Editorial Content Specialist Full Time

Company Overview

TED Talks are dedicated to sharing great ideas — from tech & science to politics and business — with audiences around the world. TED the organization is a mid-sized nonprofit, based in New York City, filled with creative, committed, nice people.

Job Summary

We’re seeking a writer/editor for the launch of a large new project: TED Recommends. The role will source, write and edit a large corpus of personalized recommendations for TED Talks, with the goal of helping audiences find, connect with, and share our content. The role reports to our editorial department and will work closely with our product-development group. Comfort in a startup/product launch environment is important — this is a built-from-scratch project that will involve changes in strategy and direction as it grows. It also helps if you like TED Talks.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Work closely with our curators, speakers, and superfans to collect recommendations that inspire new and repeat views of TED Talks
• Edit and manage a database of recommendation blurbs
• Create a style guide to edit recommendations into house style as needed
• Write and review user-facing emails and other user-facing products for language and tone
• Work closely with UX team to review onboarding, user feedback, and user-management experiences
• Contribute to marketing campaign to create awareness of our recommendation service

Qualifications and Skills

• 2-4 years as a writer, editor or editorial content strategist
• Lively copywriting style and ability to edit and self-edit. Start by sending a great cover letter!
• Familiarity with basic editorial tools, including at least one of each of these: mail provider, content management system, notification system, social monitoring suite
• Comfort with project management tools and solid time-management strategies

Also helpful (and worth mentioning in your cover letter): Experience developing, managing or actively participating in online communities; experience collaborating with tech and/or product-development teams; experience developing or executing marketing campaigns

Benefits and Perks

• This is a 6-month contract position at a competitive rate.
• The position combines both in-office work and head-down workdays. While this position is not ideal for a full-time telecommuter, it is possible to do some telecommuting. The TED office has great coffee, nice views, and interesting coworkers, and our culture is collaborative and lively, with frequent events in our office theater.