[JUDGING] Love Drogheda
Section: Social Media Strategy: NGO
Organisation Name: Love Drogheda
General Strategy Questions
Name Of Brand Client
Love Drogheda
Name Of Brand Client Copy
Correct
Personpeople Who Led This Campaign
Aisling Conlon
Do You Use Alt Text In Your Images And Caption Your Videos
Videos were captioned
What Objective For Campaign
Love Drogheda exists to make Drogheda a better place to work, live and visit, funded directly by more than 1,550 local ratepayers under the Business Improvement District model. The objective for the social media strategy was to turn that funding into a visible, measurable return: driving footfall and spend into the town, promoting ratepayers and their offers and building awareness of events, all while growing organic reach and engagement across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok without paid support.
Rather than posting generic promotional content, the aim was to build a presence people would actually want to follow and engage with, one that felt like it came from the town rather than at it, spanning pillars such as retail, outdoors, the surrounding areas, nightlife and eating out and more.
A further objective was consistency and improvement over time. Every month was measured against the same core metrics, including engagement, across every platform, so findings from one month could shape decisions the next, rather than treating social media as a static, unreviewed channel.
Outline Your Strategy For This Campaign
The strategy is built around defined content pillars, retail, outdoors, the surrounding areas and nightlife and eating out, rather than one generalised feed, so every post ties back to a specific reason for someone to visit or spend in Drogheda.
Content is planned on a monthly board and reviewed against performance data before the next month is built, so findings genuinely shape what gets made rather than sitting in a report. That review led to a deliberate reset: the Love Drogheda gift card cutout was retired from imagery, replaced with real local people, real streets and real businesses, to make the page feel like it comes from the town rather than at it.
Format is mixed deliberately across graphics, photography and video, with live coverage of flagship events such as the Lú Festival of Light, the Christmas Light Switch On and St Patrick's Festival used to capture real time energy rather than only polished aftercare content. TikTok was reintroduced using carousel style formats, benchmarked against accounts such as Lovin Ireland and Dublin Airport.
Facebook and Instagram carry the bulk of consumer facing content and events. LinkedIn speaks directly to ratepayers, businesses and Louth County Council. The gift card scheme and local offers are threaded consistently across all four platforms.
What Were The Outcomes For This Campaign Metrics Next Question
The pivot to defined content pillars and real, local imagery worked. Content built around community life and live events, the Lú Festival of Light, the Christmas Light Switch On, St Patrick's Festival, the Drogheda 10K, Moorland Café and an April Fool's stunt linking Drogheda and Dundalk by fake portal, consistently outperformed generic promotional posts across every platform, confirming the pillar led approach was the right call rather than a guess.
Growth was sustained rather than a single viral spike. Reach, impressions and engagement climbed steadily across nearly every month on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok alike, showing the strategy compounded over time rather than relying on one standout post to carry the numbers.
Introducing TikTok with carousel style formats opened up a genuinely new audience the other three platforms were not reaching, adding real incremental reach rather than cannibalising existing followers.
The strategy also delivered the proof the BID model depends on, giving over 1,550 ratepayers and Louth County Council visible, monthly evidence that their funding is translating into awareness, footfall and engagement for the town, not just activity for its own sake.
What Are Your Metrics For This Campaign Real Metrics Please
All figures below are organic, with no paid support behind them, across Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and TikTok for the eight months tracked, September 2025 to April 2026.
- 780,600 people reached organically across eight months, with 2.45 million impressions delivered, entirely without paid spend.
- Reach grew 226% year on year in December 2025 alone, the single strongest month of organic growth recorded across the whole run.
- Instagram delivered its best month yet in April 2026: reach up 471% year on year, impressions up 307% year on year and content interactions up 521% year on year.
- The April Fool's Drogheda to Dundalk portal stunt post reached over 100,000 people in one piece of content, 45,900 on Instagram and 56,700 on Facebook, with 1,431 likes and 1,328 saves on Instagram alone.
- Content interactions climbed 160% year on year in April 2026 and profile visits climbed 130% year on year in February 2026, proof engagement kept compounding well beyond the January reset.
- Total content interactions reached 39,200 across the eight months, with over 30,000 profile visits generated, real people actively choosing to click through to the page.
Is There Anything Else You Want To Add Be Brief
Every figure mentioned is entirely organic. Love Drogheda put zero paid media behind this growth in 2025-2026. It was ran on planning, consistency and the team being physically present at events with a camera, not a media budget.
For a town the size of Drogheda, funded by local ratepayers rather than a national marketing budget, that is what makes the growth genuinely remarkable.
