From the 2022 Holiday Party presentation:
Our 1st award goes to Vivian Lyte Johnson (shown above left.) Let me read a bit of her nomination: She is a true champion for democracy and women's rights. Vivian is the immediate past president of the West Orange County Democratic Women's club. She now holds the position of State Committeewoman for the Party and is also the Precincts Activities Chair. She has always been active in the community and engages with our young people encouraging them to become politically involved. Vivian is a true leader. Her effervescent personality and dedication to move Orange County in the direction of doing what is right for all of our residents draws us all in to walk beside her. She is truly inspiring and well deserving of this award.
Our next award goes to Patricia Rumph, (shown above right with Barbara Lanning) an Orlando native, who has dedicated her life to helping others. As President of the Pine Hills Community Council, she is a driven community activist and impassioned advocate who builds alliances with those who fight for quality-of-life issues that make communities stronger. The Pine Hills community, located just outside of Orlando, Florida, is one of Orange County’s oldest and largest neighborhoods. Since 1972, the PHCC has brought together businesses, individuals, and delegates from community organizations to focus their combined efforts toward improving the life values in the Pine Hills community. Under President Rumph’s leadership (2020), increasing civic engagement has been a priority. A social media presence was established within months via the website, monthly newsletter, Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook (now w/over 1K followers) to increase interaction with members, residents, partners, and the community at large. This was especially helpful during the pandemic to virtually continue the business of the Council in the community and host a virtual candidate forum in 2020. The PHCC and community partners work to advance civic engagement within Pine Hills and Orange County through education, engagement, and empowerment community events. In This school year 2022-2023, the PHCC launched a new program, Student Engagement Civic Award, to encourage the civic service engagement of students on campus and in the community. And in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, the PHCC partnered with Pine Hills Boys & Girls Clubs and Healthy West Orange to distribute 100 food boxes, 60 boxes of protective masks, 60 at-home COV19 tests, and tomato seeds. Patricia Rumph is an active LWVOC member, and the Pine Hills Community Council is a partner organization of our VS Targeted Outreach Team Subcommittee (TOTS).
LAUNCH THAT Digital Marketing recognized for their guidance in an overall revamp of LWVOC's public digital presence.
Shown above L-R: Amy Edel, Fran Mannino, Lisa Adkins (League Communications member) Cara Tompot, Claire Walker
Earlier this year, League leadership began an exploration of how to improve our local branding. No, not to necessarily reBrand us or reInvent our public persona (I mean we are a local institution) BUT to consider a reLaunch of LWVOC.
This would certainly be beyond our in-house capabilities so they began reaching out to community partners, in particular, a special friend of the League who had helped with Voter Services a few elections ago.
And so began our collaboration with Launch That Digital Marketing, a prestigious local firm here that began in 2007, who decided that they were going to assist us for FREE. They offered us the opportunity to evaluate our Social Media strategy, our email/newsletter outreach, the redesign of the public side of our website, ideas on consistent marketing via our graphics, photography, and messaging, search engine optimization...in other words, we got a make-over
Their team was headed up by Claire Walker who is with us tonight as well as a few others including Cara Tompot, Amy Edel, and Fran Mannino.
They and other "rocketeers" evaluated how LWVOC looked to the world and then they set about revamping it with our input. We participated in a lot of Zoom calls with them, tweaking their suggestions with our own institutional knowledge but gaining so much insight per their expertise....setting aside EGO and letting professionals do what they do best... and voila, before the Primary Election, we reLaunched LWVOC.
It's always good to find out if it worked, right? Because we did hear from some of you who were "challenged" by the new look so we know you were paying attention. I won't bore you too many statistics but here's a few...
Our Social Media now sports a consistent look and this year (with the biggest spikes happening since our relaunch)
Facebook Reach is up 61.6% (The number of people who saw any content from your Page or about your Page, including posts, stories, ads, social information from people who interact with your Page and more.) and FB visits are up 28.5%
Instagram Reach is up 768.1% and visits are up 107.3%
I don't have Twitter info but really, who needs it at this point!
Website
Continues to grow and perform well and in the last 6 months, it's achieved an all-time high of 139k impressions (Total impressions is how many times a user saw a link to your site in search results.) and it FINALLY happened in the last few weeks, our MOBILE users have now surpassed our desktop/laptop users...
Emails/Newsletters
Our newsletter open rate has hovered between 25-29% for a while BUT in the last few months, it's continually crept up and now our average is between 37-39% and when it comes to emails sent ONLY to members, our last few have been around 55-60% which is PHENOMENAL
So, at this time, I'd like to present a simple certificate of appreciation to Launch That but also a promise, that we will continue the good practices of digital engagement and messaging that they have taught us.