Media Partnership Case Study: The Diplomatic Insight & IDSF 2025

Strategic Media Partnership in Action

In 2025, The Diplomatic Insight entered into a media partnership with the 4th International Digital Security Forum (IDSF), held in Vienna and organized by the Austrian Institute of Technology. This collaboration was about visibility, impact, narrative framing, and shaping the global discourse around cybersecurity, technology diplomacy, and international digital governance.

What is IDSF?

IDSF is one of the most forward-looking gatherings on digital security in Europe. It convenes experts from governments, international organizations, academia, civil society, and the private sector to explore the urgent questions of our time: How can we secure critical infrastructure in an age of AI? What does “digital sovereignty” mean for nation-states? And how do we balance freedom of speech with the threat of online radicalization?

As a platform rooted in diplomacy and strategic communications, The Diplomatic Insight, with a media reach spanning 92+ countries and a readership including diplomats, government officials, academics, and global policy leaders, was uniquely positioned to help bring these critical conversations into the public domain.

The goal of our media partnership: As one of their media partners, our goal was to help IDSF achieve its primary objectives. Our mission was to:

Elevate public understanding of emerging technologies and global digital threats.
Extend IDSF’s reach to key stakeholders, including diplomats, tech leaders, and policymakers.

As a media group focusing on global diplomacy with a readership of influential diplomats, ambassadors, government officials, entrepreneurs, and academics shaping policy, TDI was uniquely positioned to add value to the conference.

Here’s how we accomplished it:

Digital Media in Action: Content Creation & Distribution

Unlike most media partners that simply report during the event, we realized that mere reporting wasn’t going to hit the mark.

So we decided to start long before the event began.

We mapped our purposes and audience intents (awareness, reporting, and analysis) and produced 14 targeted blog posts in a phased approach for a global audience:

1. Pre‑Conference (Generating Awareness; Informative)

In our first phase, we imagined that we knew nothing about the IDSF and asked ourselves, what would we want to know if we came across it for the first time?

But subjective assumptions were not enough for an effective media partnership. We needed to understand what people were searching for about the core message of IDSF.

So we conducted keyword research using Google trends, ChatGPT search, and Perplexity to identify:

What are people searching for?
What our audience wants to know?
What aspects generate the most interest?

Based on this research, we created six pre-conference informative articles:

2. During Conference (Reportive; Highlight‑Driven)

When the conference began, we had something most media partners don’t: Dr. Farhat Asif, Executive Editor of TDI and President of the Institute of Peace and Diplomatic Studies was not only covering the event but she was part of the panel discussions.

As both a participant and observer, Dr. Asif provided our team with insider access that transformed our coverage approach. Rather than relying on press releases or second-hand reports, our team was directly embedded in Vienna, experiencing the discussions firsthand.

This allowed us to provide real-time coverage that covered what most ignored:

3. Post‑Conference (Looking Back & Looking Forward)

Finally, we created and shared content that showed the human side of the conference while also looking ahead to its broader impact:

Photo Tour: Inside the Venue of IDSF 2025 in Vienna

Each post was SEO‑optimized around core keywords (e.g., “IDSF 2025,” “cyber diplomacy,” “digital sovereignty”) to generate and capture public interest well before—and after—the event.

Amplifying Through Social Media & Online Networks

Our content strategy extended beyond blog posts to leverage TDI’s established social media presence and network reach.

LinkedIn Newsletter:

Dr. Farhat Asif promoted IDSF through her personal LinkedIn newsletter, reaching over 12,000 subscribers with dedicated articles including:

Multi-Platform Distribution:

Every article we created was shared across The Diplomatic Insight’s social media channels:

The Diplomatic Insight LinkedIn page
X (Twitter) account
Facebook page
Weekly newsletter, The Diplomatic Dispatch

Strategic Media Partnership in Action — A screenshot from our 29th May Diplomatic Dispatch

This multi-channel approach collectively reached around 20,000 engaged followers across platforms. We used relevant hashtags to reach interested and engaged social media users:

#idsf2025 #internationaldigitalsecurityforum #digitalsecurity #techdiplomacy #digitladiplomacy #dataforpeace #freedomofspeech #cybergovernance #vicesse #wko #ksö #digitalsovereignty #genderequality #globaldialogue

Private Network Engagement:

Beyond public channels, TDI Chief Editor Muhammad Asif Noor shared event information within private communities of diplomats and official circles, tapping into exclusive networks that typical media partnerships couldn’t access.

The Impact

Our content and distribution strategy delivered results that exceeded typical media partnerships.

TDI Dominating IDSF Search Results

Search Rankings: TDI blogs and social posts ranked first after the official IDSF site in both Google and Bing results. This impromptu screen capture shows TDI dominating the search rankings for major IDSF-related keywords & queries.
AI Search Integration: TDI blogs became authoritative sources, with ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other AI search engines citing our content in IDSF-related queries.

Backlinks: Sent 17000+ backlinks to IDSF through the top website banner that appeared across pages, strengthening their online discoverability.

Direct Traffic: Received 1000+ visitors on TDI’s IDSF-related blogs.

The Lesson

By starting months before the conference, conducting genuine audience research, and leveraging our unique positioning in the digital media landscape, we created a partnership that delivered measurable value for both organizations.

Here’s our key insight: media partnerships work best when they’re strategic alliances rather than transactional arrangements.

Through our data-backed and grounded approach, IDSF gained enhanced visibility, and our audience received valuable insights.

For future partnerships, this experience reinforced that the most effective collaborations happen when media partners become genuine stakeholders in the event’s success, not just observers reporting from the sidelines.

Are you also seeking a strategic media alliance for your event, conference, or project? Let’s discuss! Email us with your questions at info@thediplomaticinsight.com

Web Desk

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Established in December 2008, The Diplomatic Insight is Pakistan’s premier diplomacy and foreign affairs magazine, available in both digital and print formats.