iPlus

Building the future of global media in Northern Iraq

Entering a Transforming Media Landscape

At a time when Iraq’s media ecosystem faced both structural and technological limitations, iPlus emerged with a bold vision to serve underrepresented citizens and reposition regional stories within the global conversation. The mission was to build a new kind of network—one that could operate at the intersection of public service journalism, global distribution, and low-bandwidth innovation. The opportunity was especially critical in Northern Iraq, where less than half the population had internet access, yet more than 60 percent had access to multiple smartphones.

The strategy centered on reaching partially connected audiences, elevating local narratives, and extending the brand across platforms in multiple languages. This required more than a content plan. It demanded a ground-up buildout of people, process, and platform to deliver a global-ready media company rooted in Kurdish, Arabic, and English language content.

Executive Leadership and Organizational Design

The success of the transformation depended on assembling a multi-disciplinary leadership team capable of operating in startup conditions. A full executive staffing plan was created and executed, spanning editorial leadership, social media operations, product management, UX design, audience insights, and platform engineering. Each department was designed with clear functional lines, defined outcomes, and integrated workflows.

Candidates were assessed across a seven-point leadership rubric, evaluating criteria such as collaboration, self-awareness, coachability, and resourcefulness. Roles were filled with individuals who demonstrated both subject-matter expertise and the adaptability required for a rapidly evolving digital news operation. The resulting organization operated in Kurdish, Arabic, and English, with mirrored editorial and social teams across each language group.

Platform Architecture and Product Rollout

A responsive web platform served as the foundation of the iPlus digital presence, supported by integrated social media distribution across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. The technology stack was built on a coupled Drupal CMS, selected to enable fast iteration cycles, multilingual publishing, and seamless content syndication to third-party platforms such as Google News and Apple News.

The product portfolio included interactive long-form content, audio news briefs, mobile-friendly daily summaries, and personalized newsfeeds. User journeys were mapped to match the behavior of mobile-first, bandwidth-constrained audiences. Features such as “My List,” offline reading, and SMS alerts ensured accessibility across connection types.

Daily editorial planning and output were managed via role-based workflows in the CMS, ensuring that news, opinion, social, and video content could be scheduled, published, and monitored from a single hub. Social video workflows were also established to scale short-form content production for platforms such as Instagram Stories and Facebook Watch.

Training and Capacity Building

A comprehensive digital journalism training program was developed and delivered to all staff. The curriculum covered online editorial planning, SEO strategy, social media production, video scripting, analytics, and content marketing. Hands-on exercises guided the team through optimizing stories for organic search, producing daily social media calendars, and developing video treatments for high-priority stories.

The training also introduced best practices in digital publishing, including metadata tagging, platform-specific formatting, and audience growth techniques. Trainees were taught how to surface story leads from Reddit, Quora, and Google Trends, and how to apply audience behavior data to refine output.

The training efforts created a pipeline of homegrown talent able to produce high-quality journalism and compelling digital storytelling across platforms and formats. This capacity-building initiative became one of the most lasting and scalable investments of the program.

Content and Distribution Strategy

The editorial vision was to tell human stories from Northern Iraq to the world while making complex global issues accessible to local communities. To achieve this, a multi-platform content strategy was implemented that blended reversioned newswire stories, in-house reporting, social video, explainers, and audio formats.

The “For You” section provided a dynamic feed of curated stories tailored to individual interests and browsing behavior. A “Daily Brief” format was created to provide a quick digest of the most important headlines each morning. Voice and SMS-based news delivery extended the reach of iPlus content to audiences with limited internet access, using IVR systems and dial-in briefings.

Social distribution strategy focused on visual branding, short-form video, and language localization. Each story was optimized for engagement, with A/B testing used to iterate on headlines, thumbnails, and publishing times. Retargeting strategies and social idents were deployed to build affinity and drive return traffic to owned platforms.

A Vision Realized

What began as an idea to bring more voices from the region into the global conversation evolved into a scalable and strategically aligned media operation. By grounding our efforts in data, building the right team, and staying focused on the needs of the audience, we laid the foundation for iPlus to thrive in a fragmented media era.

This was not just a product launch. It was the creation of a new institution—one built for the realities of Kurdistan and the opportunities of a digital, global future.