Wok Based Project Proposal

DL805 Bachelor of Business (hons) in Digital Sales and Marketing

Student Details
Student Name: Ian Tracy

Business Details
Business name: Irish Water
Industry: Utilities

Existing online presence

Website link: water.ie
Social media links:
NETWORK LINK
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/IrishWater/
Twitter https://twitter.com/IrishWater
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/official_irish_water
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/irish-water
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/
UCTu1kv6_Kst3YoUUhgQqr8w

Plan
What is your idea? (approx. 100 words)
Irish Water is Ireland's national water utility, responsible for providing water and
wastewater services throughout Ireland. The organisation was founded in 2014 and has
been on a considerable journey of brand resilience in the recent past. I want to create a
strategic (1-2 year) digital comms plan that will ensure that communications from the
company are timely and relevant – focusing on social. Telling people about its important
work is a crucial element of Irish Water’s success. Currently IW’s social media activity is
somewhat unplanned, reactive, and not channel specific. I want to take the incredibly
positive message that the company already has and amplify it, harnessing the power of
timely, relevant, planned communications that will make a real difference to people’s lives.
What are the business requirements for this project? (approx. 100 words)

 Utilise social media as a more strategic tool to help support and grow Irish Water’s
trust and confidence metrics aligned with pre-defined comms objectives
  Embed social channels as business-critical ways to reach our audiences with
important information
 Behavioural change – internal communications campaign to ensure that IW
colleagues are advocates on social, helping to amplify
 In April 2023, the organisation will undergo a substantial global rebrand, being
renamed Uisce Éireann and has secured funding for a major information campaign -
encompassing online, offline and TV. Irish Water’s social channels need to work hard
as part of this campaign.
What are you planning to do online? (approx. 200 words)

 Create separate streams of content plans for each social channel (with a standalone
video content plan for YouTube)
 Use social listening and media sentiment reports to create new suite of social media
content which speaks to the actual issues that people are talking about right now.
Research shows they really do care about the work that IW does in their community,
the company’s content needs to get better at speaking to their concerns. Listening to
them will help us formulate a benefit-led content strategy
 Conduct full review of all pages on water.ie to create database of pages of interest
which can be amplified on social (local projects, community stories, household tips
etc) and track traffic to pages
 Review social content in conjunction with keyword research, utilising online tools for
this – to optimise the type of messaging we are sending based on people’s interests
and their needs at any time. Also, to potentially benefit water.ie for SEO.
 Create bespoke content tailored to each channel (currently the company posts
mostly identical content on each channel). We will work on researching each
audience and ensure they get the type of content they wany on their preferred
channel when they are on that channel
 Use SMART metrics to ensure that all relevant consumer touchpoints are monitored
and included in reviews.
How will this benefit business operations? (approx. 100 words)

 Improve brand awareness

 Direct and increase website traffic
 Increase social communities across all channels by agreed metrics – consequent
improvement in all other metrics, both paid and organic (engagement, CTR, CPC etc)
 Create social media influencer opportunities
 Be more proactively engaged with our online community and transition to managing
community - currently IW is non participative/ passive on its channels
 Joined-up, 360 approach to digital communications within the organisation
 Create rich data that can be analysed for better understanding of our audiences –
this benefits directorates across the business, not just marketing
 Promote our content in line with other concurrent activity e.g., public relations or
internal communications (integrated approach)
  Improve SEO for water.ie.
How does this tie into the business strategy? (approx. 100 words)
As a non-commercial entity, IW cannot look at profit or sales as measures of campaign
success. Instead, it is judged by a variety of metrics as part of quarterly consumer research
(quantitate and qualitative).

 Research shows that consumers think most of IW’s transformative work is done by
local authorities. Increased focus on targeted social media with strong messaging
and creative will ensure better cut through on messaging like ‘what we do’
 In the past three years, Irish Water has seen its trust & confidence and brand
sentiment scores increase gradually as it continues to invest in local communities,
delivering transformative services to the people of Ireland. The objectives of social
activity can be easily tracked alongside brand sentiment scores
 Other important metrics to be tracked – and which social media can help to fulfil -
include media sentiment, stakeholder satisfaction, stakeholder engagement and staff
engagement.
Objectives (approx. 300 words)
What are your overall aims for this project?

 My vision for this project is for digital communications – and social media especially
– to become embedded as the most valuable tool for communicating Irish Water’s
purpose, which is to “rise to the challenge of delivering transformative water services
that enables communities to thrive”.
 Irish Water needs to expand its marketing outreach capabilities to better
communicate water supply initiatives, such as massive investments in infrastructure,
its water conservation programme, its sustainability agency, and regulatory
compliance issues. Social media needs to be better harnessed as a central pillar of
comms strategy as it is brilliantly placed as the best channel (or series of channels) to
amplify the amazing work done every day.
 Demonstrably integrate emerging trends and best practices into Irish Water's
strategy and content development.
 In addition to the benefits to the business as outlined above, one workstream within
the strategy will be the delivery of a comprehensive internal communications
campaign, utilising internal comms channels like email and intranet – so that Irish
Water’s 1500 staff are aware and on board with all our social media initiatives and
that they see such work as part of an integrated ‘whole’. Utilising LinkedIn especially,
its envisaged that we can convert a cohort of colleagues into online evangelists. The
initial research period will help to identify opportunities here.
 Aim to embed monitoring into the digital architecture of everything Irish Water
does, but particularly in social channels. Regular reporting to be set up (30 day
rolling plan within strategy) utilising tools such as social listening (via media agency,
 Omnicomm), CRM (HubSpot), consumer insight (Behaviour & Attitudes) media
sentiment (RuPoint media).
 Aim to be able to review IW’s trust and confidence metrics at the end of 2023 and
see that through accurately targeting audiences, we strengthened engagement for
increased brand resilience. Also aim to see measurable increase customer
satisfaction and positive brand perception.
Outline of plan for 5 months (December 2022 to May 2023)

Month Details Deliverable

December Research phase:
- Utilise SOSTAC approach Report of findings
- Conduct interviews with IW Exec and
stakeholders to examine current comms pain
points which social strategy could alleviate
- Competitor analysis – IW does not have
competitors, but I will research water utility orgs
in other jurisdictions to uncover best practice and
report on their social presence, their activities
and successes e.g., NI Water, Thames Water,
Scottish Water
- Channel research, incl deep dive into Instagram,
not currently optimised (Paid content only).
Examine other channels, TikTok for video content.
- Research; I have started on a reading list of
content on social media strategy, content
creation and several studies specific to branding
and comms for the public sector. Plam will
include bibliography.
January - Consumer Insight – review IW’s many years of Review of previous
consumer insight to decipher trends in responses consumer insight
on how they best want to be communicated with
– both consumer and business. Ideally to create
audience profiles for better targeting on channels. Create slide deck of
- Social listening and media reports/ Review and pertinent highlights,
report on past 12 months of IW reports to infographic of
ascertain trends, important topics and forecast strengths,
future outcomes that we can harness in our social weaknesses,
comms. Also, potential to mitigate against opportunities,
potential future negative developments. challenges.
February Planning and Execution phase
- Create content plan – rolling 30 days ensuring Content plan
regular distribution of content, with allowance for
reactive, crisis posts where needed. Targeted,
specific content per channel. Close collaboration Social assets –
with social media manager. banner, video, gifs,
- Full review of all existing social media assets to photography etc
ensure fit for purpose. Where needed, content
can be updated or otherwise replaced.
- Brief creative agency with requirements for
necessary new content (banners, imagery)
March Create social media strategy. Plan and outline social Document outlining
media goals, tactics used to achieve them, and metrics strategy
tracked to measure performance
Internal comms – present strategy to colleagues and
 training on how strategy will be embedded in comms
going forward
Director of Corporate Affairs sign off on strategy
April Launch as part of Irish Water rebrand project