Why are so many kids in this country striving readers and not thriving readers? How can we get kids excited about learning? How can we get kids to believe in themselves? These questions are the driving force behind literacy experts Pam Allyn and Ernest Morrell's new book, Every Child a Super Reader. The book, published in November 2015, is aimed at empowering educators to reinvigorate reading and writing instruction in their classrooms and help every student become a "Super Reader." It demonstrates how teachers can help develop students' seven key strengths (belonging, curiosity, friendship, kindness, confidence, courage, and hope) that transform them into avid, passionate, and critical readers and writers.
We launched a 360-degree, cross-channel social media campaign with the objective to elevate the conversation around "Super Readers," share Pam and Ernest's important message, promote the book, and empower teachers and parents to contribute their own thoughts and opinions. The components of the campaign were as follows: a robust social media plan with a dedicated podcast episode, paid and organic social media posts from Scholastic's educator and parent-facing accounts, a #superreader hashtag campaign, a radio media tour, extensive teacher blogger promotion, giveaways, and video.
The strategy behind the "Super Reader" campaign was to extend Pam Allyn and Ernest Morrell's message beyond just the people who read the printed book; to engage educators and parents across social media in thoughtful, inclusive conversation about children and reading.
To implement this strategy, we created a comprehensive social media plan to execute across several months, which included a dedicated episode on our corporate podcast, "Scholastic Reads," paid and organic social media posts from Scholastic's educator and parent-facing accounts, a #superreader hashtag campaign, a radio media tour, teacher blogger promotion, giveaways and video.
In the Scholastic Reads podcast episode, Pam and Ernest talked in-depth about their book and the concept of a "Super Reader." Pam and Ernest offered constructive ideas for teachers and families to empower kids through reading, and they shared findings from their decades of research. From this episode, our social media team pulled exceptional quotes to turn into word art, which were then shared across social.
Scholastic has several educator and parent-facing social media accounts, through which we shared daily #superreader content: Scholastic Teachers Facebook, Scholastic Corporate Facebook, @ScholasticTeach and @Scholastic (Twitter), and @Scholastcinc (Instagram). The authors also wrote guest posts for our education blog, edu@Scholastic, and our blog about books and reading, On Our Minds.
Content shared on social included prompts, quotes and tips from the book, and pictures of students reading aloud, holding up a book they love, and even dressed in superhero capes—all using #superreader! On our Teachers Facebook page, we shared a quote and image from the podcast episode, boosting it at $400. This post saw the highest engagement of any post on the page in a six month period.
We also used the power of video to share Pam and Ernest's message. We recorded a video with the authors for YouTube, which we shared widely on social. At the National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention, we used Periscope to stream live video of Pam and Ernest during panel sessions and to talk more about the book.
To further expand the reach of Pam and Ernest's message nationwide, we utilized the media relations placement agency MediaConnect to implement a multi-city radio media tour featuring live and recorded interviews with the co-authors. From January 26 to April 7, 2016, Pam completed 7 interviews and Ernest completed 13 national and local interviews with morning drive radio stations.
Two bloggers who contribute to Scholastic's Top Teaching section on our corporate website hosted giveaways on their blogs, encouraging readers to comment in response to prompts and enter to win free copies of the book. In addition, the Scholastic PR team reached out to established teacher bloggers, securing four published posts (and seven more currently in progress) featuring reviews of the book and, in most cases, giveaways to readers. We amplified these efforts by retweeting the bloggers and sharing their giveaways and reviews.
The social media campaign surrounding "Super Reader" content achieved remarkable results which far exceeded our expectations. While promotion of the book is still ongoing, the results below are pulled from a six-month period (January - June 2016).
Approximately 425 posts were published across Scholastic's social media channels, which garnered a total of 8,700 engagements at an average of 21 engagements per post.
The "Every Child a Super Reader" podcast episode remains our most popular out of 20 episodes, earning the most plays (over 26,000) and shares (50,000).
The boosted post on our Teachers Facebook page received a reach of 195,000 people, a click-through rate of 3.5%, a low cost-per-click of $.06, 8,000 clicks through to the podcast episode, nearly 2,000 likes, and 600 shares. This post has the highest engagement of any post on the page in a six month period.
The 20 total radio interviews for Pam and Ernest secured through the radio media tour resulted in approximately 1,952,300 estimated media impressions.
Adding to the success of this campaign was blogger outreach. The two "Every Child a Super Reader" giveaway posts from Scholastic's Top Teaching bloggers received 39 entries and 639 engagements. In addition, as a result of the PR team's targeted outreach to other teacher bloggers, four posts featuring reviews and/or giveaways were published and received 92 giveaway entries overall.
The combined total reach of this campaign on social media was 50 million.
