Women on Boards
CP Communications was engaged to raise the profile of Women on Boards, a social enterprise to improve the gender balance on Australian company boards. Women on Boards brokers women into board roles, offers professional development and mentoring programs, hosts excellent events and ensures a high level of dynamic interaction across its large and influential network.
We wanted to raise awareness of both Women on Boards and the board issues among senior women managers and executives, influential male decision makers, men in middle management and company chairs, CEOs and senior decision makers of ASX listed companies.
CP Communications developed a PR strategy that incorporated media releases, pitching well-written articles and opinion pieces to target media. We pitched interview opportunities to print, radio and television relating to features or topical issues, researched relevant conferences for the Directors of Women on Boards to speak at. We were also responsible for promoting events held by Women on Boards to drive attendance, and for managing social media accounts.
Media releases
Media releases were distributed to select media outlets to announce company news, events and comment on topical issues. They were used only when most appropriate. Media releases included the announcement of the ThinkWomen National Breakfast Series, the announcement of the new Next Gen mentoring program, the event details of the Gender Matters Conference and a response to the release of the Australian Financial Review’s list of Australia’s top paid CEOs and senior executives.
Articles and Opinion Pieces
The directors wrote articles and opinion pieces which we edited and pitched to relevant magazines and major newspapers such as Superfunds magazine, HR Monthly, Australian Career Practitioner and Dynamic Business. The articles were about topical issues such as gender quotas, new statistics such as the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) census data and industry-specific issues such as women on boards in agribusinesses.
Events
Women on Boards hosts regular conferences and seminars. We promoted the bi-annual Gender Matters conference, the ThinkWomen National Lunch Series and the ThinkWomen National Breakfast Series. We promoted these events with media releases and tailored media pitches.
Social Media
In the two months leading up to the Women on Boards Gender Matters Conference, CP Communications managed the Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts for Women on Boards to drive awareness of and registrations for the conference.
On Twitter, CPC tweeted at least four times a day and also pro-actively and reactively engaged with the online community to increase awareness and hype around the conference and women’s issues related to people in the workforce. The hash-tag #WOBGM was created and used before and throughout the conference with relevant tweets. This hash-tag was also used by other conference attendees and Twitter followers interested in the conference.
As a result, the number of people following @Womenonboards increased by over 40% from the start of this project to 1,143 followers and is now on 44 lists on Twitter. Measuring the effectiveness of Twitter on Klout and TweetReach showed that positive sentiment around the conference increased significantly as people tweeted their appreciation of consistent and effective use of the #WOBGM hash-tag and management of the @Womenonboards Twitter handle. @WomenonBoards reached 12,951 people on the day of the conference alone.
Results
CP Communications achieved over 50 pieces of media coverage for Women on Boards across newspapers, magazines, radio and online. Major pieces of print coverage included articles in The Daily Telegraph, HR Monthly, Australian Farm Journal, The Courier Mail, The Adelaide Advertiser, Management Today, BRW, AFR BOSS, Superfunds, Australian Mining, Australian Financial Review, In The Black, Australian Banking and Finance, Australian Career Practitioner, Herald Sun and NETT.
Major online coverage included Australian Women Online, MyBusiness.com.au, Australian Businesswomen’s Network, HR Club Sydney, AAP Sydney, Connected Women, DynamicBusiness.com.au, Women In Business, Crikey.com.au, Herald Sun online, NETT.com.au, The Punch, Switzer, First 5000, and The Boardroom Report.