Senior Brand Content Specialist at MFS Africa

The Role

We’re looking for an experienced Senior Brand Content Specialist to help build MFS Africa’s Brand Marketing capability and provide our stakeholders with insights into the African payments ecosystem.

The specialist will be responsible for MFS Africa’s media content by overseeing publications on communications channels such as websites, blogs, social media, and newsletters for external stakeholders. The role fits within the Corporate Communications and Brand Marketing portfolio, executing the brand’s communications pillars through producing and guiding the production of content.

The ideal candidate for this role should love producing interesting business content about the continent and the fintech space. They should be energetic, driven, creative and passionate about the African continent, its people, culture and its potential. They need to enjoy writing and creating audio-visual and digital content for external audiences and have a network of creatives across the continent that they can tap into when producing content.

The successful candidate will develop and execute content strategy in line with MFS Africa’s brand strategy by engaging the business to understand external stakeholder information needs. They will manage the production of articles, videos, newsletters, and photoshoots, all the while ensuring that this content is high quality and reflects the MFS Africa brand effectively. As a builder, it is important that the candidate is able to produce content themselves. In time, they will build out a team and must therefore be able to manage others.

If you are a versatile communicator who is eager to learn about the Fintech and payments industry, this role is for you. MFS Africa operates across the continent; therefore, you must be a fluent French speaker and a strong French writer.

The position can be based either in West Africa , East or South Africa and will report to the Head of Corporate Communications and Brand Marketing.

The duties and responsibilities of the role will be as follows:

• Develop and run the brand content marketing strategy and editorial calendar for all MFS Africa external content
• Collaborate with the Business Units, Marketing and Product functions in the development of communications plans
• Ensure the alignment of the content strategy and demand generation strategy for the sales-focused business units
• Develop, manage and edit different types of content (white papers, blogs, sales decks, industry reports, social media, etc.) in line with overall communication and business strategy
• Coordinate the execution of external communications, ensuring most appropriate channels, and that messages are consistent and aligned to the brand story
• Monitor content performance, and ensure that metrics support the business strategy
• Support the implementation of the strategic communications plan to build MFS Africa’s brand, broaden awareness of its services and priorities, and increase the visibility of its services across key stakeholder audiences
• Support multi-regional PR campaigns and other special projects that help to elevate MFS Africa’s reputation
• Ensure a consistent brand story across all communications
• Ensure that content strategy supports the growth of a high-quality CRM database
• Track performance of communications initiatives
• Keep abreast of trends and leading practice in content communications, and bring the best ideas into the organisation
• Work closely with marketing team for targeting keywords for copy/ SEO, ensuring alignment between brand and product messaging

Requirements
Skills and Competencies

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English and French are essential
• The ability to balance exceptionally high standards with meeting deadlines
• The ability to make sense of large amounts of data, draw insights and create compelling content for business audiences is critical
• A demonstrated history of producing high quality and compelling content about tech in Africa
• Extraordinary learning agility and ability to thrive under pressure
• Experience managing a team of writers, content producers, including external creatives and designers
• Experience with growing a digital audience and managing CRM tools
• The ability to work in a fast-paced corporate environment and translate complex technical ideas into simple and compelling narratives
• Digital skills are a must – must be able to create short videos, take good quality photographs, manage Mailchimp/Mailigen, CMS, and website
• Ability to manage editorial budgets

Qualifications and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in languages, journalism, communications or related field
• 7-9 years related experience, ideally in corporate and fintech environments with significant exposure to technology or financial services media and/or investor relations
• A portfolio of content projects from B2B projects or for business audiences
• Broad knowledge of external communications environment
• Journalism and/or product marketing experience are highly advantageous
• Experience working in a B2B environment is highly advantageous
• Experience living, travelling or working in multiple African countries
• Strong writing skills in English and French are compulsory

What does success look like?

• Innovation, business acumen and excellent judgment
• Top-performing high-quality content created at consistent intervals for external audiences is the highest priority output of this role
• Growth in audience sign-ups across African regions and in the US, UK, EU
• The ability to support communications projects such as the development of external communications tools and processes
• The ability to be connected to the company and to think of creative ideas that support stakeholder engagement and connection
• An enthusiasm to grow as a well-rounded communicator
• A curiosity about the field of payments and cross-border trade in Africa
• You pride yourself on always meeting deadlines
• Consistently passing the Keeper Test

Benefits

• We are highly innovative and were ranked by Fast Company as one of the most innovative companies in the world
• We work at the very cutting edge of fintech in Africa
• We solve relevant problems for Africa and the world. We are building the MFS Africa Hub into a payment infrastructure designed to last 100 years
• We have a culture of caring and execution and a very diverse work environment with over 30+ nationalities represented