• Job Type: Officer of Administration
• Bargaining Unit:
• Regular/Temporary: Regular
• End Date if Temporary:
• Hours Per Week: 35
• Salary Range: $85,000-$110,000

Position Summary

Reporting to the Associate Vice President of Public Affairs in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, the Director of Social Media will lead the social media effort across platforms to communicate University news and coordinate content across all four Columbia campuses. The Director of Social Media is the digital eyes and ears of what is happening at the University and what needs to be communicated internally and externally. Through strategic planning and social media guidance, the Director is also a steward of the University???s digital public profile, promoting Columbia???s position as one of the world???s leading institutions for teaching and research, as well as planning and implementing emergency messaging. What???s more social media strategy complements the overall storytelling around presidential and university institutional priorities, which requires an understanding of audiences, reach, and engagement.

The Director of Social Media will work closely with the editorial team, press officers, media relations, and communications and digital media teams across the University to write, edit, design, and package University content for a wide array of audiences. The Director oversees strategy and planning for all of the central communications offices??? social media platforms (currently Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube) and provides editorial oversight to members of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs working on those platforms.

Responsibilities

• In collaboration with the senior leadership of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs, identifies opportunities for social media communication for internal University audiences and for external audiences.
• Forges and manages relationships with a wide range of social media teams across the University.
• Develops, plans, guides, and executes the University???s social media strategy, including the creation of unified messaging that advances strategic goals and maximizes impact and engagement.
• Continuously identifies creative ways to enhance, promote, and cover the University???s achievements, events, and news across digital communications streams.
• Creates content for a wide variety of digital media, including writing, rewriting, editing, proofreading, and fact-checking.  
• Streamlines the coordination and approval process for digital, audio, and visual story development.
• Stays abreast of digital media trends to optimize the office???s approach.
• Communicates and educates others across the University on the best practices for social media and fine-tunes them based on data and analytics.
• Reviews and assesses content to ensure it adheres to University???s brand messaging and goals.
• Keeps the senior leadership of the Office of Communications and Public Affairs abreast of potential crises for the University that may be trending on social media.
• Prepares regular reports to inform senior leadership in the Office of Communications and Public Affairs and colleagues across the University about trends, lessons learned, successes, and areas of opportunities that were identified
• Develops and enhances internal systems that enable the office to work more collaboratively across teams.
• Collaborates on development and execution strategy, planning, and implementation of Emergency Messaging. 
• Troubleshoots digital media issues as needed.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor???s degree required.
• Minimum four to six years of communications, public relations, web content management, and social media experience required
• Advanced writing, editing, and verbal skills, especially for social media.
• Sophisticated judgment about the relative newsworthiness of developments concerning the University.
• Discretion, the ability to keep confidences.
• Ability to interact effectively with senior administrators and faculty.
• Fluency with essential computer skills, Microsoft Suite, Adobe Creative Suite, and Google Docs.
• Skill with social media platforms and publishing tools and an ability and willingness to quickly learn new platforms and applications.
• Strong attention to detail and consistency in meeting deadlines.
• Ownership of the end work product, flexibility in adapting to constructive feedback.

Preferred Qualifications

• Organized work ethic, a sense of calm under pressure, and a belief in team spirit.
• Experience with Sprout Social, SalesForce, QuickBase, or other product management tools.
• Experience working with Canva.
• Experience editing video on mobile and desktop platforms.
• Knowledge of digital accessibility.

Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran

Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.

About Columbia University

Columbia University is one of the world's most important centers of research and at the same time a distinctive and distinguished learning environment for undergraduates and graduate students in many scholarly and professional fields. The University recognizes the importance of its location in New York City and seeks to link its research and teaching to the vast resources of a great metropolis. It seeks to attract a diverse and international faculty and student body, to support research and teaching on global issues, and to create academic relationships with many countries and regions. It expects all areas of the university to advance knowledge and learning at the highest level and to convey the products of its efforts to the world.

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