How I Plan to Expand Our District’s Content Marketing on My Flight to Nashville: What I’m Doing to Win Parents and Students

“Regardless of quality, content marketing success must also include the community, distribution, and promotion.” – Mark W. Schaefer

I am going to accomplish THREE goals while I am at the NSPRA National Conference in Nashville next week.

1. Learn from my Awesome Colleagues
2. Network with PR and Marketing Professionals
3. Expand my District’s Content/Inbound Marketing Plan

Here is a breakdown of what I am going to do on my two-hour flight to boost goal number three of expanding my district’s content marketing initiative. Feel free my plan to expand your district’s own marketing strategy.

Car Ride to the Airport [25 minutes]

Your buyer/parent/student personas are very important as you build any type of marketing strategy for your district. The days of sending a blanket newsletter through email are over. You must have specific campaigns to specific personas you are trying to target. It’s all about moving your prospects through the decision making marketing funnel.

My first plan of action is to refresh my knowledge of creating personas by listening to Joe Pulizzi’s Content Inc. Podcast episode 60 entitled Building Personas Now.

The episode is around 6 minutes and gives great insight into personas and why you need them. Listen and take notes… unless you are driving yourself to the airport.

 

Waiting for my Flight at the Gate [45 Minutes]

Since we all have to get to the airport two hours early, this gives us plenty of down time waiting for our flight at the gate. During this time I plan to fill in Hubspots FREE Creating Buyer Personas Template.

This is a great in-depth resource to truly define whom you are targeting with your campaigns. This will be the foundation for all you do to reach the group you are targeting. It is very important to really know your audience. Every marketing piece or initiative should be driven by your personas. You will want to fill in more information when you get back from your trip by interviewing and surveying your persona group.

Before I board my flight, I am going to send an email to my district Webmaster to make sure the domain we purchased is linked to our website we created specifically for this campaign. I am also going to make sure our landing page and pop-up Call-To-Action buttons from Lead Pages are ready to drive our personas to our Super Content Offer.  More on Super Content later.

Flight to Nashville [Two hours]

Two hours is plenty of time to get stuff done. My first order of business is to write a blog article targeting the personas we have identified as the most important in brining new families to our district. A blog is a great way to consistently publish useful content for you parents that they will find valuable. If you district does not have a blog, here is a great video from Pat Flynn, which shows how to build a blog on Word Press in less than four minutes.

We use our blog, www.schoolahoop.com, as an educational tool for parents as they navigate raising their children in the 21st century. We have used this blog to drive readers to specific parts of our website, as well as capturing their email address to send exclusive content or invitations to our district events including specific programs they might be interested in.

I can usually write and edit a blog post in under an hour, as well as creating a catchy headline to go with the post. Publishing a blog post is not just about writing an article. You also need create graphics to go with your post as well as graphics to promote the blog post on social media and your website. Another important element that I mentioned above is creating your post headline. A catchy headline is very important in driving people to your post.

Here are some tips on writing a great blog post headline: 

Hubspot's Guide to Writing Kick- Ass Titles

In total, writing the article, editing, creating the headline, preparing it for SEO, creating visuals and publishing the post should take about two hours including a ginger ale drink break mid-flight.

Taxi Ride to Hotel [20 Minutes… Give or Take]

As I ride in the taxi with my district colleagues, I am going to review what I have put together so far in regards to new content for our new initiative. Get their feedback and see what needs revised.

NSPRA Conference [Sunday – Thursday]

I plan to put my content building on hold while I am at the conference. I’m going to take a break and learn from the best minds in School PR.

Taxi Ride to Airport [20 Minutes… Give or Take]

Our blog is such an important resource in our content plan; I figured I would review new ways to build our blog audience by listening to Social Media Examiner’s Show Podcast entitled 6 Ways to Grow Your Blog Audience. Socialmediaexaminer.com is one of my favorite websites to visit for great social media and marketing tips and trends.

Waiting for my Flight at the Gate [45 Minutes]

This chunk of time will allow me to create four different social media posts I can use for Facebook and Twitter to promote my blog post. Ninety-five percent of my social media posts have visuals.  I believe in visual storytelling. Twitter allows you 140 characters, but by attaching a picture, we can tell a whole story.  I recommend reading The Power of Visual Storytelling for great insight on visual storytelling.

The reason I create four different social media posts directing my audiences to the same blog post are that I don’t want to bore my audience. Mix up your social media. Don’t repeat your same post over and over again. And please do not use the same post across Twitter and Facebook. They are not the same medium.
 

Flight to Dallas [Two hours]

Now I need something special. I need Super Content. This might be in the form of a SlideShare (which has been a great success for my district), an eBook, How-To Videos, White Papers, Infographics or any other thing that will be of high value to my audience.

This piece of content needs to be very special for your audience, so they will want to give you something in return to get it. In order for your audience to get it, they need to give you something in return. Most of the time for us, this is getting their email address.

An email address can be very powerful. We use their email to send special event notices, information about programs and other promotional items including additional content that they may find valuable. Having the people you are targeting willingly give their email address is awesome. It means they are aware of you and they want more information. You are one step closer to reeling them in. 

A Few Days Later…

After I get back to the office next week, it’s time to combine all of these creations including the website and landing pages that were created, to build something special.

We will use our website and blog to drive our audience to the landing page we built by having a Call-to-Action using our Super Content. Social media will do double duty by driving people to our website and landing page.

Hopefully our content will be valuable enough to convert our audience from spectator to subscriber. Our main goal will be to gather email addresses and create an email campaign to pull them through our marketing funnel.

Do you have any questions about our content marketing process? Leave your questions in the comment section below. 

What Your School District's Social Media Plan Can Learn From Oreo - Less is More

 

According to the Dallas Morning News, Mondelez International Inc. is launching a new line of Oreo Thins in the U.S. next week. The slimmed down cookie will be 140 calories for a package of four, compared to 160 calories for three cookies. The thinner cookie was created to appeal to adults who want a  “sophisticated cookie,” the company said.

Oreo’s thinner philosophy should be your school’s new social media strategy. Just because social media is all the rage these days, does not mean you have to dive into every platform that is out there. Your school district should be strategic on selecting your social media communication plan.

The best piece of advice I can give your district is to find out what platforms your core audience is using and conquer those before you move into emerging areas. Most school districts have a core audience of parents, students and community members including local business that they are targeting. My recommendation is to choose five platforms to reach those audience members. Those can be different depending on your district and its demographics, but there are some that are better than others when it comes to market saturation.

Here are our big five:

1. Facebook

Facebook is big for us. Even though students claim to hate Facebook, we find that when there is an engaging post they like, they are still there. Facebook has also become a hug communication tool to our parents. More and more of our parents have chosen Facebook as their social media platform of choice.

2. Twitter

We tend to be a little less serious when it comes to Twitter.  We find more of our students and young professionals are on this platform.  We use Twitter to post pictures of our students doing great things, and event follow-up notices after we have posted a more detailed description on Facebook.

3. Instagram

This is where we target our students. This platform is safe compared to Snapchat and Vine for us. Most of our content on this platform are pictures of students and the great things they are doing in our district. Anytime we post a picture of students, our engagement levels are through the roof. We do tend to see parents on Instagram, but our students engage more then our parent browsers.

4. YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the United States.  Video is a wonderful platform for engagement. The more visual you can get in your social media is for the better.  Not only is Youtube very popular, but also Facebook native video is doing wonderfully in the engagement rankings.

5. LinkedIn

We have started to revamp our LinkedIn strategy in our district.  We know the business community can be a great asset for financially strapped school districts.  LinkedIn is much more than a job search platform.  You can engage professionals with event posts and recycled blog articles that best represent your district and what it has to offer. We have a long way to go with this social media site, but we have a strategic plan to get better.

As of right now, the sites above are what we are focusing on. We do have a Pinterest, but we are not very active. We do dabble with Periscope, but once again it is not our main focus.  We are continuing to monitor the social media offerings and see what we need to do next.  However, there is no need to jump on everything. Find out what you are good at and conquer those worlds before you dominate the entire industry. Take it from Oreo, sometimes more is not better.

5 Things to Do at NSPRA 2015 to Expand Your Personal Brand

What better way to expand your presence in the School PR World then at the biggest conference of the year? Professional conferences are not only to learn, but they are also a great networking opportunity.  NSPRA 2015 is a great place to build Brand You.

Here are 5 Tips to expand your personal brand at NSPRA 2015:

1. Announce Your Arrival

Before you do anything, you have to let everyone know you are here. When you land at the Nashville Airport or cross the Tennessee border in your car, take a moment to snap a pic and post it to your social media.

I know “selfies” might be over-used, but do one anyway.  Taking a picture of yourself announces you are in the building and it gives everyone an opportunity to put a face to your name. Who know? They might even recognize an article of clothing you are wearing in the pic and make an effort to say hello when you check in.  Make sure to use the official NSPRA hashtag #NSPRA2015 for better exposure.

2. Live Tweet an Informative Presentation

If you want people to follow you on social media or respect your opinion, you have to deliver great content. And your content you share does not always have to be your own.  You can be the vehicle that delivers someone else’s expert advice.

Your conference speakers were chosen for a reason.  The have insightful, useful ideas that have worked in their districts. Share their ideas and publicize the key points they are delivering. Make sure to credit the speaker and try to include their Twitter handle to give them a shout out.

By sharing great content, your followers will trust you as an informative source on certain topics.  The more they trust you, the more retweets and shares you are going to get, which means more followers for you to share your own ideas and content.

3. Follow Five Fellow PR Professionals a Day

Have you ever heard the phrase, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours? The same thing applies to social media. Most of the time when you follow someone in your field of expertise, they will follow you back.

The more people you follow, the more people are going to follow you. Conferences are a great way to boost your social media numbers.  Social media is the 21^st century business card. Once they see the valuable content you are sharing on social media, the more likely they will share it to their followers. 

4. Gather Your Colleagues for a Periscope Roundtable

Video is all the rage these days. The newest and coolest thing right now is streaming, live video from your smartphone. The top two apps in this category are Periscope and Meerkat. Choose an app, gather some colleagues, pick a location and stream away.

It might be a good idea to choose a theme before you start filming. Let people know the topics beforehand, so they have more talking points to add to the conversation. Make sure everyone involved knows they are being filmed. Some people get a little uneasy around cameras and might not want their face on the World Wide Web.

5. Interview a School PR Professional for a Blog Post

You’ve gotten more followers; you have made some new friends, now you have to provide them with excellent content.  What better way than to interview a speaker or PR colleague and turn it into a blog post.

Find someone that really stood out at the conference and ask them for a quick interview.  Take good notes during their session, and create questions that you feel people would want to know the answers to. Most PR Professionals will love the publicity, and since you are asking questions about an area they’re experts in, it won’t be too much trouble for them answer.

The great thing about interviewing a speaker is that you have a built in audience for your post.  Tag the speaker when you publicize your post and the audience that was in their session will most likely be interested in a follow up interview that expands on the topic.  This way you can publicize the speaker and publicize yourself at the same time.

Make yourself stand out at the conference. Learn as much as you can, and expand your circle of friends.  Follow these tips and become one step closer to becoming the go to source for School PR.