Pictured above: Samples from an Instagram post I designed which portrays an in-depth analysis conducted on global reproductive rights.
As an award-winning Social Media Editor at Foreign Policy Magazine, I execute social media initiatives and multimedia projects that translate breaking news stories, photo essays, dispatches, live journalism events, analytical reports, and podcast episodes across Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, and Facebook for an international audience.
Within six months in this role, I spearheaded a multifaceted rebrand and growth and engagement strategy that led to the company's all-time highs in referral traffic. Compared to other traffic sources such as SEO, email, and direct, FP received the greatest growth in social media traffic on record under my leadership. These efforts helped contribute to FP’s above-average traffic across the board, with an 89% MoM increase in traffic against competing publications.
Scroll down to see samples of my work and data-driven milestones attained through my role.
Instagram Stories and Native Instagram Products:
In September 2020, I received a Front Page Award from the Baltimore-Washington News Guild for Best Graphics with FP's art director for our Instagram story featuring the Fall 2019 print issue.
As an award that is normally granted to photographers and photo editors, this was the first time this award was considered for a social media initiative.
Below are more examples of my work:
Twitter for Breaking News and Feature Stories:
From breaking down the history of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, to explaining the arc of Hosni Mubarak’s political career, I have used Twitter threads and live Tweeting sessions to engage a global audience on myriad news moments while directing traffic to FP's website.
Here are a few highlights of my social media directorship at Foreign Policy:
Within the first quarter of my start date, I increased sessions from Facebook by 200%, sessions from Twitter by 75%, and sessions from LinkedIn by 264%.
Within 18 months of my role, I increased Instagram followers by 31%, LinkedIn followers by 115%, and maintained a steady stream of growth to our 1 million Twitter followers and 1.2 million Facebook followers. At the time of this writing, we now have 1.2 million Twitter followers and 1.5 million Facebook followers.
While in this role, I also spearhead and triage international breaking news moments. During our week-long coverage of the November 2020 U.S. election, I singlehandedly expanded my social media output into a 24-hour operation:
From the 2nd to 8th of November 2020, the number of articles I folded into our queue was 2.6x more than an average 6-day span at the publication. I oversaw a team of editorial interns and fellows to manage this increased volume and, in doing so, experienced 2.87x more traffic from Twitter than an average week in October 2020, 1.31x more traffic from Facebook, and a 23% increase in traffic from Instagram to FP's website than an average week in October 2020.
During this time, I made special efforts to reckon with the news consumption habits of readers from a diversity of time zones—especially readers from the global south. I worked with our data team to add a WhatsApp sharing icon at the top of FP articles. I also worked with this team to construct an RSS feed to automatically post articles across our social media venues at alternative time zones.