Social Media & Community Manager

The Role

If you spend your weekends working on your car, your evenings scrolling detailing content, and your work hours wishing you could mash the two together — keep reading.

Malco is hiring a Social Media & Community Manager to lead how Malco Auto and Malco Marine show up online. We make professional-grade detailing chemicals that pros have trusted for decades. We’re going up against well-funded competitors who are out-spending us on content. We don’t plan to out-spend them. We plan to out-build them — with sharper content, a real community, and a brand voice that sounds like it came from someone who’s actually held a polisher.

That’s where you come in.

What You’ll Actually Do

Build the community.

This is the heart of the role. You’ll live in the spaces where detailers actually hang out — the Facebook groups, the Discord servers, the Reddit threads, the YouTube comments, the DMs. You’ll know the regulars by handle. You’ll know which creators are on the way up and which ones the pros don’t take seriously. Specifically, you’ll:

• Build real, long-term relationships with detailers, creators, shop owners, and the people whose opinion actually moves the category.
• Recruit, onboard, and run an ambassador and micro-influencer program — the kind that gets pros reordering, not the kind that gets impressions.
• Show up in the comments and DMs as the voice of Malco. Knowledgeable, fast, on-brand, and without sounding like a corporate account.
• Surface what the community is saying about products, competitors, and trends — and push it back to Marketing, Product, and Sales so it actually shapes decisions.

Run the social calendar.

You own day-to-day social for Malco Auto and Malco Marine across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube (Shorts and long), Facebook, and LinkedIn. The calendar isn’t a standalone thing — it’s how the broader brand and content strategy shows up on platform. Specifically:

• Own the calendar across both brands. Plan content arcs around launches, brand moments, seasonal beats, and the cultural rhythm of the detailing world.
• Partner with our Content Studio (videographer, designer, creative lead) to brief and shape hero assets — then cut, rework, and adapt them into platform-native pieces.
• Make reactive content yourself when speed matters. Phone-shot, phone-edited, posted same day. If a trend hits Tuesday morning, we’re not waiting until Friday.
• Write captions with actual voice. Different for Auto vs. Marine. Different for TikTok vs. LinkedIn. Not AI slop, not corporate filler.
• Use AI (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) as a force multiplier — for drafting, reformatting, trend monitoring, audience research. We expect it. We use it ourselves.

Read the data, then move.

• Track what actually matters: engagement quality, community growth, ambassador performance, share of voice vs. the competition, and the signals that connect social activity to brand and demand.
• Report up to marketing leadership regularly with what’s working, what isn’t, and what you’re changing because of it.

Show up for the brand offline, too.

Trade shows, ambassador meetups, training days at the Barberton detailing bay — those are owned by other teammates. You don’t run them. But when they happen, you’re there to capture content, amplify the moment on social, and help bring the right community members through the door.

Who We’re Looking For

To be blunt, this isn’t for everyone. Here’s who we want to hear from:

• You’re a detailing enthusiast or insider. You’ve held a polisher. You can talk paint correction, ceramics, foam cannons, and two-bucket method without Googling. You know who Larry Kosilla is. You have opinions about Yvan Lacroix’s content. This part is non-negotiable — we’re not going to teach you the category.
• You’ve done this work for 5+ years. Social, community, creator marketing, brand — some combination. You’ve grown an audience or a community from small to actually-meaningful, and you can talk about how you did it. Junior candidates won’t be a fit; this isn’t a learning-on-the-job role.
• You’re a creator, not just a manager. You can pick up a phone, shoot something, edit it in CapCut, and have it live by lunch. Hero content gets briefed to the Studio; reactive content gets made by you.
• You’re native to the platforms as they exist in 2026 — not how they worked five years ago. You know what’s breaking on TikTok, what’s changed on YouTube Shorts, what dies and what doesn’t in Reels.
• You bring strong opinions. We don’t want to hand you a playbook. We want you to walk in with one, run hard, and tell us where you’re going.
• You treat AI as a tool, not a threat. You’re already using it. You have favorite prompts. You’d rather automate the boring parts so you can focus on the work that actually matters.

Bonus Points If

• You’ve worked in or around the automotive aftermarket, detailing industry, or marine space.
• You have your own social presence in the detailing world we can look at.
• You’ve managed creator or ambassador programs that produced measurable category wins, not just content.
• You’ve worked at a brand that punched above its weight — you know what scrappy looks like.

What You Get

• Two brands with real heritage, real product quality, and serious room to grow. Malco Auto is the $14M flagship. Malco Marine is the emerging brand. You’ll shape how both show up.
• A Content Studio behind you — dedicated videographer, designer, and creative lead. You’re not a one-person army.
• A marketing team that takes social and community seriously as a growth lever, not a checkbox.
• Real budget for ambassador and creator programs.
• A family-owned company where decisions happen fast and your work ships without six layers of approval.
• Competitive compensation, calibrated to experience. We’d rather pay more for the right person than settle for cheaper and wonder why nothing’s moving.

Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Business Administration or related field.

Experience / Requirements:

• A detailing enthusiast or detailer insider who has actually held a polisher. You understand paint correction, ceramics, foam cannons, and two-bucket method.
• 5+ years of experience in social, community, creator marketing, brand or some combination. Have grown an audience or a community from small to actually meaningful.
• A creator and a manager.
• Native to the platforms as they exist in 2026.
• You bring strong opinions and have your own playbook.
• Ability to use AI as a tool.

How to Apply

Send your resume plus:

1. Links to social accounts or communities you’ve personally built or grown. Brand accounts, your own — whatever you’re proud of.
2. A short note (a paragraph or two) on the last piece of detailing content that made you stop scrolling — and why it worked.

Skip the cover letter. The two answers above tell us more.