CASE STUDY: Amplifying LEAP’s Mission Through Digital Content Strategy, Video and Data Analysis.

LEAP_logo

Introduction

The Irish Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFA) wanted to support the next generation of women executives in New York and partnered with the Irish International Business Network who recruited Maura Kelly to relaunch the onsite LEAP (Leadership & Executive Acceleration Program) in 2019. Maura continued to be a Director in 2020 but due to Covid-19 the program went virtual.

(This case study highlights the 2019 program). Maura Kelly was selected for her executive skills, C-Suite contacts and knowledge of the issues. Maura also saw this as an opportunity to build online digital resources (videos/ content) to engage a larger community around LEAP.

Challenge

The Irish government wanted to bring attention to the need for diversity and inclusion in business leadership, and highlight ways immersive programs, such as LEAP, can make an impact on the Irish diaspora.

Strategy

To ensure the LEAP program attracted a wide audience of support, we designed an integrated content marketing campaign to engage the business community, build the brand and create a deep network. We:

  • Flooded communications channels: social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook), niche publications (IrishCental.com), and PRWEB (PR syndication) with a deeper picture of women’s success in business and the need to support the next generation.
  • Coordinated the messaging with the speaker’s social media networks, using select #hashtags and @handles, before and during all events (for a total six program events).
  • Live-tweeted quotes and speaker tips to extend the presentations nationwide.
  • Extended the LEAP brand and thought leadership by capturing all content on video, repurposing and transcribing several presentations (talk and panels) and redistributed them on the IIBN YouTube channel, social channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) with links to the LEAP website.

Results: Real time events and their digitized content can build engaged communities and reach influencers, partners and supporters. 

Through Twitter Analytics we monitored how many “impressions” were achieved per tweet leading up to and around events. On average LEAP posts with speaker handles attracted over 3200 impressions, with special events attracted up to 5200 impressions significantly expanding our audience outreach.

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UN Ambassador Geraldine Byrne Nason’s select quotes were placed on Twitter and LinkedIn, reaching over 3,500 Twitter impressions, 25 RT’s and 1000 views on LinkedIn.

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Typical event tweets with speaker @handles garnered multiple RT’s and engagement.

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Sample partner social media message:

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LinkedIn Publishing: For the launch, we organized a leadership panel of female executives. We transcribed and repurposed the panel content into a robust highlights article for LinkedIn garnering hundreds of views, and insightful quotes were promoted on Twitter. The LinkedIn article featured a link back to the LEAP website and LEAP YouTube Playlist.

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Article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/women-leaders-power-up-next-generation-leap-launch-maura-kelly/

YouTube Videos – Speakers become LEAP Brand Ambassadors when we distribute their digitized talks and presentations via online platforms.

We uploaded nine videos (workshops and promos) to the IIBN YouTube channel and created a LEAP Digital playlist https://bit.ly/2XEKTCL to take advantage of the IIBN global viewing community (London, Dublin, New York, Munster and Central Europe). The YouTube analytics tool revealed the LEAP videos to date have received hundreds of views and have been watched in numerous countries.

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Links to content results in more impressions.

  • We posted the LEAP Digital video link message on Twitter resulting in over 3830 impressions, and the post received over 700 views on LinkedIn.

Press and Media: We used PRWeb (PR syndication) for two distinct press releases on partner news, and IMPACT highlights of the program.

Overview

TOTAL PICKUP 120 

Exact Match 120 postings

TOTAL POTENTIAL AUDIENCE 37M 

Exact Match 37M visitors

Media Pick Up: We earned widespread media coverage of LEAP’s event with Northern Ireland’s TWN group, and the final IMPACT report.

Over 230 Media/ Information and Broadcast news outlets including ABC and NBC affiliates posted the LEAP information on their websites with a total potential audience of over 37MM viewers.

Total Pickup by Source Type: Broadcast Media (41%) Newspaper (30.0%) Online News Sites & Other Influencers (18%) Financial News Service (5%.) Blog (4%) Other (2%).

Other highlights:

  • One Young World, a global organization that gathers young leaders to develop solutions to world issues highlighted the Impact of LEAP in their September 2019 Impact Report. https://www.oneyoungworld.com/impact
  • LEAP Directors hosted a table for LEAP women (courtesy of Verizon & Ronan Dunne) at the Ireland Funds Gala honoring Ronan Dunne, Pres, Verizon Consumer Group and actor, Saoirse Ronan. The event raised over 2.1 MM.
  • A LEAP member authored an article for IrishCentral.com (2.2 MM readers) resulting in over 110 shares and the article to date has received 1,171 views when it was posted on LinkedIn.

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Article: https://www.irishcentral.com/news/community/leap-program-new-york

Conclusion: Building a pipeline for female leaders & inspiring social change for good.

LEAP has grown quickly into a strong, effective community force. Working with a coalition of corporate executives, leading businesses and nonprofit partners, LEAP has developed leadership skills in the next generation of female leaders and impacted the communities by strengthening the capacity of six nonprofit organizations since the pilot program in 2017.