Healing Through Words: Global Readalong
To celebrate the release of the Canadian poet and all-round global phenomenon, Rupi Kaur’s latest book, Healing Through Words, Tandem Collective partnered with Rupi’s team and publishers in the UK, US and Canada to run a community writing exercise across these three different markets.
Healing Through Words is a collection of guided writing exercises that explore themes of trauma, loss, heartache, love, healing, and celebration of the self. Tandem’s vision was to make this a truly unique and cathartic campaign where community members felt supported and respected as they harnessed their creativity while undergoing a personal journey of self-exploration.
Pre-awareness and Launch
In order to amplify the cover-reveal on the 19th July 2022, just after Rupi shared the Healing Through Words cover on her own account, we sent out a newsletter to our global Tandem community. We offered community members the chance to win a signed copy of Healing Through Words if they shared the new cover on their Instagram stories. The newsletter achieved a Unique Open Rate of 51.8% and a Unique Click-through Rate of 2.75%. We had over 150 entries for the competition which made for strong pre-awareness for the book in the months before publication.
As part of Rupi’s highly anticipated 2022 World Tour, we ran a competition for Tandem community members based in the UK to win tickets to her show at London’s Barbican Centre in September. Given the tour’s focus on Rupi’s hugely popular poetry collections, we asked entrants to share their favourite Rupi poem via Instagram Stories and tag @tandemcollectiveuk to be in with a chance of winning. Two delighted winners attended the show and received copies of the book. We also sent a couple of representatives from Team Tandem to the event to document their experience on Tandem’s social accounts.
The second part of the pre-awareness phase featured a bespoke Write-along recruitment newsletter. This was sent to our subscriber lists on the 5th September 2022 to announce the Write-along. The UK Open Rate for this was 43.5%, the US Open Rate was 66% and the CAN Open Rate was 66.5%. We subsequently created three DM groups in the UK, US and Canada, each made up of 15 influencers with an emphasis on making the groups as diverse as possible.
We anticipated that the Write-along would require significant emotional investment from the participants, so we really wanted to make sure everyone felt supported and motivated throughout the duration of the campaign. We also knew that every exercise would be personal to each individual and that they may not feel as comfortable sharing as much because of this.
With this in mind, we set up a WhatsApp broadcast schedule which included welcome and closing messages from Rupi to bookend the Write-along, as well as links to a meditation exercise and some of her poetry. We scheduled messages to go out every couple of days across the fortnight-long campaign to punctuate some of the writing activity, and so that our participants had exclusive content from Rupi to motivate them on their writing journey.
We also hosted a pre-launch Zoom meeting with participants in the UK, and a separate Zoom call for those in the US and Canada. This was an opportunity for everyone to meet and talk about their expectations and concerns for the Write-along.
In addition to this we sent designated mid-week check-in emails from the Tandem Campaign Managers in the respective territories to all participants both weeks of the campaign. These were to make sure all participants were comfortable as they progressed through the writing exercises, with the understanding that the exercises did not need to be completed in a particular order and that all participants could go at their own pace, a message reinforced by Rupi herself.
The Write-along
Our two-week Write-along ran a couple of weeks after publication, from the 13th – 27th October across all three regions, to help maintain momentum and generate noise around Healing Through Words. Week one focused on the first two chapters Hurting and Loving, while in the second week we looked at the last two chapters Breaking and Healing.
Throughout the two weeks of the Write-along, we shared exclusive content from Rupi with the participants in the DM groups, such as an author questionnaire and written messages of encouragement from Rupi herself, signed off with her signature.
Instagram Activation
Digital cards were created with branded artwork from Healing Through Words and shared with all participants across the three territories. These social challenges were designed to help inform and direct the content shared on their Instagram accounts. Examples included, asking participants to create a reel to showcase their writing space (featuring the book) and to make a reel or annotated post highlighting some of the key themes of Healing Through Words.
We also wrote a series of ‘Healing Through…’ Challenges, one of these was ‘Healing Through…Art’. We sent out mini canvases to each participant and challenged them to create a piece of art inspired by any section of the book and using any medium. They later shared these to their social accounts. It was so interesting to see the different interpretations.
Another challenge included a group exercise, ‘Healing Through … Storytelling’ where we provided the opening line of a fictitious story and asked participants to continue by writing the next line on their Instagram Stories and tagging the next person to continue. We created a schedule for this challenge, and it resulted in an entertaining plot!
We also created a set of digital writing prompts and questions, for example, ‘What helps you centre yourself on a tough day and what do you do as a way to practise self-care?’ which were shared with all participants in the DM groups every day throughout the two-week campaign to help structure the Write-along. Participants were not obliged to share any of these answers publicly, this was for their personal reflection and to discuss in the DM groups if they wished. However, we did see many of those taking part share the prompt cards on their Instagram Stories with their annotations.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cj0FevoAqdD/
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjyGLBmOdDh/
https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cj0ar-dj8Dw/
TikTok Activity
To maximise the reach of Healing Through Words, the Tandem community ran a TikTok campaign using two BookTokkers from each territory. The Booktokkers were tasked with creating at least one video from a series of challenges like those we created for Instagram reels.
https://www.tiktok.com/@ttinaleie/video/7166313461356514565?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&lang=en
Results:
In summary, the Engagement Rate for this global campaign across the UK, the US and Canada was a huge 13.47%. We accessed a Collective Follower Count of 43,630, through which we achieved an estimated 3438 Story Views and 2652 Reels Engagement. We received so much positive feedback from this campaign, some of which can be seen below.
Testimonials:
Absolutely breathtakingly beautiful. If you think you aren’t a writer, you will be after using this! I absolutely loved this write along!!! I would definitely do one again. - @erikalaceyreads
Loved this experience and it was such a great group! I will be purchasing this for so many Xmas gifts this year. - @smell_of_a_boo
Absolutely brilliant writealong. It really made me feel differently about myself. Perfect!
- @lisas_books_gems_and_tarot
It was a wonderful experience! - @oyindalovesbooks