The Catapult Network brings together nine leading technology and innovation centres spanning over 40 locations across the UK. The Catapult centres are independent not-for-profit private organisations transforming the UK’s capability for innovation in sectors of strength, established by Innovate UK in 2011.
Brief
spottydog was briefed by Catapult Network to optimise its Twitter and LinkedIn platforms to engage key stakeholders, grow awareness of its work in the UK innovation space, as well as boost engagement rates and follower metrics.
Core to the brief is identifying a series of cross-cutting editorial themes to give the Catapult Network a voice and develop brand awareness to key stakeholders on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Approach
With a focus on delivering quality over quantity to drive enhanced engagement levels, we refined the Catapult Network’s social media strategy.
Following a full content audit, we create monthly editorial calendars which, when taken in conjunction with topics fed through from the individual Catapults, enable us to cover key cross-Catapult themes while ensuring equitable promotion of all nine Catapults throughout each given month.
In addition, we developed a tiered stakeholder list filled with key individuals to engage through the Catapult Network’s social content.
Supporting this is the creation of a reactive, always-on news monitoring service, where we identify interesting stories, themes, and posts that the Catapult Network can get involved with and add to the conversation. Topics we’ve covered so far include COP26 and UK government announcements, with each of these enabling us to positively reinforce the purpose and positive impact of the Catapult Network. Adding to this is flagging key national events, such as This Is Engineering Day, International Podcast Day, and Women in Science Day, to create engaging copy to boost the Network’s digital presence.
We created a suite of templated graphics to accompany reactive content, such as adding a quote graphic to an announcement post. Alongside this, every month we create two videos to summarise the key stories and announcements happening across the Network, which has helped to further our reach.
Impact
Set with a KPI of increasing the audience growth from 5,000 to 6,600 followers on LinkedIn, we smashed this by exceeding the target in just five months. After 18 months, we grew the following by 96% to 9,800 followers.
For Twitter, we attained a total of 1,146,100 organic impressions, 2,023 post likes and 86,527 profile visits in less than one year, expanding the Network’s social reach.
From April 2021 to October 2022, we achieved 731 interactions from key stakeholders including MPs Kwasi Kwarteng and George Freeman, industry organisations Innovate UK and Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, plus Priya Guha and Simon Edmonds to name a few.
To top it off, month on month we achieve an impressive engagement rate on both platforms that is significantly higher than industry average. On Twitter the highest engagement rate to date is 5.3% and LinkedIn 6.8%.
