The TRiiBE is excited to welcome Nadia Harrald to the team as its first full-time audience and marketing manager.
In this new role, Harrald will lead The TRiiBE in strengthening its relationship with current readers, identifying and courting new audiences, and developing marketing plans for big stories, events and projects. She also will work with us to revamp strategy for The TRiiBE’s digital newsletters, acquiring new subscribers and growing our newsletter product as a considerable revenue source.
“As I embark on my new role as the audience and marketing manager at The TRiiBE, I am most excited about applying the skills I’ve acquired over the years to help grow The TRiiBE’s brand awareness, audience and further our impact through marketing efforts,” Harrald said. “I get excited when I think about the potential The TRiiBE has with being a household name that people know and trust, recognized globally for its meaningful content and innovative approach to storytelling.”
Harrald has been working in this role for a little over a month, but she has already started making an impact. She holds weekly social and marketing strategy meetings, and leads with a research- and evidence-based mindset.
“My goal is to use data analytics, market research, insights from social media, and audience feedback to make informed decisions, ensuring our content stays relevant and engaging,” Harrald said. “Success, in my view, is marked by tangible milestones: increases in newsletter subscribers and social media engagement, higher website traffic, improved conversion rates, and SEO performance. Additionally, if our marketing efforts help bring in money through things like donations or selling products, that’s a big win.”
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the 2020 summer uprisings, The TRiiBE has experienced exciting growth in readership each year. During our 2023 Chicago municipal election coverage, The TRiiBE’s average monthly digital impressions (including social media and web traffic) exceeded two million.
Harrald will work in collaboration with our Social, Editorial and Art teams to redesign our newsletters and build workflows for weekly newsletter content. Her first project is to build a robust audience pipeline that efficiently funnels readers from our social media channels to our newsletter products and website. In the wake of ever-changing algorithms on social media, The TRiiBE’s newsletters are going to become increasingly important in staying connected to our audience. Harrald will report to TRiiBE publisher Morgan Elise Johnson.
“What makes The TRiiBE unique and valuable in today’s journalism landscape in Chicago and beyond is our voice. With Nadia, I’m energized about the new ways we’ll be utilizing that voice beyond the social media space,” Johnson said. “We want to invite our audience in for deeper conversations and provide a variety of experiences beyond the web. It’s time for us to really be in community again, so an audience and marketing manager is the right investment for us right now.”
Most recently, Harrald served as digital marketing manager for WTTW/WFMT Chicago. There, she was responsible for creating digital campaigns aimed at increasing revenue through donations, gifts and memberships while engaging diverse audiences. Her career started in 2014 at ABC-7 Chicago as a production assistant and field producer.
She was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, and is passionate about correcting the one-dimensional portrayal of Black Chicagoans in mainstream media.
“I was drawn to The TRiiBE‘s commitment to highlighting positive, informative and impactful multifaceted stories of Black Chicago. Additionally, the marketing field’s lack of diversity motivates me to represent and hopefully inspire other Black women to pursue careers in this industry,” Harrald said. “I’m honored to be a part of a team of other like-minded, talented individuals with the same goal of not only keeping our people informed, but to liberate us while doing so.”
Harrald can be reached at nadia@thetriibe.com.
The TRiiBE is owned and operated by Morgan Elise Johnson, Tiffany Walden and David Elutilo; all three are Black alums of Northwestern University.
Since its launch in 2017, The TRiiBE has earned multiple Chicago Journalism Association (CJA)’s Sarah Brown Boyden Awards and Peter Lisagor Awards, including Best Community/Neighborhood News in 2021, a 2020 CHIRBy Award, a 2019 ADWEEK Rising Brand Stars of Chicago Award and more.
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