The brief

Following the global events of 2020, we worked with Indigenous Business Australia’s (IBA) Strong Women Strong Business (SWSB) team to re-imagine what supporting Indigenous women in business in the current climate could look like.

We worked with IBA to invigorate their social platforms to align with the new online business environment following the impact of COVID-19. Our focus quickly shifted to building on meaningful and accessible ways to cultivate the SWSB network and create a strong sense of community for Indigenous women in business online.

The impact

SWSB members adapted – as strong women in business do – to the new challenges brought about by COVID-19. The online SWSB Facebook group grew vastly into a flourishing interactive hub for likeminded women to support each other in life and in business through unprecedented times. The first half of 2021 saw the existing SWSB Facebook membership grow by 22 percent.

As part of the overall strategy, we worked with the SWSB team to analyse recurring themes and universal experiences SWSB members were contending with in the current COVID landscape, building this into the strategy.  A key deliverable was the development of SWSB’s first ever regular newsletter.

Now at 1,160 subscribers and growing strong, the newsletter provides another medium to tell stories and unite the SWSB community through rich, focused and user-generated content. Moreover, the ‘Women in Business’ section of the newsletter has consistently been one of the top four performing click links of each newsletter edition so far.

Other deliverables included the successful implementation of a social media risk management and moderation response guide, as well as the establishment of the SWSB Instagram community which is currently at 1.2K members and steadily growing.

Re-strategising and building on SWSB’s online community also meant that conversations and opportunities to network were made more accessible to Indigenous women in business in regional and remote areas – a key focus for SWSB.