Case Study 1

Billion Readers
A year of growth: June 2025 – June 2026

My role: content strategy, paid media and platform management across 4 platforms, delivered with the Stories Social team.

About BIRD
BIRD is a literacy and accessibility initiative. It wants reading and storytelling to be available to everyone, in every language. Its programs include Same Language Subtitling and Captions, Audio Description, StarDost (well-known people reading stories in their own language) and BIRDSong, a lullaby initiative.

Where we started
In June 2025, BIRD’s channels were just getting going. Instagram got under 2 lakh (about 177K) views a month, Facebook had almost no organic reach, and YouTube hadn’t found its audience yet. The goal was a steady, story-led content engine across five platforms, with paid promotion on top, that kept the warmth of the storytelling.

What happened

What I did

One idea ran through everything: real narrators, real language communities and real impact stories, not generic awareness content. Then I gave each platform its own job:

YouTube: five videos a month built around StarDost and BIRDSong. Video Views campaigns drove reach and Demand-Gen campaigns drove subscribers.
Instagram: weekly reels, carousels and story ads, with Awareness, Traffic and Engagement campaigns and a conversational caption voice.
Facebook: cross-posted reels and carousels, with their own Awareness, Traffic and Engagement campaigns.
Google Ad Grants: always-on Search and Performance Max campaigns that reach people already looking for this, including one aimed at the diaspora.
LinkedIn: thought-leadership and hiring content, plus sponsored carousels and document ads, to build a professional audience.

Why it worked?

Celebrity-led storytelling: StarDost became the signature format and the most consistent source of saves, shares and new followers.
Stories that felt local: language-first, culturally specific stories beat generic awareness content on every platform.
A disciplined format mix: reels for reach, carousels for depth, GIFs for shareability, story ads for traffic.
Paid on top of organic: whatever resonated organically got ad budget, so spend followed what audiences had already shown they wanted.
Five platforms working together: awareness on Facebook and YouTube, community on Instagram and LinkedIn, and high-intent traffic through Google Ad Grants.