Job Title: Head of Audience, Belfast Telegraph

Department: Editorial

Function: Publishing

Reporting to: Executive Editor, BT

Role Purpose

The Head of Audience will lead the Audience Team and be responsible for driving online readership, engagement, and audience growth for the Belfast Telegraph. You will manage the team who curate the site and ensure every story reaches the right audience, in the right format, on the right platform, and at the right time.

You will have a deep understanding of how online readers consume news across platforms and be adept at using data, audience insight, and editorial judgment to shape strategies that grow reach, loyalty, and reader value. Working collaboratively with the newsroom, you will identify priority stories, plan audience strategies from the outset, and help ensure our journalism is packaged and distributed for maximum impact.

You will be part of the senior management team shaping the future strategy of the Belfast Telegraph, helping to embed digital-first thinking, supporting forward-facing review of audience functions, and managing budgets as necessary.

Role Responsibilities (Overview)

• Drive audience growth in line with strategic priorities, ensuring the right stories reach the right audience every day across all relevant platforms
• Lead, manage, and develop the Audience Team, ensuring their skills and workflows evolve with the needs of a digital-first newsroom
• Develop and implement best practice for maximizing audience engagement, loyalty, registration, and subscription-supporting behaviors
• Own the homepage and front-door strategy, using testing, insight, and innovation to improve performance and presentation
• Build and run a planning process that enables the Audience Team to prepare priority coverage early, with clear audience goals, platform plans, and measures of success
• Oversee newsletters and other reader engagement products, using them to deepen loyalty, drive sign-ups, and support long-term audience value
• Keep up to date with product, platform, and website developments, working with technical and product teams to identify improvements and new features where necessary
• Liaise with counterparts across the Mediahuis group to gain and share insights, benchmark performance, and apply proven audience-growth approaches
• Keep up to date with developments on social and emerging platforms to ensure the Belfast Telegraph has a best-in-class, future-facing distribution strategy
• Use real-time and historical data to track progress, share actionable insights with the newsroom, identify audience opportunities, and solve performance challenges creatively
• Provide quality control and regular feedback to the Audience Team, content teams, and production teams to strengthen headlines, presentation, timing, and platform execution
• Work closely with the Executive Editor, news desk, and senior editors to ensure priority stories are planned, presented, and distributed for the biggest possible impact
• Work closely with visual, audio, and journalist creator desks to develop strategies that grow video views, podcast listenership, and platform-specific storytelling
• Work closely with the graphics department to optimize how online content is illustrated, presented, and made more engaging across digital formats
• Develop new ideas to enhance digital storytelling, improve content packaging, and better serve existing and emerging online audiences.