Pearson Education is one of the world’s largest education companies, focused on creating cutting-edge learning aids for learners of all ages. Their higher education materials include textbooks, phone apps, and tools such as MyLab that provide an interactive learning experience.
A major piece of our strategy for driving rapid follower growth included tag-a-friend giveaways. Students were encouraged to follow the account and tag a friend in order to win. Relatively simple but still effective.
We learned that running the same prize multiple times isn’t continuously effective, and varied our approach. The key here was choosing giveaways that were genuinely exciting for Pearson’s audience but still relevant to minimize follower turnover.
Pearson partnered with a number of student “Studygram” influencers to promote their products and encourage follower growth with sponsored content. The influencer program was key for developing study inspiration (surprisingly popular on Instagram), campus life, and extra-curricular content.
Student ambassadors are the foundation of the Pearson Learners account – in fact, before Pearson hired Sculpt, the ambassadors were the ones running it. Sculpt helped curate content from Pearson Campus Ambassadors by sending out regular, timely surveys that capitalized on hot topics and organizing student takeovers of Pearson Learners’ Instagram Stories.
Sourcing user-generated content like this kept our publishing calendar full of posts that were fresh and firmly within the voice of our audience.
We used proactive commenting and direct messaging to engage with incoming and existing college students’ posts and Stories. Around 30% of students responded to our direct messaging initiative and commenting helpful tips, compliments, and other non-salesy notes resulted in positive engagements and follows.
While sentiment metrics are by nature harder to quantify, our proactive community engagement did help increase positive brand perception online – a key issue that Pearson had been struggling with.
With DSL’s help, the Pearson Learners Instagram page grew from 3,347 followers to 10,336 followers – a 209% increase. Additionally, we increased the average engagements per post from 59 to 111 year-over-year – an increase of 88%.
The Pearson Learners account has a clear and focused brand voice now. Most importantly, Pearson’s internal team now has the organic social know-how to plan and develop content that will maintain their follower count, engage their audience more directly and authentically, and continue building off of this success.
What didn’t DSL handle? Their creativity, can-do attitude
and willingness to do whatever it took to make things
successful impressed us.April Stuart, Campaign Manager, Pearson Education
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