World Class Willow, WCW for short, is aspire to be the only global boutique cricket company that sells high-quality, pro-grade cricket bats and accessories, sponsor emerging cricketers at all levels, and provide free cricket scores from around the world through its flagship app. Based in the United Kingdom, it has presence in 23 countries within 3 months of launching the brand.
How did it all begin?
One of the company's founder was really impressed with my previous work, and was exploring opportunities to collaborate together in some way.
After some long conversations on LinkedIn, he offered me a role to work as a point of contact for all the marketing activities to be done in India for World Class Willow India.
My role at World Class Willow
As a Social Media Manager, I was responsible for handling and monitoring WCW India's social media presence.
I was in-charge of promoting their App to generate an income stream for World Class Willow + finding prospects for sponsorship to enter into the Indian market.
With them, I launched and implemented WCW India's first social media campaign around ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.
I also created unique and eye-catching infographics to cover cricket tournaments, events, and leagues; did player profiles for WCW's sponsored players, etc.
Responsibilities
Handling and management of WCW India's social media accounts + run campaigns for brand awareness.
Organic promotion of WCW's products.
Covering matches that involves Indian cricket team to drive app installs.
Support to social media advertising.
Creating infographics and promoting WCW's app & website.
Reporting performance every week and month in Google Sheets & MS Word.
Getting approvals of infographics over emails.
Preparing creatives to promote infographics on social media.
Tracking infographics' performance via Bitly links.
Pinning infographics on Facebook & Twitter for increased visibility among other regular updates.
Using Instagram's Stories and Highlights feature to promote infographics + other regular content.
Content curation to keep WCW India's social media channels up-to-date and increase followers over time.
Moderating comments to keep the community conversation healthy and non-abusive.
Answering and responding to bat & sponsorship inquiries.
Re-sharing infographics as a blog post on my sports blog, Planet "M", for keeping a record of my work and exhibit my skills.
Key takeaways
First hands-on experience of implementing an integrated social media campaign.
Wrote ad copy for social media advertising for the first time.
Organic promotion of WCW's products and service via copywriting.
First hands-on experience of lead generation for a product or service using social media platforms.
Covered Indian cricket team's matches at all levels for both women's and men's teams — International, Domestic, List A, U-23 & U-19.
Worked as a Talent Scout to find prospects for sponsorship.
First hands-on experience of doing content marketing to build brand awareness, drive app installs, and generating sponsorship inquiries.
Point of contact for all things cricket in India for WCW's India operations.
How to cover LIVE tournaments on various social media platforms while promoting an app and a product.
Activated & optimised WCW India's Facebook, Twitter & Instagram accounts.
Tweaked social media strategy based on past content performance + feedback from the founder.
Achievements
I did my first concept and implementation to analysing and reporting an integrated social media campaign with them.
I activated and optimised WCW India's social media channels; added keyword rich description; included links to website and app in the caption of the profile picture and cover photo, respectively.
I build WCW India's fan following from scratch for Twitter and Instagram accounts. For Facebook, we did a mix of organic + paid social.
I notified grammatical errors in WCW's Android app. There were same errors in the iOS version of the app as well.
I covered T20 Mumbai 2019 and CPL 2019 for the first time, among other series / tournaments during my time-period at the company.
I asked whether WCW's website has Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel code since we were promoting website and doing a lot of advertising. It turns out GA one was there, but FB code was missing. Founders didn't confirm whether they have added it or not.
Overall, I created 23 infographics, and distributed them in 192 social media creatives across Facebook, Twitter & Instagram. The infographics received 50,807 reach, 2,716 engagement, and a total of 332 link clicks. The estimated app download numbers were 1,591 (+152) for Android and iOS. Founders didn't share final app installs numbers, even after multiple requests.
The organic and paid promotion of WCW's cricket gear received 380,343 reach and 7,638 engagement from 211 posts shared across Facebook, Twitter & Instagram.
In a short amount of time, Instagram Stories were started appearing in Hashtag Stories from September 12, 2019 on almost regular basis.
Accounts handled
World Class Willow India (Social Media + Website + App)
External links
You can see all the infographics as blog posts on my sports blog, Planet "M".