Head of Audience Strategy

About Independent Media

Independent Media comprises The Independent, Standard Digital, Bulletin, BuzzFeed UK, HuffPost UK, Tasty UK, Seasoned, IndyBest and indy100.

Harnessing market-leading innovation and excellence across its portfolio of pioneering brands, Independent Media has unrivalled scale, integrity and authority via its sites, apps, video, audio, experiential, newsletters and social media.

While each Independent Media brand speaks in an authentic, unique voice to a loyal and distinct audience, they stand together in their commitment to positivity, inclusivity, and quality journalism and content.

Independent Media’s network reaches 650 million users each month, with 1.1 billion content views across its brands and platforms, including web, apps, social media, podcasts, email, YouTube, syndication partners and print.

The role and the team

We are seeking an innovative and experienced editorial audience expert to oversee audience strategy across The Independent Media network portfolio; The Independent, The Standard, Indy100, IndyBest, Buzzfeed UK, Tasty UK, HuffPost UK, Seasoned and Bulletin.

The successful candidate will likely be an experienced editorial leader with extensive knowledge of how to grow audiences online both in scale and engagement on and off platform.

They will also have the ability to project manage the portfolio’s audience and engagement growth ambitions relevant to each brand.

The right applicant will work continuously across the title’s brands developing audience growth strategies and helping teams adopt strategy changes when needed. They will feel confident creating strategies for engagement on platform as well as for SEO, social media and newly emerging platforms.

They will be able to seek out initiatives that will keep engagement, traffic and search authority evolving and growing around Google updates as well as social media platform algorithm changes.

The right applicant will also be used to fast paced working environments where priorities need to be delivered quickly.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

• We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. As a growing and global brand, we must have a workforce that’s more representative of our readers, viewers, clients and partners, and a workplace that creates a sense of belonging for everyone
• We are committed to hiring and developing a diverse workforce regardless of background, and we support our people to thrive in their careers here.

The Independent is an equal opportunities employer, if you require any reasonable adjustments to complete your application, please do not hesitate to advise us accordingly.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities

• Lead on audience strategy across Independent Media brands.
• Understanding each of the brands’ audiences and applying the relevant insights from multiple platforms to inform decision making
• Ensuring business audience targets are met across brands
• Managing communication between key stakeholders across the business to deliver audience initiatives and insights effectively

Essential skills and experience

• Expert news publisher SEO experience
• Ability to analyse complex audience data and communicate recommendations to stakeholders
• Publisher social media expertise
• Publisher data analysis expertise
• Understanding of on and off platform distribution models
• E-commerce publisher SEO knowledge
• Can identify new audiences and inform strategic decisions to grow them
• Experience of implementing engagement tactics that drive loyal user behaviour

Our values – you will deliver across all our values

Inclusive: We champion diversity in our teams and in our reporting. Working as a team, we put transparency and effective communication at the heart of everything we do.

Innovative: From the very beginning, The Independent has been breaking the mould. We take risks and are always looking to try new ideas in pursuit of excellence.

Independent: Nobody tells us what to think; we make up our own minds and aren’t afraid to do things differently. Like our readers, we value honesty and integrity above outside influences.