Social Media Executive - Back Roads Touring - Maternity cover

Position: Social Media Executive for Back-Roads Touring

Reporting to: Head of Marketing, Back-Roads Touring

Location Base: Chiswick, London, UK (3 x days per week office / 2 x days remote)

Contract: Fixed term maternity cover. Start asap for 12 months

Hours: This contract is available as 4 or 5 days per week

Here at Global Touring, we’re a travel company specializing in group tours, inspiring people through life-changing travel experiences. Through our brands Topdeck Travel and Back-Roads Touring we are ever developing our product range, driving growth in key sales markets (Australia, New Zealand & North America), innovating product delivery and ensuring we deliver a first-class customer experience.

Role overview:

• As Social Media Executive for Back-Roads Touring (maternity cover), you’ll work closely with the Marketing, Creative and Digital teams to deliver social activity that grows our presence within the APAC and North American 55+ travel market.
• You’ll stay ahead of platform trends and algorithms to increase awareness, organic reach and engagement, while planning and executing content across channels and identifying partnership opportunities aligned to our growth strategy.

Create and distribute content across channels:

• Based on the content pillars and themes set by the Head of Marketing, populate weekly content calendar with posting schedules for all channels.
• Own the timely and consistent flow of content across all channels that aligns with the brand guidelines and remains right for the channel.
• Create, edit, schedule, publish and share engaging and original social media content daily, ensuring it resonates with our customer segmentation.
• Take ownership of content distributed to ensure it aligns with Back-Roads’ creative brand guidelines, tone of voice and wider marketing messaging.
• Collaborate with other teams, such as marketing, operations and product, to ensure a cohesive and integrated approach to content creation and social media.

Drive social media-led campaigns:

• Work with the Head of Marketing and Marketing Exec to plan and implement social activity for campaigns and promotions, to support product launches and marketing initiatives.
• Work with our in-house Creative team to bring campaign ideas to life through carefully curated briefs.
• Develop and drive opportunities to develop and grow our social channels outside of the day to day with proactive socially-led activity with big ideas for social activations.

Create and distribute blogs:

• Based on the content pillars and themes set by the Head of Marketing, plan blog content and posting cadence each month – using broader resources to fuel each topic such as Tour Leaders, Product Managers, staff, AI tools etc.
• Write SEO driven blogs that capture the search trends inspirational, sales and factual content including tour page and referral links where possible.
• Monitor and report on the success of each blog to drive tactics for future planning.

Community & inbox management:

• Ownership of our social interaction and community management, fostering engagement among audiences by responding to comments, encouraging discussions.
• Working alongside our Customer Service team to address enquiries in a timely manner.
• You will be the key contact and leader for all content collaborations – from initial outreach through to briefing, feedback, signoffs and payment.

KPIs & reporting:

• Accountable for core KPIs and regular performance reports – such as followers, engagement, clicks, comment sentiment etc.
• Make data-driven recommendations, optimising performance and exceeding growth targets.
• Use analytics to access the best use of efforts to drive growth in the right areas.

Conduct channel and competitor research:

• Stay informed on the latest trends our audience are consuming and our platforms are delivering to adapt accordingly.
• Research (primary and secondary) competitors to learn more about our customers in market, using learnings to build marketing strategies and content for organic social channels.
• Conduct regular research and market analysis for both direct competitor and out of industry leaders for the customer segments to inform your marketing campaigns and communications.

Work with Tour Leaders:

• Establish a strong and regular relationship with on the road Tour Leaders to gain insights on tours and destinations to drive content.
• Collaborate with our Tour Leaders to develop our shared content library that supports all channels, ensuring content is organised and accessible.
• Seek, curate and distribute Tour Leader and other on-road content across social media and blog channel to drive engagement for our product offering.
• Distribute and guide Tour Leaders in their content creation skills to help improve the quality of content they share.

Brand collaborations:

• Seek and lead partnerships/collaborations with brands who have similar audiences with the objective to drive awareness or conversions.
• Ensure research spans across a range of different industries to reach a broader audience for growth.

Contribute to crisis & customer communications:

• Act as the social media contact for crisis communications relating to Back-Roads Touring.
• Provide ad-hoc support to marketing leadership on customer communications and policy updates when needed.

Experience, Requirements and Key Behaviours:

• 5+ years’ experience in a similar role.
• Experience managing major brand presence on social media, ensuring and maintaining high levels of community engagement.
• Hands-on experience in content management including facilitation and production (text, image, video), as well as social influencer and community management.
• Deep understanding of the social media landscape including existing and emerging platforms, algorithms, challenges and opportunities globally.
• Understanding of the importance of SEO, keywords and hashtags to ensure our posts surface in search algorithms.
• Excellent written skills in English, with the ability to write engaging social copy that reflects brand tone of voice and resonates with our largely Australian/American communities.
• Ideally (but not mandatory) have experience in marketing to 55+ travel seekers in the AU/NZ/US markets.
• Love of a collaborative, fast-paced, entrepreneurial environment.
• A willingness to learn and grow and always be curious.
• Openness to work in a global environment, which will involve some out of hours meetings.
• And of course… A passion for all things travel related!

Hungry for more? You know what to do.

Our Values:

• Stay Curious: We are natural born explorers. Our people question old solutions, apply alternative thinking and embrace being challenged in the search for outcomes.
• Choose transparency: We take the right way, not the easy way. We’re straight up even through the toughest conversations; tackling challenges head‑on and with integrity.
• Don’t pass the buck: If we do it, we do it well. We are empowered to make decisions based on data and experience – holding each other accountable along the way.
• Together we go further: Across oceans and office desks, it’s more than a love for travel that keeps us connected.