Social media specialist Eimear Walsh brings Mary from Dungloe to new heights

Daniel O'Donnell with Eimear Walsh at this year's Mary from Dungloe festival. Photos: Conor McGarvey

placeholder image — Daniel O'Donnell with Eimear Walsh at this year's Mary from Dungloe festival. Photos: Conor McGarvey

The digital reach of the Mary From Dungloe International Arts Festival increased by over 3000% this year, with a local woman Eimear Walsh playing a massive part with her social media skills

The marketing decision to promote the Mary From Dungloe International Arts Festival through various social media channels certainly paid off and it went viral.

This year Eimear Walsh volunteered as the social media manager and helped increase the festival's social media presence by over 3000%.

Dungloe native Eimear, who attended Rosses Community School, is a 20-year-old third-year Digital Marketing student studying at the Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT).

She set up DigiDomhan marketing to explore her passion for digital marketing and took charge of all the social media accounts linked to the 56th Mary From Dungloe Festival and experienced great success in promoting it.

“I set up DigiDomhan at the end of May as a marketing page trying to build a portfolio for myself after I started the Mary From Dungloe I received a lot more engagement and it took off from there,” Eimear told DonegalLive.

Eimear is set to take on the role of the social media manager for the 57th Mary From Dungloe International Arts Festival 2024. The festival committee has already started planning for next year’s Mary From Dungloe. The festival will run for 10 days from the end of July until the start of August following the success of this year’s campaigns.

“From May to August, I had the incredible opportunity to take over the Mary From Dungloe International Arts Festival's social media pages for their 56th festival,” she said.

“The growth on Facebook was the most significant contribution showing an 11,300% increase in Engagement, a 2,900% increase in post reach, a 2,100% increase in following and a 1,800% increase in Facebook reach. “The main social media platform we used was Facebook because our main demographic is 30-60 years old."

“Instagram was still significant with a 1,300% increase in engagement, a 618% increase in post reach, a 550% increase in Instagram reach and a 425% increase in following. This year, we posted a lot more on Instagram than in previous years, so we gained a lot more followers.”

Additionally, Eimear successfully established the Mary From Dungloe TikTok account to engage with a younger audience. The TikTok page currently has 1,325 followers and 11.6k likes despite it only being established in July of this year.

Gavin Boyle, co-director, making a presentation on behalf of the Gray Room to Adele Morgan, 2023 Mary from Dungloe winner, and Pat Nora Gallagher, co-director

“There are loads of different avenues Eimear went down to get the festival out there and it meant that even people who weren’t at home felt involved,” Gavin Boyle, Co-Director of the Mary From Dungloe Festival with Pat Nóra Gallagher, said.

When speaking about how she grew the digital reach, Eimear explains that she broadened the target audience by posting content regularly and on different platforms.

“The main thing was to have a theme, so everything matches up with the brochure, over the space of three months I posted 421 posts on Instagram and Facebook and 69 videos,” she said. “There was engagement as five posts were going up every week, the growth majorly started when we started posting about all the events”.

The digital presence also brought more people in attendance, Gavin added: “There is no doubt in our minds that because of the online content, more people were aware of the festival, we gave a daily update as to what is happening and that alone kept people in the know and more people came out of their houses”.