BlogWell Philadelphia Social Media Case Study: Scholastic, presented by Ivy Li & Morgan Baden
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In their BlogWell Philadelphia presentation, "Transforming Scholastic Book Clubs Into Brand Amabassadors," Scholastic Digital Publicist, Ivy Li, and Senior Manager of Internal Communications and Social Media, Morgan Baden, share how social media has helped turn Clubs customers into brand ambassadors. They also discuss the unveiling of a new book community for readers of every age, everywhere, to celebrate the company's 90th anniversary.
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BlogWell Philadelphia Social Media Case Study: Scholastic, presented by Ivy Li & Morgan Baden
- 2. Transforming Scholastic Book Clubs customers into brand ambassadors and introducing… YouAreWhatYouRead.com
- 4. Making the jump to social media 144,000 fans
- 5. Strategy Voice New titles; bestsellers Expert Advice Customer Service Book Buzz Exclusive Content Editorial recommendations Behind-the-scenes Platform for teacher/parent voices Give back (huge component of Clubs business model) Customer queries/issues Employee perspectives Content that can’t be found elsewhere Experiment; be flexible; offer value
- 9. Sweepstakes successes 1 3 2
- 16. A niche community Parents/teaches demographics Total fans Low “hide” rate
- 17. Clubs set the stage for the rest of Scholastic social media
- 18. Session 1: Participation, trends, goals, ROI, monitoring Session 2: Best practices, converting the skeptics, engaging Twitter conversations, case studies Session 3: Tying goals to metrics, measurement, social media metrics, tools for sharing
- 20. MILLIONS OF BOOKS. WHICH FIVE SHAPED YOUR LIFE?
- 21. MILLIONS OF BOOKS. WHICH FIVE SHAPED YOUR LIFE?
- 23. Join our community! @Scholastic Facebook.com/Scholastic Facebook.com/ScholasticBookClubs www.oomscholastic.com
Editor's Notes
- MORGAN Welcome! Introductions
- MORGAN Ask Question: Raise your hand if you remember getting these in school or if your kids bring these flyers home today? After 61 years, Scholastic Book Clubs continues to deliver great books to kids in classrooms all over the country. Everyone thinks of Scholastic as being paper flyers that live in classrooms only. But we knew there was a massive teacher community online – particularly Facebook – and we wanted to meet our customers where they live. The bad news is, it took a communications crisis for us to respond to that need. The good news is, once we did respond, our online community began to thrive. The challenge that we face daily is: how do you bring a community that exists offline (in disparate schools and households) into an online place?
- IVY In early 2009, Scholastic did not have any organized presence on Facebook. An organization that is known for attacking children ’ s brands created a page attacking Scholastic Book Clubs based on a flawed research study that carried false information. And it spread … What was needed was a community that could behind the right facts. We realized that while we had tens of thousands of brand ambassadors, we weren ’ t sure how to tap them and we weren ’ t really sure who they were. Scholastic Book Clubs in reality is a B-to-B business because our flyers reach the hands of teachers first. Teachers then pass the flyers to kids and parents. Though parents make the final purchasing decision for most kids, we didn ’ t have a strong communication line to these parents. But social media helped us change that. Facebook helped turn our B-to-B business to a B-to-C business because it gave us a platform to engage with parents. This was a missing piece. In part to respond to the attack page, the I <3 SBC group page was created. Decent response (few thousand members), but we soon realized the Group page couldn ’ t hold all the fans we had, and didn ’ t lend itself to the type of community we wanted to build. So we launched the first official Scholastic Facebook fan page in September 2009. Because it was a crisis communications response, the Corporate Communications department was heavily involved. Corporate Communications already had a blog and Twitter account, but neither of these platforms were appropriate in building a large and vibrant community where we could discover brand champions specifically to deal with this crisis. So Clubs entered the Facebook world first. Keep in mind: we ’ re talking about a niche community here, so while the numbers may seem small, it ’ s a targeted community - exactly who we wanted and needed to reach.
- MORGAN As we began planning the transition from the Group page to a Fan page, we had a lot of questions we had to deal with. For starters, what did we envision for the Clubs fan page? Who did we want there? How were we going to reach them and then keep them engaged? What kind of community would we be? How could we transition members of the group page to the new page without alienating them? What could we offer on our fan page that would make it a thriving community for teachers and parents? Who would do all the work? Once established, how to grow? We decided we wanted to: Give a voice to the employees of Clubs Share our expert book knowledge. (Clubs doesn’t just sell Scholastic books - they’re experts in children’s books overall; a key selling point for customers.) Editorial recommendations, teacher advisor recommendations, ClubHouse videos, bestseller lists Provide content on the fan page that isn’t found elsewhere Customer service: developed organically; reps now trained on social media Flexibility & willingness to try new things Clubs page was an experiment and helped set stage for rest of company’s social media efforts Offer value & platform for community Ask for teacher input & then use it when it’s supplied Give back (huge component of Clubs program; replicated in social media) Leverage the trust we have with our community Our Clubs community trusts us not to spam them or market to them too heavily. Page had to replicate that.
- IVY Once we knew how we wanted to approach establishing the official Clubs page, we needed to get people to join it. We had a base of members from the original I <3 SBC group page who transitioned over to the new page. We included the link/tout to the new page in all our customer emails. Part of the Clubs business model is that our teacher community really does read the emails they receive from Clubs, so simply adding the link began to net thousands of fans to our page.
- IVY Targeted sweepstakes with significant prizes: Sweepstakes 1: (targeted Facebook message to all active customers - teachers, parents - with a contest incentive of 32 books for 5 winners. 12,000 entrants but netted 50,000 fans. Sweepstakes 2: (100 free books for a classroom) returned 16,781 new fans [fb ads] Sweepstakes 3: (bonus points for teachers) returned about 36,000 fans
- IVY Facebook requires that all promotions are hosted through an application on the Facebook Platform. Updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo do not count as forms of entry. You may, however, condition entry to the promotion upon becoming a fan of a Page. There is also a $10,000 media buy for FB ads for each Facebook sweeps or contest you launch if the form of entry is on Facebook.
- IVY Contest results - clearly show how sweepstakes are successful With 1 million customers, we’re at 144,000 fans -- more than 10% of our base. Considering we already know that teachers are not big adopters of technology, and that teachers aren’t on Facebook during the day, we consider this to be a success. It also demonstrates that even when you have a strong page with great content, you have to be creative about getting new people to join your community.
- MORGAN
- MORGAN Clubs has a strategy, and is trying to tell a story with the types of content we post.
- MORGAN/IVY Marketing handles business/content Promotions handles sweeps, contests Creative aims to improve the experience and ask fans for feedback Editorial provides the expertise
- MORGAN The community is successful because it’s a place where teachers can talk - not just to each other, but to parents as well. They ask questions to each other, and the community responds Like the SBC business overall, the Clubs Facebook page is intended to bridge the home-school connection. It’s about really listening to our customers - in this case, teachers. They’re often left out of the education conversation, and this is a place they can be heard, where their opinions are taken seriously. Teachers have always been our ambassadors. Facebook lets them share their passion with other teachers AND directly with parents, who are our customers too. Facebook also lets us talk with our parent customers in new ways, too.
- IVY For social media, we all know that the R in ROI is relationships. But sometimes it’s nice to see instances when the R does in fact equal Return. In the case of Scholastic Book Clubs, we have seen a correlation between our social media efforts and sales. Clubs looked at the spend, number of orders, and order frequency of 32,000 teachers/fans On average: Fans spent 29% more than non-fans Fans spent 7.6% more per event than non-fans Fans place 29.8% more orders than non-fans
- MORGAN Went from executive skepticism to buy-in Facebook page is linked in all messaging to customers It’s even on our shipment boxes And it’s working… Traditional media coverage The page continues to grow and thrive Because community was so responsive, we spun the Facebook page into a BookTalk blog A deeper dive into the conversations already happening 77% active users is a huge number -- that means the vast majority of our fans are consistently engaging with our brand.
- MORGAN While is community is relatively small, it’s made up of exactly the people Clubs needs to reach, and they’re a highly engaged group.
- IVY Clubs was the first official Scholastic presence on Facebook, but we soon realized we needed more. We expanded, and continue to expand, as our brands and communities grow. We oversee all the brands and handle the day-to-day managing for the corporate accounts, while specialized, smaller teams handle their own pages. Lots of cross-posting Caution: audiences overlap, so no spamming
- MORGAN Scholastic also trains employees in social media, awarding SMU diplomas when the three-part session is completed. Corporate Communications handles the training and strategy.
- MORGAN
- IVY [GIVE OUT BRACELETS!] What we’ve noticed is that we listened to the conversations and joined people where they are. It became clear that people love talking about books, period. Old, new, like, hate - they want to talk about them. So we created a site where they could do that, encompassing the social aspects that we’ve found on our current social sites. Introducing…
- IVY
- IVY
- Questions?