Journalist

With teams based in London and Riga, and led by the Assistant Editor Social Media, the BBC News Russian social media team plays a vital role in producing innovative and original digital content, and reaching and engaging with Russian Service audiences, especially at a time when so many of our platforms are blocked in Russia.

We are looking for an experienced, energetic, creative and self-motivated social media journalist to join our Riga team.

The successful candidate will be responsible for supporting multiplatform social strategy, ensuring our ideas and editorial values are upheld on every account and with every post.

The social media journalist reports to the Assistant Editor to ensure each account delivers on the agreed social strategy, maximizes engaged reach with the account's target audiences, delivers content of the highest creative quality, and drives traffic to BBC pages.

This requires not only a solid background across all social platforms, but a strong command of visual mediums, journalistic best practices, and engaging storytelling.

Awareness of big news moments, ability to work with a large flow of information and a comfort not only in social app usage but with the analytics to make sense of success on those platforms a must.

Experience visual content and creating video and repurposing existing assets into social formats is key to the ideal candidate for this role.

Main Responsibilities

Collaborate across the Output and Content teams, bringing their work on news and features to life across platforms.
Create for, post on, and engage with the leading social media platforms of the day.
Produce visual and text content that is optimized for social platforms in line with the BBC’s style guide and tone.
Deeply understand the features of social media platforms, propose and create formats and sections suitable for these platforms.
Contribute ideas, angles and formats to meetings on how to cover the main news of the day in social media. Contribute to forward-looking planning.
Find and produce stories for the Russian Service social media accounts, including producing and editing your own materials.
Develop creative storytelling approaches to social and online content, utilizing existing and new tools.
Review and respond to analytics to understand performance and pivot accordingly.
Remain current in industry trends, digital developments and competitor activity and share new thinking.
Maintain a collaborative, team-player mentality, working toward collective goals alongside a very talented group of colleagues.

Are you the right candidate?

Proven professional experience in social media and especially in digital media
Solid photo and video editing experience
In-depth understanding of digital and social platforms - the BBC’s and others - and the different ways audiences are consuming news.
Strong visual awareness, attention to detail and aesthetics.
A full command and up to date knowledge of Russian (native language or equivalent) and fluent English.
Excellent written Russian and the ability to use language to tell a story effectively.
Fluent usage of visual editing software (Photoshop, FCP)
Good knowledge of news and current affairs for Russia and FSU and internationally.
Proven editorial judgment and flair, able to make sound decisions quickly.
Strong knowledge of relevant legal and editorial policy issues.
Ability to work well and calmly in a pressurized live 24-hour newsroom environment; and to handle a rapidly changing news agenda.
Sound understanding of the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines and commitment to the editorial aims of BBC.
Decision making High level of responsibility and decision making; able to operate alone. No managerial responsibility. May be informally supported by junior staff i.e. Researchers, Coordinators and Assistants. Scope Covers a wide range of journalism activity, producing news content and supporting the production and presentation of programming.