This role has been filled.

The Booker Prize Foundation is building a new editorial team to take responsibility for our website and our wider digital portfolio across social, video and audio platforms, as well as our work with other digital partners. We are looking for a Social Media Manager to create impactful social media content on multiple platforms to help us reach a broader audience, all over the world.

The successful candidate will have excellent knowledge and experience of digital media, first-class technical ability, creative flair, organisational skills and attention to detail, as well as a good understanding of the place the Booker Prizes hold in our culture.

 

Role Summary

Job Title: Social Media Manager  
Reports to: Head of Editorial 
Contract: Employee, preferably full-time employment  
Location: UK based, at present working remotely  
Salary: £35,000-£38,000 
Application details: Email CV and covering letter to [email protected] 

Winning author Damon Galgut at the 2021 Booker Prize Awards Ceremony

Organisation Description

The Booker Prizes have a unique place in the literary sphere, enjoying an enviable reputation as a cultural institution that is highly respected, much loved and hotly debated throughout the world. Over the past 50 years, more than 500 extraordinary books have been brought to the attention of the public, influencing reading tastes and transforming culture in Britain and beyond, along with the careers of hundreds of authors from around the world.

The Booker Prize Foundation is a registered charity, established in 2002, whose purpose is to promote the art and value of literature for the public benefit. The best-known way it fulfils this mission is by awarding the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize. Other aspects of the foundation’s work include reading initiatives in prisons, writers’ visits to universities, the distribution of books to disadvantaged readers and the funding of Braille and audio editions of Booker Prize books through the RNIB. The UEA Booker Prize Foundation Scholarship is awarded annually to a candidate for the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Many past scholars have since met with acclaim as published authors.

In 2021, we launched a new digital strategy at thebookerprizes.com to showcase ‘our’ nominated books alongside their exceptional authors in one unique online space. Called the Booker Library, it aims to be a unique and entertaining cultural destination that brings fresh attention to our books by combining 1) new content; 2) archive material from our authors, publishers and partners as well as our own physical archive at Oxford Brookes University; and 3) curated content from across the web.

We’ve identified the concept of the Booker ‘Golden Thread’, a strand that runs through all our books, authors, themes and subject matters. We aim to bend and stretch this thread in many directions to help our audiences explore our world with the goal of encouraging more people to read more books. We want to bring new insights and attention to the books, their themes, subject matter and the art of fiction writing itself. We are building a small editorial team to take responsibility for executing this plan.

We strongly welcome and encourage applications from candidates who are under-represented in the creative industries.
 

Geetanjali Shree, winner of the International Booker Prize 2022 for Tomb of Sand

Job Description

The Booker Prize Foundation is looking for an experienced Social Media Manager to be responsible for bringing ‘our’ books to life online on multiple platforms. This will cover all longlisted, shortlisted and winning books for both the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize in their combined 53-year history, as well as those nominated each coming year. This role will involve working closely with the Head of Editorial and the editorial team to showcase our wide range of written, video and audio content, from practical information about the prizes to long-read features and exclusive video, creating unique assets and imaginative campaigns for multiple social channels for maximum impact and reach. These assets may include text, video, graphics, photography and animation.

This role requires someone with the passion and knowledge of what works across the content spectrum digitally and on all social media platforms, with experience of creating content routinely for a media company or cultural institution. They will be a social native who knows the various platforms inside and out with an appreciation for what works with a range of audiences, as well as a practical understanding for how to represent a high profile and respected cultural brand such as the Booker Prizes online, and how to build and nurture an engaged and loyal community around it.

Bernardine Evaristo 2019

Responsibilities

• Creating digital and social assets to a regular schedule for publishing across our social channels

• Working with the Head of Editorial and the new editorial team to devise and deliver effective and creative social media and digital content to support our annual awards and the wider Booker Prizes content portfolio and activities

• Ensuring all social media assets are on brand and consistent

• Working with our existing brand identity and design templates to further develop our vision and coherence across all of our channels

• Producing original social content including photography and video shoots as required

• Creating and improving processes to optimise the production and publishing workflow for these assets

• Engaging with traffic and performance data analysis to inform our future work

• Identifying and working with third parties – including agencies, individuals and influencers - on potential content and partnerships, especially on Instagram and TikTok

• Exploring new ways of driving readers from our social channels to our website, to our original content, and to the books themselves

Douglas Stuart on stage at the 2021 Booker Prize Awards

Experience

• Demonstrable understanding of creative social content, and a thorough understanding of the core social media platform behaviours and requirements (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok)

• Experience with design, layout, graphical, audio visual information and storytelling techniques in a social media context

• An appreciation of photography and experience of selecting and curating visuals for social platforms

• Comfort conducting analysis using data, including analysis of social performance and main website content

• Experience of community management and of interacting with users in an engaging and positive way

• Self-starter who can work on their own initiative as well as collaboratively within a team and with third parties or external individuals/companies

• Ability to prioritise, handle multiple simultaneous tasks and work in a newly created team

• Experience of working with static and motion graphics via the Adobe CC suite of apps including Photoshop, After Effects, InDesign and Illustrator, and of cutting videos using Premiere or Final Cut Pro, an advantage

• Knowledge of - and a passion for - contemporary fiction and literature definitely a plus!
 

This role has been filled.

Paul Beatty 2016