We were lucky to catch up with Laura Boyd recently and have shared our conversation below.

Laura, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you manage your own social media?

I started a Twitter X Account in 2017 in hopes to inspire other teachers with content that would boost student engagement through implementing educational technology apps/websites. As of August 2025, it is still solely me managing my account on X, Instagram, and YouTube.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I began teaching in 2011 when I started with Teach For America in Memphis, Tennessee. During my two years in the corps, I taught high school Spanish in a high-poverty school. This experienced showed me the importance of a quality education for all students regardless of zip code. After the two years, I then transitioned by embarking a new job teaching middle school in Franklin, Tennessee.

During the pandemic I gained an incredible amount of followers who were seeking new innovative ways to engage students from behind the screen whether they were in person, online, or hybrid. This time helped me pivot my teaching skills as well having to teach in person to online learners gave me the inspiration to help others. What started as posting one to two times a day with ideas in how to use technology to teach students became several posts daily in hopes to equip teachers with resources like Quizlet, Pear Deck, Canva, Google Classroom and many more! For example, I would post a graphic with how to integrate a tech app such as Google Classroom, QuaverEd, Pear Deck, or Genially, to my followers. The graphics were fairly easy to follow in hopes that in any teacher regardless of content, grade level, or tech experience could follow the instructions and begin implementing the new tech tool.

My online presence really began gaining traction and this is when I began partnering with education technology companies to share their brand in hopes to help out teachers worldwide ultimately! This helped immensely grow my own brand as well. I even created weekly Friday chitchats during the summer to engage and support teachers with ideas. Through my posts, I was interviewed by Teach For America, The University of Tennessee, Wayground, and began submitted publications to Edutopia on the side. I also earned Teacher of The Year at my school, district, region, and was top 9 for the state of Tennessee. This really propelled my networking and gained more followers! I am most proud of the work I have been able to accomplish by helping new and veteran teachers with ideas in how to engage their students. For me it has always been to give teachers resources that they can actually begin implementing in one day that work! There is nothing worse in my opinion to attend a training and get nothing out of it. Teachers are eager to learn and want tools that will propel student achievement and improve their own craft. I feel very honored to have helped so many teachers and look forward to helping as many as I can worldwide through social media! Having taught for 13+ years has allowed me to see first hand the value of a teacher and this motivates me to continue in this line of work helping teachers. Teachers will always be respected and honored by me.

How did you build your audience on social media?

For me it has always been consistency. I have been posting every day on X since 2017. I post engaging tweets that ask teachers simple questions to engage with them and build rapport. For example, I will say Roll Call and ask teachers to tell me their grade level, content, etc. Or I will say what is one classroom management trick that every teacher should know. This helps me engage with my followers and learn more about them on a individual level. I also find value posting encouraging tweets to show teachers how much they are valued and respected by me. These include: Thank you teachers, you are amazing, the work you do is incredible! Teachers need to be reminded how great they are and how they should be celebrated! Sometimes I post selfies or pictures of me and my baby, and dog just to humanize the account. My advice for anyone out there is to have a niche and stick to it! People are always looking for ways to connect and social media is just one method to do so.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I reached out to many different educational technology companies and I did get a lot of no’s, but I also was persistent and didn’t give up on my self and got a lot of independent contracting. I created a template email that linked all my previous work, rate card, and spotlighted journals/publications. I also offered time in my calendar to meet them so this made it easy for them to connect with me if they were ready and interested! Being organized on the front end shows professionalism and you want first impressions to last. Thank you to all my followers who have supported me on this incredible journey!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @technologylaura
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauraboyd/
• Twitter: @technologylaura
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@technologylaura
• Other: https://www.edutopia.org/profile/laura-boyd/
  
  https://webflow-dev.quizizz.com/blog/december-featured-educator-tn-teacher-of-the-year-finalist-laura-boyd?lng=en
  https://www.a4le.org/A4LE/A4LE/Resources/Resource_Center/BLP/2023/Empowering_Education.aspx

Image Credits

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