The Ride Platform - Senior Manager, Social Media & Influencer

The Ride Platform

About The Ride Platform

The Ride Platform, Inc. is the parent company of Outdoorsy, Ride, Wheelbase, and Roamly. We are named for the single transaction where an operator meets a renter. We build end-to-end for the Operator Economy: the marketplaces to book (Outdoorsy, Ride), the enterprise SaaS to manage (Wheelbase), and the insurtech (Roamly) to protect the assets people turn into businesses. We enable millions of people to explore the world while helping independent operators build generational wealth. Our mission is to build the essential infrastructure for the mobility economy.

About the Role

The Senior Manager, Social Media & Influencer is the brand-facing voice of our marketplaces in culture — and, just as importantly, a builder who can make the work, not just manage it.

You'll own two very different mandates at once:

  • Outdoorsy — scale what exists. Own the integrated strategy and execution of Outdoorsy's established organic social channels and creator program. Grow engagement, reach, and downstream demand from a real baseline.
  • Ride — build from zero. Stand up Ride's social presence from almost-scratch. Build the channels, define the voice and content pillars against high-level strategy, produce the early content, and grow the first audience.

These are distinct audiences (RV and outdoor travelers vs. auto renters and owners) with distinct competitive sets. You'll keep their voices separate and credible, not blended into one channel.

Your job is to build a repeatable engine for content, community, and creator activation that scales across both brands — starting with your own ability to produce platform-native content that earns attention.

Where We Need Your Help

  • Outdoorsy is established; we need it to grow faster. Real channels, a real audience, a real baseline — and the headroom to push engagement and downstream demand harder than we are today.
  • Ride is a blank slate. No followers, light content and an initial voice. You get to help define what this brand sounds like in culture. If building from zero excites you more than inheriting a rigid playbook, this is the part you'll love.
  • We're lean, and we want it that way. You'll set strategy and ship the work, leaning on contract video talent and AI tooling to punch above our weight — not waiting on a queue.
  • We need someone who can prove it mattered. Not just engagement screenshots — a clear line from social activity to awareness, demand, and conversion that leadership can act on.

Core Focus Areas

Owned Social Channels

  • Hands-On Content Production (core, not optional): Ideate, shoot, and edit platform-native short-form video and content yourself. On a lean team launching a new brand, the person who can make the thing moves fastest. You'll partner with the creative team where it adds scale, and direct contract video creators — but you set the bar by producing.
  • Channel Strategy & Execution: Lead day-to-day operations of organic channels (Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest). For Outdoorsy, define platform-specific strategies that maximize reach, engagement, and demand. For Ride, stand up the channels themselves — handles (expanding or focusing as needed), pillars, early content, and an audience built from zero. Ensure all content is optimized for GEO/AEO discovery and stays ahead of emerging platform shifts.
  • Content Calendar & Production: Own end-to-end calendar development, scheduling, and publishing across all platforms and both brands. Lead development of platform-native content (text, image, short-form video, stories), producing scrappily and at speed when the moment calls for it.
  • Brand Voice: Steward Outdoorsy's established social voice for consistency. For Ride, define and codify the social voice from scratch in partnership with the brand team.
  • Trend & Competitive Intelligence: Monitor trends and run competitive analysis across relevant landscapes — outdoor/travel and car rental. Translate cultural moments into timely, on-brand activations.

Community Management

  • Day-to-Day Engagement: Own the inbound queue across both brands — comments, DMs, mentions, tags — with a response standard that reflects each brand's voice and a clear escalation path for customer-service issues. Use AI-powered tooling to scale without losing voice.
  • Community as a Focus: Treat community as a depth and retention engine, not just moderation. Build the relationships that turn first-time followers into advocates, and grow awareness + engagement by actively engaging on and off-channels.
  • Sentiment & Health Monitoring: Track sentiment, conversation volume, and engagement health as ongoing KPIs. Surface emerging themes — good and bad — to brand, product, and CX leadership early.
  • Advocate & Host Relationships: In partnership with our Host/Operator-focused team members, build durable relationships with high-engagement members, power hosts, and brand advocates. Stand up lightweight programs that recognize and activate them, turning organic enthusiasm into earned reach.
  • Proactive Engagement: Identify cultural moments, competitor conversations, and creator content where Outdoorsy or Ride belongs, and engage in ways native to the platform.
  • Voice of Community: Partner with the community lead and customer service on social-first support, and feed community insights into product and brand as a regular input.

Creator & Influencer Program

  • Program Ownership: For Outdoorsy, absorb and evolve the existing creator program into a scalable function with clear tiers and repeatable workflows (sourcing, briefing, contracting, review, usage rights). For Ride, build the program from nothing.
  • Two Distinct Creator Universes: Build Outdoorsy's roster around creators whose audiences intersect the RV/outdoor traveler market and whose style fits the brand. Build Ride's roster in a different world entirely — auto, urban travel, road-trip, and car culture creators.
  • Compliance: Own FTC disclosure standards across all creator work (#ad, sponsorship terms, usage rights). Build it into briefs and contracts from day one.
  • Partnership Execution: Manage end-to-end partnerships from outreach through launch and post-campaign reporting. Negotiate scopes, deliverables, and usage rights at scale.
  • Integration with Paid & Brand: Partner with paid media and brand so creator content is integrated across campaigns and contributes to full-funnel performance.

Analytics, Measurement & AI-Powered Workflow

  • Performance Reporting: Build and maintain reporting for organic social and creator partnerships across both brands. Own KPIs: reach, engagement, follower growth, earned media value, and downstream conversion. For Ride, establish the baseline; for Outdoorsy, beat it.
  • Insights to Action: Analyze performance to deliver optimization recommendations. Present findings to leadership on a regular cadence — and be able to explain what a viral post actually means for the business.
  • AI-First Operating Model: Build an AI-augmented workflow for content, scheduling, social listening, sentiment, and creator vetting. Continuously evolve the stack to increase throughput and free time for higher-value strategy and creative.
  • Social Listening: Use AI-powered listening to track sentiment, surface conversations, and identify cultural and competitive signals worth acting on.

Cross-Functional Leadership

  • Marketing Integration: Partner with paid media, PR/comms, brand, and product marketing on integrated campaigns across the customer journey.
  • Cross-Team Collaboration: Work with customer service and product to surface social-driven insights and support social-first customer experiences.
  • Contractor & Vendor Management: Manage external creators, social/video production partners, and specialty vendors (influencer platforms, social tools). Set clear scopes, KPIs, and expectations. Expect to lean on contract video talent to fill the production gap as both brands scale.
  • Stakeholder Communication: Drive alignment across workstreams. Translate social and creator impact into clear business outcomes for senior leadership.
  • Intern Management & Development: Recruit, onboard, and manage a Social Media Intern as a core member of the function. Give them meaningful ownership (content support, community moderation, trend research, reporting) with a clear path to grow into a full-time role as the function scales.

Requirements

Expected Outcomes

Outdoorsy (scale)

  • Sustained, measurable growth in engagement rate, reach, and follower count, with content that resonates with target audiences.
  • An evolved, clearly tiered creator program with a documented roster and repeatable workflows.

Ride (launch)

  • Channels live with an established voice, content pillars, and a foundational audience built from zero.
  • First creator partnerships signed and producing, with a roster sourced from the auto/travel creator world.

Both brands

  • A clear ROI framework that translates activity into awareness, engagement, demand, and conversion outcomes leadership can act on.
  • A demonstrably more efficient, AI-augmented operating model that lets a lean function punch above its weight.
  • Consistent, distinct voices across owned and creator-led touchpoints, with playbooks that make it easy for partners and contractors to plug in.
  • Both brands showing up in cultural moments with credibility — participating where it strengthens the brand, not chasing every trend.

Your First Year

  • By 90 days: Ride's priority channels are live with handles, pillars, and a defined voice; you've shipped the first wave of Ride content and have a working content calendar running for both brands. You've audited Outdoorsy's existing channels and creator program and have a point of view on what to keep, kill, and scale.
  • By 6 months: Ride has an emerging audience built from zero and its first creator partnerships signed and producing. Outdoorsy's engagement and reach are measurably up against your baseline. An AI-augmented workflow for content, listening, and reporting is in place. The Social Media Intern is onboarded with real ownership.
  • By 12 months: Both brands have documented, distinct playbooks and tiered creator rosters. You're reporting a clear ROI framework to leadership on a regular cadence. The function is demonstrably more efficient than a headcount-heavy or agency model would be — and you've made the case for what the team needs next.

Who You Are (Candidate Profile)

  • 6–8+ years in social media and/or creator/influencer marketing, with meaningful time owning channels and programs end-to-end.
  • A maker first. You can ideate, shoot, and edit short-form video yourself, and you have the taste to tell stories that earn attention online. This is the core of the role.
  • A track record of growing social channels and launching new ones from scratch.
  • Deep fluency in the creator economy: how to evaluate and tier creators, structure partnerships, negotiate scopes and usage rights, and build relationships that last.
  • Strong editorial and creative instincts — you care about the quality of the content, not just the dashboard behind it.
  • Equally comfortable with brand strategy and performance data; you can write a creative brief and present a channel report in the same meeting, and explain what social impact means to the business.
  • Hands-on and AI-fluent — you use AI tools daily to increase throughput, sharpen analysis, and fuel creative experimentation, and you bring proactive recommendations to the team.
  • Player-coach: comfortable setting strategy and rolling up your sleeves to ship the work on a lean team.
  • Clear, confident communicator with senior stakeholders.
  • Genuine affinity for the outdoor, RV, auto, or travel space is a strong plus.

Benefits

What We Offer

  • Competitive Compensation: Base salary range of $115,000 - $150,000 DOE.
  • Growth Opportunity: Join a company in its early stages and help build its success from the ground up.
  • Equity: Opportunity to earn equity compensation.
  • Comprehensive Benefits: 100% company-paid medical premiums for employees, 401(k) match, and Flexible PTO.
  • Vibrant Culture: Catered lunches, happy hours, and team-building events.
  • Work-Life Balance: We offer marketplace discounts and maintain a culture that values the balance between work and adventure.