About Goodstart Early Learning

Goodstart Early Learning is the largest early learning provider in Australia with a network of over 650 centers. As a not-for-profit Goodstart exists to provide children and families with the early learning and care they need for the best start in life.

Goodstart Early Learning's social media strategy is to build awareness among families and to reach new talent. In addition to their main account, each center has its own social media channel, adding complexity to their social media marketing.

For this case study, we spoke with Kate Williams, Senior Digital Marketing Specialist at Goodstart Early Learning, about how they use Brandwatch to:

  • Target the right people
  • Find the content champions
  • Protect children's rights
  • Improve workflow and reporting

Targeting the right people

Goodstart Early Learning's primary audiences are young families and educators, mostly in the 18-34 age range. Kate emphasizes the importance of connecting with them where they are,as they use social media for research and recommendations, especially as this may be the first contact they have with Goodstart Early Learning. Social media is also a valuable platform for finding new talent, which is the other audience Goodstart Early Learning is focusing on with its social media strategy.

Brandwatch helps Kate and her team understand what families are discussing online and what topics they are interested in. These insights help the organization create more relevant content. For example, they discovered that families were talking more about how to support children with autism. Goodstart Early Learning then used their social channels to educate families about social inclusion and what resources they can offer.

Finding the content champions

Before working with Brandwatch, Kate and her team had no way of knowing what all of their centers were posting on social media. With over 650 centers, it would be impossible to do this manually. A key goal was to see all their social media activity at a glance, and Brandwatch helped them have all their accounts in one centralized platform. This way, they can see what their centers are posting online, what their strategy is, and what kind of content is doing well. They can also use the content from the best performing centers to improve their social media strategy on a national level and to inspire other centers on how to improve their social channels.

With Brandwatch, we can get an overview of what all our centers are posting on social and identify the great content gems, not only for us to use on a national level, but also as examples for other centers that might be struggling with their marketing. We almost use them as case studies so they can learn and grow from people working in the same company.
— Kate Williams, Senior Digital Marketing Specialist at Goodstart Early Learning

With Brandwatch Measure, they can see which centers are doing well and which need more support. Kate and her team put social channels from different centers into different channel groups. That way, they can compare them to the national average or another region. They can easily identify the gaps and give the centers support to improve their social performance.

Protecting children's rights

A big challenge for Goodstart Early Learning is balancing children's privacy and promoting their work on social media. Kate emphasizes that protecting children's rights is at the heart of their decision making, and if there is any doubt, they refrain from posting.

Using stock photos is a safe way to use photos with consent, but it also makes the content less genuine and authentic. This challenge can discourage centers from promoting their services on social, meaning they miss opportunities.

When people don't see faces, it's hard to connect because you need the human element, but you also need to balance that with protecting children and families. With Brandwatch, we can identify the centers that are doing great social media with engaging content while protecting children's privacy. We can share those examples with other centers to encourage them and make sure they are not falling behind.
— Kate Williams, Senior Digital Marketing Specialist at Goodstart Early Learning

Finding these champions with Brandwatch helps Goodstart Early Learning address this challenge, keeping children and families safe while still showing a human side and celebrating the great work they do at their center.

Improving workflow and reporting

Brandwatch helped Goodstart Early Learning cut through the complexity of getting visibility into social media activity across all centers. It helps them understand industry trends and brand sentiment, analyze competitor activity, manage community management, leverage user-generated content, and improve their social media performance.

With Brandwatch, Kate and her team have saved a lot of time, improved productivity, and reduced workload. They can easily tailor their social media management to the unique needs and challenges of the early learning sector.

The quality of content has improvedsignificantly. While they were originally aiming to post once a week, they can now easily post three times a week with dedicated video content and all the great content from the centers at their fingertips.

I particularly recommend Brandwatch if you are a large organization or have many different locations like we do. It makes it so much easier to monitor what all the different locations are doing, while still giving them complete autonomy over their own community. You can see their performance and celebrate the champions to raise morale and give credit to those who are creating outstanding and inspiring content.
— Kate Williams, Senior Digital Marketing Specialist at Goodstart Early Learning

Kate also highlights how Brandwatch helps them streamline their community management by allowing them to create templated responses, add notes and tags, and delegate tasks all in one place, replacing other systems they previously had to use to get the job done. They can respond to time-sensitive comments and messages much more quickly, and it has improved the social team's internal communication. They can easily create and pull custom reports and communicate key metrics to stakeholders.

Published on November 15th, 2024