Social Media & Narrative Director

Coalition for Healthy Democracy
https://coalitionforhealthydemocracy.org/

Salary

$125,000 annually (W-2, full-time, exempt; up to $1,000/month health care reimbursement)

Location

Massachusetts-based (Boston preferred). Hybrid, with frequent in-person content capture.

Reports to

Campaign Manager (and works closely with communications and email consultants)

Term

Through November 2026. Start ASAP.

Position Summary

The Social Media & Narrative Director is a senior strategist-practitioner responsible for building and executing a winning, persuasion-focused social media program for a 2026 Massachusetts statewide ballot initiative to enact All-Party Primaries.

This campaign is intentionally bold and disruptive. We are challenging a political status quo that protects incumbency, limits competition, and takes voters for granted. Our core messages emphasize competition, accountability, and ensuring that every voter matters—and we expect to face opposition from entrenched political interests, major parties, and institutional gatekeepers as a result.

This role fully owns the campaign’s social media operation—from strategy to posting to performance analysis—and serves as the campaign’s lead architect of public narrative power on social platforms. The role combines organizer instincts, creative direction, political judgment, and hands-on execution.

The Social Media & Narrative Director collaborates closely with communications consultants, paid media and influencer agencies, digital firms, organizers, and campaign leadership. Earned media will be led by consultants, but this role is responsible for translating earned moments into narrative force, persuasion, and amplification on social media. This role has primary decision-making authority over the campaign’s organic and paid social strategy, in coordination with campaign leadership.

We are a high-performing, creative, and strategic team that values experimentation, bold ideas, disciplined execution, and attention to detail. We are looking for someone excited to be part of a campaign that takes risks, learns quickly, and executes with rigor in pursuit of structural democratic reform.

Note: Email production is not part of this role (handled by a digital agency).

Core Responsibilities

1. Social Strategy That Wins

  • Develop a social media strategy aligned to campaign phases: education, persuasion, and mobilization.
  • Define platform-specific goals, audiences, and content roles.
  • Build and iterate a narrative ladder that makes All-Party Primaries intuitive, urgent, and voter-relevant in Massachusetts.
  • Translate the campaign’s core messages—competition, accountability, and ending politics that take voters for granted—into compelling, social-first storytelling.

2. Hands-On Channel Ownership

  • Personally manage all campaign social channels, including drafting, posting, engagement, and moderation.
  • Create app-native, platform-specific content designed to persuade, spread, and shape public conversation.
  • Set and enforce tone, voice, and engagement norms, including how the campaign participates in conflict, debate, and criticism.

3. Modern Production and Clipping Systems

  • Build a sustainable production pipeline, including capture plans, filming schedules, templates, and asset libraries.
  • Utilize effective organic content through hook identification, tie to the ‘so what’ of our campaign, and build momentum for readers into a call to action.
  • Use clipping workflows (manual and/or services) to rapidly convert:
    • Earned media
    • Long-form interviews
    • Paid media shoots
    • Curated content
      into high-performing short-form social content.
  • Coordinate regular filming with campaign leaders, endorsers, validators, and community messengers.
  • Prioritize authenticity, clarity, and speed over polish.

4. Paid Social Strategy and Agency Coordination

  • Serve as the campaign’s strategic lead on paid social media.
  • Coordinate with paid social and digital agencies on:
    • Message strategy and persuasion goals
    • Creative direction and narrative alignment
    • Learnings from performance data
  • Ensure paid social reinforces organic social storytelling, validator narratives, and broader campaign messaging.

5. Influencer, Validator, and Surrogate Activation

  • Develop a plan for centralized content creation and decentralized distribution through individuals and networks.
  • Recruit, brief, and activate influencers, endorsers, creators, and trusted community voices.
  • Coordinate with influencer agencies or manage direct relationships as appropriate.
  • Build toolkits and workflows that make it easy for validators to post and amplify campaign messages.
  • Track and optimize validator participation and message resonance.

6. Rapid Response and Public Conversation

  • Monitor news cycles and social discourse.
  • Identify moments where the campaign should intervene to shape narrative and frame debate.
  • Execute rapid response content that is fast, disciplined, and strategically aligned.
  • Engage assertively and confidently in public debate, including when challenged by powerful political actors or institutions.

7. Analytics, Learning, and Integration

  • Track performance and deliver regular insights focused on persuasion and narrative movement, not vanity metrics.
  • Adjust strategy based on what breaks through with persuadable and skeptical audiences.
  • Coordinate closely with organizers, consultants, and campaign leadership to align social moments with real-world activity and campaign priorities.

Qualifications

  • Typically 4+ years of senior social media experience in politics, advocacy, or movement campaigns.
  • Proven record of building narrative impact through social media, not just engagement metrics.
  • Excellent political writing and editorial judgment.
  • Strong short-form video and production instincts.
  • High personal accountability and comfort owning execution without a large internal team.
  • Organizer mindset with strong collaboration skills.
  • Experience working with paid social, influencer agencies, or social marketing firms strongly preferred.
  • Comfort operating in contested political environments where the campaign is challenging entrenched power.

Compensation & Benefits

  • Compensation: $125,000 annually
  • Employment Type: Full-time, W-2, exempt

The campaign also offers:

  • Health care reimbursement up to $1,000 per month
  • Paid time off and campaign holidays
  • Flexible work environment with in-person requirements tied to content capture, events, and rapid response
  • Significant creative and strategic ownership over the campaign’s social media program and public narrative

This is a senior, high-impact position with end-to-end responsibility for building and executing a persuasion-focused social media strategy for a statewide ballot initiative campaign. Compensation reflects the scope, accountability, and hands-on nature of the work.

How to Apply

To apply, please email jesse@coalitionforhealthydemocracy.org with the subject line “Social Media & Narrative Director” and include:

  • Your résumé
  • Links to 3 or more examples of social media work you led
    (Vertical video strongly preferred. Examples may include TikToks, Reels, Shorts, influencer collaborations, rapid-response content, or social-first campaigns. These may come from different projects; not all need to be from the same campaign.)
  • Brief responses (2–4 paragraphs total) to the following questions
    (Please do not submit a traditional cover letter.)

Application Questions

  1. Describe a campaign or project where social media helped shift public narrative or move people to action.
    What was your role, and what outcomes did you see?
  2. How do you approach social media as a persuasion and organizing tool—not just a distribution channel?
    How do you decide what content is worth making and amplifying?
  3. This role requires both strategy and hands-on execution.
    Which parts of the work do you most want to own personally, and where do you typically collaborate with others or agencies?
  4. (Optional) Why does democracy reform—and this campaign in Massachusetts—matter to you right now?

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Selected candidates may be invited to an initial conversation followed by a short, practical exercise.

Equal Opportunity

The Coalition for Healthy Democracy is committed to building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable team. We strongly encourage candidates of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences to apply.