We’re looking for a strong Social Media Manager to be our chief strategist and community organizer.  The right candidate will have the opportunity to build our social strategy brick by scalable brick – telling the stories that live in our communities, creating and promoting engaging content, and encouraging powerful conversation.  All while measuring and managing our effectiveness in growing new community users through from social platforms. 

ABOUT US

We are a venture-backed crowdfunding startup that changes lives. We’re in a massive $80 Billion market. We process thousands of transactions a day and generate millions of dollars of revenue a year.  In 2015, we’ll process over $125mm in transactions. In 2017, we plan to process over $1B.

This is what we do.

This is why we do it.

As the Social Media Manager, these are the types of moments you will help bring to scale.

We plan to make GiveForward a household name within the next 3-5 years.  

If this sounds interesting to you, here’s the type of person we want on our team:

ABOUT YOU

You are innately curious about the world and thrive when you’re surrounded by other smart people.

You LOVE winning but you don’t have an ego.

You geek out on math and psychology.

You read books.

You think the scientific method is kind of groovy.

Your values align with ours.  

You’re not afraid to skate right up to the edge.

You believe in a strong testing framework.  

You know how to drive volume efficiencies when you find something that works.

When you dream, you dream up and to the right.

Success for you = swinging for the fences.

You're tired of clients telling you they want you to "do what Oreo did".

You want work on something that really matters.

ABOUT THE ROLE

Now that we have talked about us, the company, and you, the human being, let’s get down to nitty gritty details of the role.  Shall we?

The Social Media manager must have the ability to develop amazingly effective, yet down-home and conversational marketing communications. He or she must be ambitious, creative and collaborative. We need a self-starter, an idea-guy or gal that can thrive in a very fun but highly analytical organization.
Reporting directly to the Chief Marketing Officer, you will work very closely and collaboratively with our highly motivated marketing, product and coaching teams to drive our social media presence forward. 

You will:

• Drive the strategic direction for all of consumer facing social media engagement for our brand and initiatives – including our new product features and launches, developing strong content and positioning GiveForward as an innovative leader 
• Use your superior social media knowledge and creative skills to develop stand-alone tactics and spread the news about GiveForward and our “crowdgiving” movement in a way that excites and inspires, at scale
• You’ll be guiding direction as well as talking directly with our users, as well as seeding organic conversation, igniting and growing our community every day. We’re a lean team – you can’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.
• Bring to the table new ideas to drive learning and innovation in social media, while also understanding what new ideas will apply to us and which won’t
• Demonstrate a relentless drive to understand what our users, supporters and followers are saying in the social space – and ensure the entire GiveForward team stays smart on what you’re learning. Watch what our users love, what our users want and what we can continue to do to set us apart.
• Partner with our PR to develop integrated communications that ensure we engage social influencers of all shapes and sizes and get them to understand how our service can be leveraged.
• Partner with our Digital and Growth teams to make sure we are leveraging our owned and earned content to drive stronger acquisition, and we’ve got all the right social integration in our product
• Be a brand champion. Ensure social communications are true to the GiveForward look, feel, and voice.

BRASS TACKS

Because, it wouldn’t be a job description without this stuff.  And to be perfectly honest, we’ve just always really wanted to say “now let’s get down to brass tacks.”

You are an extraordinary and humble team player and have the ability to thrive in a fast-paced, high-growth, entrepreneurial environment where quality, innovation, speed of decision-making and execution are critical to organizational success 

• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Advertising or Communications required
• 4+ years experience driving a successful, medium to large scale, multi-platform social media programs for a digital start up / consumer brand, or at an agency working with digital brands, both in developing strategy and executing on it.
• Demonstrated creativity and documented success in authentically growing highly engaged communities across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,  and Instagram.
• Ability to create scrappy, fun, hard-working content while leveraging best channel practices to drive measurable results
• Ability to recommend platform advertising and testing strategies to hit community engagement and acquisition goals
• Possesses superior writing skills and demonstrated ability to create a clear, compassionate, yet quirky and fun brand voice across our platforms
• Ability to communicate results to various internal and external stakeholders and work in a fast paced environment.
• Strong knowledge of social media trends, monitoring tools and analytics platforms – ability to make recommendations and work within budget
• Working knowledge of SEO and PR – enough to collaborate effectively with our PR, SEO team managers
• You must thrive in an environment with little structure, be eager to shape you own goals and adapt them as need be, and be creative with resources.

​When applying,  in your cover letter, please also include the social accounts you have managed and the growth, follower, engagement metrics (both organic and paid) that have been achieved under your management.

BENEFITS (all the standard stuff + some extra goodies)

Competitive salary + stock options
Health/Dental/Vision
Unlimited vacation
Really smart, passionate, and fun co-workers who will quickly feel like family
Discounted gym across the street
$500 per year to spend on doing random acts of kindness for others.  We call it creating unexpected joy. Here are some examples.

STILL READING?  GREAT, THEN LET’S MAKE HISTORY TOGETHER

Last year we showed the world that love will always triumph over violence, that honesty truly is the best policy, and that when 1000 strangers decide to pay it forward, life can unfold in magical ways.  

We’re working on something that matters.  Something that changes lives.

We’re scaling fast.

We’re looking to scale faster.  

This is going to be transformational.  We pinky swear.

And we want you to be a part of it.

We’re not promising that this is going to be a walk in the park.  There will definitely be challenges along the way.  But in the end, we’re going to make a huge dent in this universe and build a massive company together.

The main question for us now, is not how big can we get, but how fast can we get there. We hope you’ll join us for the journey.

SUPER-BONUS SECTION IN WHICH WE TELL YOU WHY YOU SHOULD QUIT YOUR EXISTING JOB WHERE YOU ARE PERFECTLY CONTENT TO COME JOIN OUR TEAM INSTEAD.

Still not sold?  Okay, here are 7 bonus reasons.

Join our team because we have:

A product people love. We have a product that people rave about and a NPS of 80.

An incredibly talented Team of smart and passionate people.

World Class Investors:  We are venture backed by First Round Capital, Founder Collective and the Pritzker Group.  Our angel investors include the founders from AngelList, KissMetrics, TechStars, and OKCupid.   

A powerful mission and award-winning culture.

A Laboratory for Scaling: We process thousands of transactions a day and have millions of visitors a month.  We focus on velocity of testing and can typically reach statistical significance on any test in a matter of days or weeks.

Lots of Fancy-Pants Awards:  In the past few years, we’ve racked up lots of fancy-pants awards like Inc’s 30 under 30, Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top 30 Startups, and Forbes’ Top Ten Startups.  All of these publications think GiveForward is going to be the “next big thing”.  We’ve also taken home the award for Chicago’s best consumer startup and best healthcare startup the last two years.  We were recognized as one of the Top 101 places to work in Chicago in 2013. And in 2012 we even won the Edison Award as the best social innovation in the entire nation (other winners in 2012 included Apple, SpaceX and IBM)

A Massive Blue Ocean Opportunity:  Perhaps the most exciting part of all this is the fact that crowdfunding as a space is only beginning to scratch the surface.  In 2014, 54 million Americans will face medical bills that they can’t cover. 99% of them have never heard of GiveForward. And let's be serious, most of them have never even heard of crowdfunding.  Over the next few years, this is what we are going to change.  It's going to be fun.

*************************************************************************************************************************

*  If this role isn't right for you, please pass it along to the best human you know.