Director of Digital Communication

Davidson College is a highly selective, independent liberal arts college located in Davidson, North Carolina, that has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country. Davidson is strongly committed to achieving excellence and cultural diversity and welcomes applications from women, members of minority groups and others who would bring additional dimensions to the college’s mission.

Overview:
A key member of the College Communications team, the Director of Digital Communications is responsible for leading and managing the Davidson online experience, through college websites, social media channels, multimedia content, search engine optimization and online advertising.

The Director’s leadership is essential to telling the college’s story to as wide of an audience as possible, raising the profile and brand of the college among external and internal constituents, includin: prospective students, alumni, donors, parents, friends and the general public. The position reports to the Chief Communications and Marketing Officer.

Essential functions:
• Develop and implement an effective and forward-looking digital strategy that integrates with and supports the college’s strategic communication and marketing initiatives.
• Maintain a vibrant and effective homepage and high-level pages in the Davidson website, helping shape the message for primary target audiences. Oversee website architecture, updates and interactivity. Identify trends in site usage.
• Help lead the design and development of a new website and the migration to it, working jointly with Technology & Innovation (formerly ITS). Under the new site, this role will focus heavily on information architecture, strategic content and user experience and the new site will be operated jointly with Technology & Innovation.
• Ensure the implementation of Web standards and policies that support college visual identity and style standards, maintaining the Davidson brand throughout its digital presence.
• Supervise an Associate Director of Digital Communications, Digital Communications Strategist and Social Media & Digital Content Strategist.
• Work collaboratively across the college to develop, organize and enhance departmental Web content.

Working conditions:
• Mostly office environment.
• Some evening, weekend or holiday work may be required.

Required qualifications:
• Bachelor’s degree and at least 5 years of relevant experience with digital communications and marketing, preferably in a higher education setting.
• Previous experience managing a large organization’s website built with an enterprise content management system is essential, experience with WordPress is desired.
• Candidate must have experience with usability, accessibility, content strategy, wire-framing, protoyping and deploying mobile-friendly, responsive websites.
• Must have a strong understanding of web and accessibility standards, user-centered design principles and a thorough knowledge of HTML5, CSS, JavaScript.
• Experience with Adobe Creative Cloud, in particular Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Premiere, is required, as is knowledge of encoding standards for optimal online delivery of multimedia content.