Digital Content Specialist

The Digital Content Specialist will be the driving force behind our digital presence, bringing bold ideas, visual creativity, and strategic thinking to our digital platforms. This role calls for a highly imaginative and versatile thinker - someone who can blend visual storytelling and brand voice, adapt quickly to trends, and push creative boundaries to keep our content fresh and engaging. With a sharp understanding of what captures attention online, this individual will elevate our presence across all channels, introduce innovative ideas to inspire our audience, and help drive measurable growth. Overall goals are to increase brand awareness, interest, and action to grow marketing qualified leads via website form submissions. The Digital Content Specialist will report to the VP of Marketing and will play a key role in expanding our online impact through thoughtful, relevant, and distinctly on-brand content.

Essential Functions:

• Create, curate, and manage compelling content across all digital platforms – social media, email, and website - ensuring digital strategies align with broader marketing goals and initiatives. Content will at least include images, videos, graphics and copy that align with Blue Plate’s brand tone and voice. Occasional graphic design work is required.
• In partnership with the VP of Marketing, Graphic Designer, and teams across Blue Plate, serve as a visual stylist who curates and develops a distinct, elevated brand identity across all channels—digital and experiential. This role brings a cohesive and impactful visual style to life, drawing inspiration from best-in-class brands to create a fresh, fun, and highly stylized aesthetic that celebrates our food, events, and culture.
• Manage social media marketing to create content, schedule posts and measure growth and audience engagement. Develop a quarterly-rolling content calendar to ensure consistent posting and engagement. Monitor activity and engagement to gain insights into customer and industry trends and preferences. 
• Regularly attend Blue Plate and other Chicago cultural events to capture images, videos, and interviews to produce content usable across all platforms.
• Lead the strategy, design, and execution of internal and external email campaigns—collaborating across departments to curate content, target key audiences, and drive awareness and qualified sales leads. Leverage automation and testing to optimize performance and continuously measure campaign effectiveness.
• Oversee and manage the Blue Plate website: plug-ins to other platforms, content and image updates, creation of landing pages; and monthly analytics reporting.
• Track and analyze all digital marketing performance and generate reports to assess the effectiveness and identify areas for improvement.
• Collaborate across all departments to assist in the delivery of RFP responses. From graphic design work to content creation, to workflow management, RFP response development is a marketing team effort and assistance is ongoing and on-demand.
• Collaborate with HR, culinary, sales, and service teams to develop and implement strategies that foster engagement with local communities and strengthen positive relationships. Cultivate a vibrant community by actively creating stories to connect Blue  Plate with the communities it serves.
• Perform other job-related tasks, as assigned.

Requirements

Education and Experience: The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing or a related field
• 1-3 years of experience with B2C social media marketing or content development
• Direct experience using social media management tools (Hootsuite, Sprinklr)
• Experience with GSuite (Gmail, GDrive, Docs, Sheets)

Preferred Experience and Skills: The following are preferred requirements but not required:

• Can provide examples/portfolio of content (photography and copywriting)
• Experience in food/event photography
• Experience with Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.)
• Experience with Mailchimp, Loomly and Wordpress preferred
• Experience in food, fashion, or lifestyle visual styling
• 1-3 years of experience with B2B social media marketing or content development

Essential Qualifications To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Blue Plate is committed to providing reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with the American wi