Social Media Manager

About us
Tell Studios is a video production company in Orion Township, Michigan. Our tagline is "video with soul," and we mean it — we help businesses and personal brands find the story underneath what they do, then bring it to life on camera. Twenty years in, we've made films for Adventures by Disney, the University of Michigan, the American Cancer Society, and a long list of businesses you've never heard of but whose stories deserved telling.

We're a small team that takes the work seriously and ourselves less so. One of our core beliefs is "done is better than perfect" — we'd rather ship something real and learn from it than polish something forever. That belief matters a lot in this role.

The three brands you'd be running. This role covers our whole family of brands, so range matters more here than depth in any one lane:

Tell Studios — our video production company. Audience: marketing directors, communications leads, and business owners in the Midwest and beyond. Tone: confident, warm, story-first.

Ryan Koral — our founder's personal brand. Audience: business owners and creators who want to show up on video. Tone: personal, encouraging, occasionally a dad joke.

Studio Sherpas — our coaching and podcast brand for video business owners. Audience: filmmakers and studio owners building their businesses. Tone: peer-to-peer, practical, insider.

Three brands, three very different audiences. Being able to move between them without everything sounding the same is the single most important thing we're hiring for.

Down the road, this may also include managing social for a select client or two — we have clients asking. That's not day one, but it's where this is heading.

What this role actually is
We want to be direct about this, because it's where these hires usually go wrong.
This is a hands-on role. You'll be writing the captions, building the carousels, cutting the clips, and hitting schedule — yourself. There's no one below you to hand things to.

It's also not a role where you wait to be told what to post. You'll own the calendar and the output, and you'll be the one telling us what belongs on it. We want someone with real opinions about what should go out and the ability to make it themselves.
If you're looking for a role where you build the strategy deck and someone else executes it, this isn't that. If you're looking for a role where you just run someone else's calendar, this isn't that either.

What you'll own
The calendar and the output. Content pillars, posting cadence, platform priorities. Writing the copy, designing the graphics and carousels, scheduling everything, and staying consistent.

Turning our library into posts. We're sitting on years of client testimonials, workshop footage, podcast episodes, and behind-the-scenes material that has never been properly mined. A huge part of this job is finding the gold in there and getting it out into the world.

Telling Ryan what to shoot. This one's important. Ryan makes more content when someone hands him a plan. We want you maintaining the idea backlog and showing up with "here's what we're shooting this week, here are the three things to talk about, here's the shot list." You'd be driving the content engine, not waiting at the end of it.

Reading the data and acting on it. We want someone who actually looks at the numbers and lets them change the plan — noticing that carousels are outperforming single images, that one hook style keeps landing, that a whole format isn't working and should be killed. You'll report back regularly on what's working, what isn't, and what you want to try next. You don't need to be a data analyst. You do need to be someone who forms an opinion from a dashboard and then does something about it.

Pulling what you need from our team. When a post needs a specific clip, you'll brief our editors directly — clearly enough that they can deliver it without a dozen follow-up messages.
Proactive communication. Regular updates, flagging problems early, no guessing games on our end.

What we're looking for
Taste. You have a point of view about what good looks like. We'd love to hire someone who doesn't just match our brand voices but sharpens them.

Range across brand voices. You can write as a video production company, as a personal creator, and as a coach for filmmakers — and they sound like three different people.

Proven experience running accounts end to end. Portfolio required. We especially want to see accounts you owned start to finish, not one slice of an agency workflow.

Comfort with analytics. You can read native platform insights and a scheduling dashboard, draw a conclusion, and change what you're doing because of it.

Design ability. Carousels, quote graphics, story frames — Canva-level is fine, we're not asking for a designer.
Basic short-form editing. Trimming clips, adding captions, cutting a Reel from existing footage.

Excellent written English. You'll be writing in our voice, publicly, every day.

Full-time and focused. This is your one job. We're not looking for someone splitting attention across other clients or gigs, and we pay at the top of the market specifically so we don't have to.

You do NOT need to: edit long-form YouTube videos, run paid ad campaigns, shoot anything yourself, or have worked in video production before.

Bonus points for: experience with video-heavy brands, podcast clip workflows, or growing a short-form account from a standing start.

The details
Compensation: 1,200–1,500 USD/month, depending on experience, paid monthly.
Type: Full-time (40 hrs/week).
Hours: Async-first — we care about output, not hours logged. Two fixed requirements: a weekly Connect call with your manager (who works US Eastern hours), and roughly two hours of scheduled overlap on two or three other days for feedback rounds. Beyond that, you set your own schedule. If you'd rather work full US Eastern hours, that works for us too.
Tools we use: Metricool, Canva, Google Workspace, Descript, Slack. Experience with these is a plus, not a requirement.
Start date: As soon as possible

Where this goes
We're building this function from close to scratch, and we'd rather grow someone into it than hire a title. If you run these three brands well, the natural next step is client work and eventually a small team underneath you. We're not promising that on day one — but it's real, and it's why we're hiring above market instead of at it.

How to apply
Reply with the subject line: SMM — [Your Name] — [a brand whose social you admire]

Include:
Your portfolio — 2–3 accounts you personally ran. Tell us what changed while you were running them.
A 60-second unscripted video (Loom or similar) introducing yourself. Nothing fancy, phone camera is fine. We just want to meet you.

One short answer: Pick one of our three brands, look at what we're currently doing, and tell us the first three posts you'd make and why. A few sentences each is plenty.

Applications missing the video or the short answer won't be reviewed.

Our process: a short intro call, then a small paid test project across two of our brand voices, then a decision. We don't ask anyone to work for free.