender as expressed through dress, appearance, or behavior.