Join our team

Freelance Social Media Content Creator

Can you tell stories about energy, climate, nature and more that pull on the heart strings?  Do you have a cutting edge understanding of the online world and what makes for great content?  Then we would love to hear from you.

The Local Storytelling Exchange is seeking a Freelance Content Creator to work closely with our team of journalists. We are looking for a creative storyteller – someone who can create content with heart, which inspires and moves different online audiences and gets them to share it widely.

The Exchange aims to find and amplify voices and stories that reflect the diversity of our society in terms of lived experience, cultural or socio-economic background, ethnicity and geography/region and strongly encourages people of all backgrounds to apply for this role.

Although this is a freelance position, we expect the successful candidate to embed themselves within the Exchange team and operate as though they are working in-house.
We would like someone to start ASAP.

Essential skills for this post include:

• Creativity
• Videography
• Photography
• Graphic design
• An appetite for trying new things and scale what works
• Deep insight into what works online right now, and why
• Expertise in audience targeting
• Experience in audience engagement across a range of diverse digital platforms
• A proven collaborative approach, experience of working with teams to support development of practice
• A passion for climate storytelling that moves people: curating stories that people want to share

This role has two core focuses:

1. Generating brilliant digital content from our library of stories which will be shared widely online – in particular in community-based social media (like Facebook groups), and Instagram / Tiktok.
2. Helping the Exchange develop our digital presence, impact and capacity – creating engaging, original AV content yourself and working with our storytellers to help them generate more digital-first stories.

Responsibilities:

Content generation  

• Work alongside our regional storytellers to source and generate stories and raw content that will support brilliant digital storytelling for different audiences and platforms, including local online communities such as Facebook groups.
• Turn the Exchange’s library of local transition stories into vibrant, audience- and platform-focused digital content.
• Monitor and evaluate the success of different messaging styles and approaches.
• Define target audiences and priority messaging for use on social media with the Head of Creative.

Capacity and support 

• Work collaboratively with the Exchange’s team to build confidence, skills and capacity in digital storytelling.
• Work with a small budget for paid promotion and asset creation.
• Work with collaborators and trusted messengers to increase the reach and credibility of online stories.

Intended outputs and impacts  

• Six to eight carefully-curated digital-first stories of the transition are generated and shared each month.
• One collaborative post per month with online partners who will help us reach target audiences.
• At least five paid promotions are trialled and evaluated.
• Target audiences are widely reached on social platforms; audiences report / comment that they engage emotionally with our content – they remember how our stories made them feel.
• Systems are put in place to evaluate digital storytelling and identify the stories and methods that are most effective at shifting perceptions and establishing constructive discourse.
• The Exchange develops an embedded approach to generating and sharing (via community partners) content that will work well in local Facebook and similar online communities.

Fee and timeline 

We welcome applications from freelancers and agencies for this opportunity, with a budget of up to £18,000 for work to be delivered over the next 12 months. In your proposal, please outline your approach to the project, including your methodology, key deliverables, and how you would allocate your time within this budget.

Application 

To apply, please supply the information above, along with a portfolio of your work. This doesn’t have to be climate-focussed content. We would love to see content that you’ve created that grabs attention, moves people emotionally and tells a great story. Please submit all expressions of interest to jobs@localstoryexchange.org by 5pm, Monday 7 April.