Social Media Manager

Date Posted	November 05, 2025
Industry	Digital Media
Specialty	Arts/Lifestyle
Required Education	Bachelor's Degree
Remote / Telecommute	Telecommute
Job Status	Full-time
Salary	$65,000-$85,000

Description:

Social Media Manager - The Barbed Wire

Are you a social media manager who is passionate about the culture and lives of Texans? Do you have brain worms from being too online? Are you a little concerned, frankly, about the state of the world? 

The Barbed Wire is a progressive, diverse, digital outlet that’s obsessed with all things Texas, and we’re looking for a dynamic Social Media Manager to join our small — but mighty — editorial team. Our reporters, writers, and editors have worked locally and in national news — from Texas Monthly and the Waco Tribune-Herald to the Washington Post and The Daily Beast. 

We are committed to bringing the best of traditional media to our newsroom — and to leaving the rest behind. 

We are shaking up Texas’ status quo with brash, good-faith, unapologetic journalism, with an eye towards readers who might otherwise avoid the news. We believe in mischief, joke-making, and the importance of the fourth estate. The truth, even when it isn’t convenient. Acknowledging our viewpoint instead of pretending not to have one. 

In just 14 months since we launched, our newsroom has established collaborations and partnerships with MSNBC.com, The 19th*, and The Contrarian. The Barbed Wire has built a loyal and supportive audience from scratch. Our readers come from organic social reach in numbers that eclipse industry standard — and that’s intentional. We’re committed to using plain language and humor to tell hard stories.

We are seeking a candidate who can take our accounts to the next level — ideating and executing social features; coordinating more event and in-person social-first coverage; strategizing and implementing more community engagement efforts; and recruiting content creators to work with The Barbed Wire. We’re looking for someone willing to take creative risks and who is thoughtful about what hasn’t been working in traditional news. Help us become a leader online, even if it means stepping outside of our comfort zone.  

We believe in equity and inclusion and in serving voices that are underrepresented in Texas across all intersections, including gender, ideology, race, ethnicity, and identity. We encourage people of all backgrounds to apply. Please feel free to tell us in your application: Do you have a perspective you think is missing from The Barbed Wire?

Applications for this full-time salaried position with benefits are open through Nov. 21.

Responsibilities:

• Oversee all social media content and community engagement strategies.

• Collaborate with the editorial team to translate newsroom stories into engaging, shareable, and resonant social posts across platforms. 

• Manage short-form video content for Instagram, YouTube and TikTok — writing scripts and editing for other members of the newsroom as well as freelancers and contributors. 

• Build and nurture communities across platforms (e.g., Facebook Groups, TikTok, Reddit).

• Serve as the bridge between audience feedback and the editorial/product teams.

• Monitor trends, hashtags, and cultural conversations to help guide the newsroom’s editorial plan and to ensure that posts find their way into the discourse.

• Track KPIs for social reach, impressions, engagement rate, and follower growth and provide weekly/monthly reports.

• Partner with PR/Comms to promote investigations and other special projects, amplify press hits, thought leadership, and brand narratives.

• Management of fellows and contractors, including writing contracts, hiring creators, and codifying and sharing best practices.

Qualifications:

• Ideal candidates currently live in Texas.

• Highly organized, efficient, and comfortable in an evolving and collaborative start-up newsroom. Intellectually curious and driven, with a keen eye for detail. Proven ability to write clean, compelling copy quickly. 

• A passionate storyteller with a sense of humor, who is fluent in the language of social media and can marry The Barbed Wire’s reporting with the most current social media trends. Bonus points if you’re great with memes.

• Comfortable on camera, as well as writing and editing material for others.

• Three years of social media, audience, engagement, or relevant product experience, preferably in news media.

• Understand what makes something newsworthy, and the contours of a news cycle. A journalism degree or training isn’t necessary, but editorial judgment and fact-checking abilities are.

Details:

• Location: Remote (ideal candidates will reside in Texas)

• Salary range: $65,000 - $85,000

• Benefits:

• A newsroom deeply devoted to company culture, burnout prevention, and sustainable journalism.

• Health Care, Vision, and Dental coverage are all available through Aetna, which offers an extensive national network. The Barbed Wire pays 100% of the employee’s health care premiums and pays 50% of any health care premiums for your dependent children and spouses.

• The Barbed Wire will match up to four percent (4%) of employee contributions to a self-directed 401k plan offered through Empower Retirement.

• Annual membership fee dues for One Medical, a concierge primary care provider, are provided by The Barbed Wire.

• All full-time employees of The Barbed Wire get unlimited PTO, personal leave, and sick time, with a mandatory minimum of 10 days off per year.

• When there are no serious national breaking news events, The Barbed Wire utilizes a 4.5-day work week. 

• In addition, company-wide days off for all employees include: New Year’s Day, MLK Day, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.

• The newsroom also closes for the week of July 4 and the week of December 25.

Join our mission to inform and engage Texans! To apply, please send your resume, two writing samples, three references, and a brief cover letter to careers@thebarbedwire.com with the subject line “Social Media Manager” by Nov. 21.