blogwell new york social media case study: scholastic, presented by ivy li and tyler reed
TRANSCRIPT
The ABCs of Corporate Blogging
On Our Minds @Scholasticwww.oomscholastic.com
Presented by Ivy Li | @ivyli
Tyler Reed | @tylerbreedBlogWell – March 29, 2011
Why we blog?
Join the community in an authentic way
Demonstrate our expertise
Tell our story
Show how we live our mission
2007: OOM started as a newsletter.
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
January 2008: Pitch to boss. Begin blogging in Microsoft Word.
April 16, 2008: First external comment.
March 2009: Focus shifts from education to a broader audience.
“I’d love to see libraries offer Wikipedia courses.
It’d be great to have library visitors
contributing in addition to consuming.”
-Eric M.
The History of OOMMarch 7, 2008: OOM goes live with “Nerd Alert!”
The History of OOM
2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
September 2009: Launch of Scholastic Twitter & Facebook Pages and Hunger Games series takes off.
February 2010: Breaking our own news: Mockingjay cover reveal
February 14, 2011: Re-designed OOM launch and new bloggers join!
The Do’s and Don’ts of OOM
Write in your own voice (Engage. Don’t sell.)
Ask for a read if you’re not sure
Blog regularly and for all of your audiences
Link out – be an active participant in the community
Ask a question at the end of posts
The Dos and Don’ts of OOM
Don’t forget about multimedia.
Don’t do it all yourself
Don’t link to a press release
Don’t ignore the comments section
Don’t be discouraged if some posts aren’t as popular.
The Minds
Ivy (Social Media Producer): trends, videos, illustrators,
and events & what’s going on at Scholastic
Tyler (Education Manager): education,
technology, Book Clubs and literacy issues
Amanda (Manager): literacy initiatives,
awards, books, and pop culture
Jessica (Scholastic Librarian): libraries,
literacy, trends, books, e-books
Morgan (Dir. Social Media & Internal Comms.): Books,
authors, education, social media, and Baby-sitter’s
Club!Dante (Internal
Comms & Kids Press Producer): kids news,
pop culture, video, and film issues
Yanique (Jr. Publicist): books,
Scholastic Store in SoHo, and Art & Writing Awards
Michael (Scholastic Store Manager): literacy, holidays, Scholastic Store
events, and books
Kristen (Jr. Publicist):
parenting, summer reading, Book
Clubs, and kids news
The Diversity of OOM• The challenge of balancing content:
- It shouldn’t always be about us- Writing for our communities
• Regular features:– 5 Questions – My Bookprint– #MyTeacher– Giveaways– In Our Feeds
• Crisis Communications
What we know that works • Content our readers go crazy for!
• News we can break
• Re-purposing assets
• Giveaways
• Trends and lists: including Top 10 or “Best of” lists
• Timely posts (seasonal moments, holidays, special occasions)
• Inside Scholastic or behind-the-scenes opportunities
• Get to know our bloggers
• Get to know our readers
• Crowdsourcing moments from other social networks
Case Study:
Mockingjay Cover ReleaseAnnouncement of the cover and title
for book 3 in The Hunger Games series
Case Study:
Mockingjay Cover ReleaseAnnouncement of the cover and title
for book 3 in The Hunger Games series
Mockingjay Blog Post Stats:
In the first 24 hours of the announcement, the blog post had more than…
The most visits and pageviews any single post on OOM @ Scholastic.
A significant amount of traffic came from first-time visitors.
= 48 linkbacks within the first 24 hours
= 172 new followers on Twitter
= 661 Tweets of the OOM blog post
We created a unique and shortened URL for the blog post for fans to share on
Twitter, Facebook, blogs and for us to tweet: http://bit.ly/HG3Cover.
This single URL had more than 3,606 clicks within the first day.
230,000+ Facebook Impressions
Case study: Mockingjay Cover Release
Just a sample of major media blogs and book blogs that linked to our blog post:
Highlights of OOM in influential media:
Case study: Mockingjay Cover Release
More highlights of OOM in influential media:
Case study: Mockingjay Cover Release
Learning about our readers
What did we want to know?
– Who are they? (teachers/parents/book bloggers?)
– What industry do they work in?
– How often do they read OOM?
– What do they like/dislike about the blog?
– What topic(s) should we focus on more?
– What can we do better?
– What other blogs do they like to read?
Learning about our readersAnswers from the survey:
Guess what? We listened and took action! We now have a Librarian Blogger on the team!
Jessica
“I really enjoyed the intern post, if we could see more of that that'd be awesome. Also, I'd like to see focuses on more young adult genre books.”
“I know you focus heavily on teachers but I'd love to see a bit more emphasis on librarians. We aren't the same as
teachers for sure.”
Paper sketch
Technical Considerations
Blogger to Wordpress.org
New bloggers
Communication to readers
The launch!
The road to new OOM
Connecting the social dots
OOM feeds Twitter and Facebook – both social networks circulate content and readers back to the blog.
• OOM provides content
• Social media helps generate content (feedback)
• Social media also helps boost traffic and readership
Overall, our readership grew (+40.38% - not including subscribers) once we established a full presence on Twitter
and Facebook.
ROI
• Relationships with bloggers (book bloggers, BlogHer, edublogosphere)
• Linkbacks
• Mainstream media citing OOM
• Unique visitors
• Subscribers
• Our own “news” vehicle
To succeed, we need…
• Passion
• Trust
• Courage
• Patience
• To be customer-centric
• To listen
• To stay organized
• To have fun!
Questions?
Get in touch with us!
www.OOMScholastic.com
Ivy Li@[email protected]
Tyler Reed@[email protected]