Teachstone’s 2x Social Media Success: Doubling Clicks with GaggleAMP

“Every child deserves life-changing teachers.” That’s the motto at Teachstone, the makers of a classroom assessment tool called CLASS®, or the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. Recognizing that the educator-child relationship is at the center of success for students, Teachstone provides the system and training to schools to bring continuous improvement to the educational process. So, it’s really no surprise when they looked introspectively to figure out how to improve and elevate their own internal voices on social media. By quickly activating 75% of their Gaggle Members on social media, they increased their social interactions and performance two-fold.

The Teachstone team had expressed a desire to be more active on social media but really didn’t know how to go about it consistently. Members of their sales team knew posting on LinkedIn could help them with lead generation and relationship building. Likewise, the executive leadership team understood that they needed to better establish their names as an authority, but that was easier said than done.

“I wanted our team to understand their own power. They are subject matter experts and I don’t think they necessarily saw themselves that way. They’re so much more than just a trainer and needed to see their voices elevated to understand that."

Meghan Cornwell, Senior Manager of Content Marketing at Teachstone.

With buy-in from their peers and the executive leadership team, the Teachstone marketing team set out to find an employee advocacy solution. Their goal: empower their teams to be more active participants in their personal brand and establish themselves as thought leaders in their space. Today, over 75% of their Gaggle Members are active participants and they’ve “long since paid for the product” in just 90 days. 

Turning a Marketer's Frustration into Content Creation

“I loved when our team would share on Slack how much traction a social post was getting. But, I also thought ‘then why not share it?’ It was frustrating seeing how much engagement we were losing out on.”

Isabella Henriksson, Content Marketing Specialist at Teachstone.

In order to help take their social media efforts further, they needed to get social posts in front of the right people at the right time, and in the right technology.

“Sharing a post on Slack to our team wasn’t cutting it,” said Henriksson. “Social media algorithms favor people rather than brands so tapping into employees was important to their continued success.”

The employees at Teachstone have deep connections with their target audience—state-level Departments of Education, independent school districts and their Superintendents, Head Start directors, and childcare providers or chains of daycares. If they could tap into this audience with the right voices at the right time, it would serve to amplify the efforts of their 9-person marketing team while also aiding in other company initiatives, like hiring.

Cornwell and Henriksson connected with GaggleAMP and immediately saw the appeal. “The ‘Things To Do’ list is very clear to the user that this is what needs to be done—there was no confusion. Other platforms had a lot of options of things that could be done but for the end user, they weren’t met with the same ‘here is exactly what I need to do’ feeling as we have with GaggleAMP” says Cornwell.

“[GaggleAMP] is so easy to use! It lets me see at a glance all the information my organization is currently sharing, and I can view and choose which items I feel are the most relevant to my own LinkedIn connections all in one place” says Dorothy Federick, CLASS Specialist for Teachstone.

The fact that it was easy for Members to know what to share and when was very well received by the Members, too. Active membership in their Gaggle is strong with nearly 4 in 5 Members actively participating in activities. This has brought the team quick and immediate results.

• Over 1200 social interactions—more than double that of a similar-size program.
• A 60% increase over benchmarks in clicks to their content.
• Immediate returns in their DM’s from thought-leadership posts.

“As a result [of using GaggleAMP], I saw an enormous spike in my LinkedIn activity and received private messages from two contacts that I had not engaged with previously” states Suzann Morris, Vice President of Policy and Partnership Development.

Activating Our Leaders

“Our executives knew we needed to be active on social media but I didn’t expect the return they would see to be so instantaneous,” says Cornwell.

Teachstone had the normal initial hurdles like concerns from employees about being able to view their social media, but once Cornwell showed them the manager interface and explained it to them, they immediately understood the benefits.

“There were some immediate quick wins,” says Cornwell.

For example, Teachstone Regional Director Gina Gates has already had two enlightening moments as a result of an activity in GaggleAMP.

Sharing the post above as a result of a question in the Gaggle of “Why do you like working at Teachstone,” Gates's answer was turned into the post, along with a link to their job openings. “Within 2 hours I had someone DM me asking about the role,” says Gates.

Gates also recalls a few days later she posted on LinkedIn about a new product and it attracted the attention of a company interested in the offering.

“Yesterday I saw someone from [client] viewed my profile and later that same day someone from [the same client] reached out to get information for 15 registrants to attend. Sure it could be a coincidence but I’m going with not” says Gates.

Suzann Morris, Vice President of Policy and Partnership Development, agrees. “[GaggleAMP] has made social media super easy to engage in for me, and keeps distractions way down.”

Elevating Our Team Members Into Thought Leaders

Teachstone stayed true to its goal of empowering its team to be more active participants in their personal brand and establish themselves as thought leaders in their space. Since implementing GaggleAMP, a number of employees have reported increases in their impressions, engagements, and follows:

• “Since implementing GaggleAMP and posting consistently on LinkedIn, I’ve seen my profile views increase 30%, I’ve seen consistently high post impressions, and I’ve enjoyed being more active and growing my thought leadership presence across the social channels.” Emily Simon, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Teachstone.
• “I have noticed an increase of engagement on my content from others in my network and more profile visits too.” Laura Earley, Client Success Manager at Teachstone.
• “The biggest impact I have seen is through my impressions. They’re 4x-6x higher than most of my other posts and it helps me grow reach on posts I’m creating, and to learn what makes the most impact.” Erin Sabina, Account Executive at Teachstone.

GaggleAMP helps Teachstone keep their team more engaged too. “Using GaggleAMP has been really helpful for me to stay in touch and be more knowledgeable about what is going on at Teachstone,” says Michelle Schmidt, Professional Services Manager of Quality Assurance.

Getting the Most From Our Investment

“The platform paid for itself within the first 90 days,” says Cornwell. “Not only from an employee earned media value perspective have we long since paid for the platform, but we’ve seen new business as a result of the connections we share on LinkedIn.”

A big part of the Teachstone success story came from working with their Customer Implementation Manager in the first 90 days. “Dean made it so easy to implement GaggleAMP. We always knew what was coming next and were never overwhelmed with all that GaggleAMP can do” says Cornwell. Henriksson echoes that sentiment: “I feel very well prepared to execute our Gaggle strategy and am confident I understand how everything works.”

Teachstone is also a huge proponent of the AI-Powered Paraphrasing technology. “There was a concern that everyone would be posting the same message. I love it when we ask our team to share something and they use the AI feature. It helps our team feel like they have more ownership of their voice and keeps from duplicating content amongst our team” says Cornwell.

If you are interested in the CLASS assessment tool and would like more information on how to implement it in your program, please visit the Teachstone website. For more information about starting your own Gaggle and getting your employees active on social media with employee advocacy, request a demo with our team.