Communications Specialist

At Essex, we provide outstanding communities in which to live, work and invest. Our associates are offered competitive salaries, experience career growth, and receive comprehensive benefit packages such as medical, dental, vision, 401k employer match, excellence rewards, wellness programs and more. Essex is committed to engaging, enabling, and empowering associates to thrive. We invite you to experience this exciting employee journey with us!

POSITION SUMMARY
The Communications Specialist will support the efforts of the marketing and communications team to increase brand awareness, enhance marketing efforts, promote a positive public image of our company, and focus on creating appealing and creative content. Candidates should have excellent writing abilities and communication skills, in addition to being innovative, organized and self-motivated. They should have an interest in driving strategic messages to key internal and external stakeholders, a passion for marketing and social media, and an excitement for building a successful communications strategy and flow.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Assist with implementation of overall marketing and communications strategy to drive traffic, engagement and leads
- Collaborate with communications team to draft and edit copy for social media, email marketing campaigns, internal and external websites, employee communications initiatives, reputation management sites, and more
- Assist with building the company’s social media strategy through research, benchmarking, messaging and audience identification
- Research and assist with developing a public-facing PR strategy to positively position the Essex brand to key external stakeholders
- Effectively communicate the Essex brand voice in a clear, authentic way across all online and offline marketing channels through content creation and copywriting
- Maintain corporate and company-wide social media pages and profiles
- Communicate with social media followers, including responding to queries in a timely manner
- Prepare monthly reports, as needed
- Stay up to date on best practices and emerging trends in internal and external communications, public relations, marketing and social media
- Other duties and special projects, as assigned by supervisor

QUALIFICATIONS
- Bachelor’s Degree in communications, journalism, public relations, or a related field
- 2+ years working experience in communications or public relations
- Excellent writing, editing, presentation, and written and verbal communications skills
- Proficient in AP writing style
- Copywriting experience across a variety of media platforms
- Demonstrable social networking experience and strong familiarity with the business applications of social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.)
- Adequate knowledge of web design, web development, CRO and SEO
- Strategic and creative mindset and strong attention to detail
- Graphic design, photo and video-editing skills preferred
- Knowledge of online marketing and good understanding of major marketing channels
- Knowledge of analytics and/or statistics is a plus

SKILLS
- Expertise in Microsoft Office Suite: Word, Excel, PowerPoint
- Knowledge of and interest in marketing technologies
- Team player and collaborator, with a strong can-do attitude
- Organized and can manage multiple deadlines
- Easily accepts directions and maintains the ability to pivot to different projects, as needed
- Takes ownership and initiative to drive projects through to completion
- Professional demeanor, positive approach, sense of humor
This job description is not an all-inclusive list of functions and tasks. Job functions and features may be added, deleted or modified at any time by your management team. Receipt or possession of this job description does not constitute a contract of employment