Social Media Support Officer

with honorarium of £1,000 pa

The BOU is widely recognised as the leader in the use of social media in ornithology.

Using several social media platforms, the BOU promotes not only its own activities to the online ornithological community, but also relevant external activities (e.g. conferences and new publications).

Central to our own activities is the promotion of our conferences, grants and awards, and papers published in our journal IBIS. Within our conference programme we run popular Twitter conferences parallel to our in-person and Zoom events.

Social media is key in our goals to make ornithology more inclusive and in order for us to reach a wider, more diverse audience.

The majority of our day-to-day social media output is produced by our Chief Operations Officer (COO) and we seek someone to work alongside our COO to deliver our social media activities, with a focus on the following areas:

• Twitter conferences – to lead on planning and delivering 2-3 Twitter conferences per year.
  • Twitter conferences follow a formulaic plan of updating resources for each event, promoting the event ahead of time, and running the event (with a Twitter conference volunteer and supported by the COO) on each event day(s).
  • The Social Media SO would need to be able to deliver these events live with programmes running on UK time.
• Twitter and Facebook – to provide cover for the COO when they are on leave.
  • Routine social media cover for the COO will equate to around 45-60 mins work to source, prepare and schedule a single day’s social media content.
• Instagram – to promote new blog articles (twice weekly).
• Engagement Committee – the Social Media SO is a full member of our Engagement Committee which meets twice a year and through which you will have direct input into all BOU engagement activities.

Applicants must have a broad interest in ornithology, science communication and the use of social media in promoting science. You should be self-motivated, be able to work unsupervised, deliver to deadlines and be familiar with the BOU, its role, its activities and its standing within the ornithological community.

The role of a BOU Support Officer is particularly suited to an early career ornithologist as these roles progress personal development in key areas such as science communication, working within a team to deliver core activities and working at society committee level to help develop and deliver a wide range of outreach activities.

The roles of our four Support Officer (Journal Publicity, Conference, Blog and Social Media) vary and the demand on individual Support Officers will fluctuate throughout the year. Each Support Officer provides around 18 days of support a year including meetings (for which attendance expenses are paid) and, where applicable (Conference and Social Media SOs), attending BOU conferences (for which the conference place and travel expenses are reimbursed).

This role is initially for two years and comes with an annual honorarium of £1,000.

Applications and schedule
Complete this online form to apply for this position.

Deadline for applications: 17 May 2021.

Interviews will be held remotely by Zoom in June with the successful applicant taking up the role as soon after 1 July as possible.