The Audience Builders Are in Demand
Something worth watching is unfolding across today’s job board: organizations of very different sizes and missions are all converging on the same hire. They want someone who understands how audiences form, stick around, and grow.
The titles vary wildly. Head of Social at a game studio. Deputy Director of Audience at a storied newsroom. Social Video Producer. Digital Strategy Manager. Strip away the varying naming conventions and you’re looking at the same core competency: the ability to turn passive viewers into active communities.
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What makes this cluster especially revealing is where these roles are appearing. An indie game developer wants social baked into its product design. A 127-year-old Jewish publication is investing in audience experimentation. A private school in Atlanta needs someone camera-ready and campus-present. These aren’t interchangeable jobs, yet they all reflect the same industry-wide realization that content alone doesn’t build loyalty – conversation does.
If you’ve been building audiences across platforms and can point to measurable community growth, your skills translate across sectors you might not have considered.
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Head of Social at The Game Band
Why this one is different: The Game Band, the studio behind Where Cards Fall and the cult hit Blaseball, is treating social not as a marketing function sitting adjacent to the product. Social is the product. This role sits inside the games team, shaping share mechanics and viral loops during the design process. For anyone who has felt constrained posting someone else’s content on a brand account, this is the opposite end of the spectrum.
- Build and manage character-driven social accounts for individual game titles
- Collaborate with product and design teams to shape share mechanics and viral loops
- Grow presence across TikTok, Instagram, X, and emerging platforms
- Write distinctive copy and develop recurring formats, bits, and running jokes that build a recognizable studio voice
Apply to the Head of Social position at The Game Band
Audience Deputy Director at The Forward
What caught our eye: The Forward isn’t just hiring for audience growth. It’s hiring for audience experimentation. This role is explicitly tasked with piloting new engagement initiatives, tracking what works in real time, and contributing to what the organization calls “an audience-centered culture.” For professionals who want to shape strategy rather than execute a predetermined playbook, this is a rare invitation.
If you’re thinking about how to sharpen your approach to social media strategy, the skill set described here is a strong model.
- Identify opportunities for deeper interaction among readers, newsletter subscribers, and members
- Design and run experiments that test engagement and conversion hypotheses
- Support the editorial social presence with fluency across major platforms
- Use data, analytics, and audience insights to inform decision-making across the organization
Apply to the Audience Deputy Director position at The Forward
Social Video Producer at The Forward
The case for applying: The Forward is double-investing in social, and this companion role focuses on the visual storytelling side. The job calls for someone who can write, produce, edit, and post social-first video at journalistic speed. On-camera comfort is a plus but not required. What is required: a track record of producing videos that actually reached large audiences. The emphasis on mentoring colleagues who appear in videos suggests this person will shape how the entire newsroom shows up on social platforms.
- Brainstorm video concepts, write scripts, integrate graphics, and produce social-first content
- Use platform-native analytics to drive audience development decisions
- Collaborate with reporters and editors to translate journalism into visual stories
- Mentor colleagues who appear on camera, raising the overall video quality of the newsroom
Apply to the Social Video Producer position at The Forward
Digital and Social Content Manager at The Lovett School
Worth a closer look: Lovett is an established Atlanta independent school approaching its centennial, and it wants someone who is equal parts photojournalist and social strategist. This role requires real on-the-ground presence: capturing classroom breakthroughs, athletic milestones, and campus events as they happen, then producing mobile-first content from that material. Covering a school’s centennial celebration is the kind of portfolio-defining assignment that doesn’t come along often. Check out these social media manager success tips if you want to sharpen your pitch for roles like this one.
- Capture, edit, and produce mobile-first photography, reels, stories, and short-form video
- Write engaging copy for social platforms and digital channels
- Play a key role in documenting the school’s 2026-27 centennial celebration and campus transformation
- Work closely with the communications team to maintain brand consistency across all platforms
Apply to the Digital and Social Content Manager position at The Lovett School
The Takeaway for Job Seekers
The throughline across all four of these roles is clear: organizations want people who can build two-way relationships with audiences, not just push content outward. If your resume still frames your social media experience as “managed brand accounts” or “scheduled posts across platforms,” you’re underselling yourself.
Reframe around outcomes. Community growth rates. Engagement experiments you designed. Formats you originated that drove measurable audience gains.
The employers posting media jobs today aren’t looking for channel managers. They’re looking for the person who understands why people gather around content and can engineer more of those moments.
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