I led social media for the Grand Ole Opry, the world’s longest running radio show, from February 2020 - February 2024. In that time, I re-shaped the social media strategy to be centered around fan and artist connection, moments that only happen at the Opry, and elevated the brand across channels, reaching a younger demographic and increasing the brand’s resonance online. Under my leadership, the Opry grew by hundreds of thousands of followers (24%) , reaching 1 million followers on Instagram, and the Opry’s cumulative audiences grew by 45% across social media in four years.

My contributions included overall social media strategy, content creation and live event coverage, community management, analytics and reporting, content editing and management, management of the social media team and overall social media planning. During my time on the team, I created the Opry’s social media library, employed reporting frameworks that gave the marketing team key insights into what was moving the needle, and I created processes and systems to streamline efforts, maximize our time, and generate increased results.

Facebook post engagements increased 2,900% from 2020-2024
Instagram post engagements increased by 22,900% from 2020-2024
Twitter post engagements increased by 1,380% from 2020-2024
Post reach across platforms increased by 1,455% from 2020-2024
Cross-platform total engagements increased by 5,357% from 2020-2024

During my time at the Opry, I took an organic approach to “selling” on social media in a way that the content that advertised buying felt organic compared to the content that told the Opry’s story. Below are some examples of the approach I took to this.

One of my favorite parts about working in social media is the amount of storytelling you can infuse into your content. Throughout my time at the Opry, I used Opry’s social media to tell the stories of artists making debuts, artists getting inducted, special shows that honored artists and highlighted why the Opry is so special to the country music genre and its fans.

In 2023, the marketing team pitched a new approach to Opry’s social media - positioning Opry as an influencer. I built out the approach and content strategy alongside our creative team. This entailed everything from changing our voice and tone on social media to changing the way we took photos and captured content. Below are some examples of this new approach in action on the Opry’s Instagram.

Every winter, the Opry returns to its former home, the Ryman for a winter show series. For the 2023 show series, it was my idea to really make the uniqueness of this show the focal point of the marketing. I worked with our graphic designer to develop a new look for the series that is brighter and features iconic parts of both venues, and then developed social graphics featuring the artists on the show series to promote it. The social plan consisted of the announcement, promotion of the shows/artists, show coverage, special moments from the shows in between, and then exclusive signed poster giveaways.

The show series ended up selling out and the social content outperformed our other recent social content. I created the social plan, created the posts and social graphics using the creative our designer developed, and did the show coverage onsite across Opry’s social media channels.

Celebrating Dolly Parton’s birthday with the Opry at the Ryman? This special show is a celebration of Opry member Dolly Parton’s birthday, happening every year during the Opry’s winter return to their former home, Ryman Auditorium. The challenge was to get fans excited about the show, sell tickets, and also create the only kind of Opry magic you can get when you combine the Opry, Ryman and Dolly.

From promotional social posts, to 77 hours of Dolly giveaways on the Opry Instagram, to full show coverage in a way that celebrated Dolly (who was not present) and the artists and fans, this was a project that was a thrill to work on. I crafted the overall social plan, the show support posts, the on-site coverage and video and photo concepts in addition to shooting the live show content myself.