DIA Progress Review ??

Sometimes, it is good to take stock.

In January, I reflected on my progress since launching irish insights in August 2023 and committed to seven goals for 2024 (yes, seven ??, the first lesson on reflection).

Since then, the format of The Digital Irish Abroad Dispatch has evolved as we have grown and taken feedback from followers.

It’s been a crazily quick few months, which has seen me:

• Become an Australian citizen alongside my girlfriend, Eva.
• Start a business with two good friends.
• Go on a fantastic trip to Japan (I had a week off from the DIA dispatch that week).

It's been a challenge to do all this while trying to develop this community, but I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, allowing me to build relationships with some great people and startups. ??

I hope you enjoy my attempt at assessing progress against the goals set in January, celebrating some successes and failures, and concluding with a?big?announcement on the look and feel of our brand as we advance??

The DIA 2024 Goals set in January were:

1?? Post five updates on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and the DIA website. ??

2?? Grow the DIA editorial team. ??

3?? Get to 2,000 newsletter subscribers by the end of 2024. ??

4?? Go deep on the Founder Focus series.??

5?? Run marketing campaigns to get content to a broader audience.??

6?? Experiment and create relevant video content. ??

7?? Document DIA growth progress as much as possible.??

I have used a traffic light?? system to measure each goal's health; as you can see, some have progressed better than others.

But before we analyse progress in these areas, let’s get into the key numbers ???

Crunching the Numbers??:

Since launching, we have posted ~130 times on DIA’s LinkedIn and published 24 newsletters on?Beehiiv?(analytics below):

• LinkedIn content has had 136,750 impressions; 83k were from a $100 ad coupon that LinkedIn gave us. We got a massive three followers from the 83k impressions. ??
• Sponsored LinkedIn testing got lots of views but very few followers.

• Satisfyingly, LinkedIn continues to be very successful. In Jan, we had 631 followers, nearly doubling in four months to 1,113.

• The DIA Dispatch newsletter has 425 incredibly engaged subscribers, again nearly doubling from 218 followers since Jan.
• Our open (59.6%) and click-through rate (9.2%) have stayed high and consistent since January. However, we could boost the CTR using more strategic copywriting and link placement.

• Total newsletter impressions have been a major success. In January, this was 1.5k, but it has gone to 4,571 in four months. We are now getting to a scale where Google promotes some of our stories, and plenty of people share. ????

Digital Irish Abroad 2024 Goals Review ??:

1?? Post 5 updates on LI, Instagram, Twitter, and the DIA website. ??

• Attempting to post this much across many platforms burned us out and proved ineffective and time-consuming. In March, we evaluated this goal and decided to double down on our efforts on two platforms (Linkedin & Newsletter), which would increase consistently.
• Since then, we have consistently posted on LinkedIn five times a week, which has worked well. Many posts have received 100+ likes, directly down to more consistent content timetabling.
• On a side note, we are working on a revamped website, which is the only platform we will focus on soon. We have some big news about this at the bottom of the newsletter ?

2?? Grow the DIA editorial team. ??

• Chris Mullan has been an incredible addition to the team. Having him involved has been the biggest win since the start of the year. The second pair of hands has allowed us to establish a consistent content curation and posting schedule; Chris has also taken to writing newsletters like a duck to water.
• Excitingly ?? We are still seeking a third person to join the editorial team, particularly someone interested in the VC/investment space. The aim is to lead reporting on global investment news, trends, and insights from Irish Founders, startups, VCs, etc.
• We have built a content engine that procures many key investment intelligence; we now need a talented writer to join the dots. ??
• Reach out if you or someone else is not interested in this area and keen to get involved. ???

3?? Get to 2,000 newsletter subscribers by the end of 2024. ??

• This was thoroughly covered when crunching the numbers above. Being at 425 subscribers right now means we will be pacing to 839 subscribers by the end of the year (41% of the target).
• What is frustrating is that getting people to subscribe is not the problem; it’s just making people aware of the newsletter in the first place. To reach this goal, we need to focus more on target five.
• P.S. Please feel free to share with friends who enjoy Digital Irish Abroad content. ???DIA Dispatch Signup Link

4?? Go deep on the Founder Focus series ???

• The addition of the fortnightly Founder Focus deep-dive newsletter has had incredible feedback and engagement. Hearing Irish founders abroad unique origin stories, motivations, and advice has been inspirational and enjoyable to document. Check out some here:
• Grainne Oates - Founder of Quitch and Cian McLoughlin - CEO at Trinity
• We have also launched a Founder Friday series on LinkedIn, providing short-form information on several Irish Founders worldwide. Last week’s post had founders from every corner of the globe (Japan, Malawi, Australia and Switzerland).
• Sharing Irish founders abroad journeys will continue to be centre stage as we develop.

5?? Run marketing campaigns to get content to a broader audience.??

• This has been borderline ??. But I have decided to go with orange as we have had a successful targeted LinkedIn campaign through Phanthom Buster. Thanks to anyone reading this who signed up.
• Bootstrapping the newsletter growth strategy while working a day job makes creating innovative marketing campaigns challenging. However, the following goal in our process is to create an email campaign for relevant people.
• Before investing money in marketing, we will stick to “hack” marketing to the 1000 subscriber milestone.

6?? Experiment and create relevant video content. ??

• I give this orange as we have been releasing video snippets when previewing the Founder Focus articles, which has been great and has built up my confidence in this area.
• But I would like to do more. For example, video previews detailing the contents of a DIA Dispatch newsletter will engage and drive more traffic to the subscriber pages. My aim for the following review is to have started churning these out.

7?? Document DIA growth progress as much as possible.??

• Considering that this is my first update review since I proposed this goal, this needs a lottt of work. Watch this space, though.
• I aim to do this more regularly but with less detail—monthly, shorter, sharper progress updates.

So overall, we have broken even at two ??, three ?? and two ??.

Reviewing these goals has facilitated one obvious lesson. Don’t set so many goals; reviewing them takes time. ???

On a more serious note, my critical lesson over the last few months is that consistency, more than anything, breeds progress, like many things in life.

Charting the Course for 2024

One final review has been around our brand, “Digital Irish Abroad”, which we feel could use a refresh.

The colouring and the name were developed over a very short few hours on a quiet Sunday morning when the idea for this newsletter popped into my head.

Over the last few weeks, Chris and I have given much thought to what this should look like per our original mantras.

We will change our branding and name to the Irish Insights Newsletter—Your Passport to Irish Tech Abroad.

Let us know what you think!

Stay Tuned! ??