Tis the Season of Giving: Bring the Joy of Content Marketing to Your District

Does your district have a giving attitude going into the holiday season?

Do you want to tap into the exciting world of content marketing?

Using content marketing to form a trusting relationship with your target audience is a powerful way to motivate your students, parents, staff and community to engage with your schools and school district.

In this article you will discover ways you can create a more giving marketing approach using useful, engaging content.

 

Your Blog is Your Foundation

In the book Born to Blog, authors Mark W. Schaefer and Stanford A. Smith present that blogs help attract a loyal following and generate new, engaging customers.

A blog should be the cornerstone of your content marketing strategy. Born to Blog states that blogs are the content engine that’s driving the social web and businesses digital marketing initiative (p. 1).

Your blog must provide useful information that educates and helps your readers.  Blogs are not a platform to brag that your football team won the district championship.  A blog should be your way to give useful, sought after information to your audience. 

For example, instead of writing about football awards, write an educational article about concussion in football. This type of useful information is what your audience is craving.

Schaefer and Smith offer six common traits of successful bloggers:

1. Find Your Voice – clarifying your niche makes your focus clear

2. Tenacity – don’t give up. It takes time to find your voice.

3. Focus on Passions – your words will be full of energy if you write about what you love.

4. Flexibility – be willing to change to find your voice

5. Consistency – your reader needs to be looking forward to hearing from you.

6. Courage – put yourself out there. Write and hit publish.

Video Killed the Print Guy

Video has always been a powerful platform.  YouTube revolutionized how people consume and interact with information.  Facebook recently allowed their users to upload video directly on their platform, which is one the best ways to get your content in front of viewers, and produces very high engagement returns.  And now with Periscope and Blab, it is time for your district to get serious about their video strategy.

And speaking of strategy, different videos are needed as your customers work their way through your marketing funnel. In Gary Lipkowitz’s article, Plain Talk About Video for Marketing Executives, he walks marketing professionals through video marketing uses relevant to content marketing.

Here are Lipkowitz’s thoughts for each part of the sales funnel:

1. Top of Funnel – advertising (not exactly content marketing) drives your audience to your content.  Posting videos on Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube gives you the “fuel” to drive your viewers to the next step in the sales funnel, which might be blog content or a specific landing page offering premium content.

2. Mid Funnel – educational content is what content marketing is all about.  This should be your sweet spot to win-over your customers. Lipkowitz suggests posting your videos on your blog, your landing pages and inside your email marketing.  If you are educating with your videos, your audience won’t think you are invading their space and trying to sell. They will look forward to your videos instead of hiding from your sale’s pitches.

3. Bottom of the Funnel – Lipkowitz states that when your customers or your community reach this part of the sales funnel they are very interested in the “who” rather than the “what” or the “how”.  When two competitors are close on quality, trust can be a big deciding factor on which company or school district they choose. Video is an excellent medium to brag about the “who”.

4. PR and Communications – Lipkowitz’s last category has to do with communicating and moving your customers quicker through the sales process.  Sometimes you have to remind your audience to take action.  Great video does a excellent job moving your customers to action.

What Other Content Might Look Like

Your district or company needs to find the right mix of content to appeal to your different audiences and where they might be in the sales cycle.  Finding the right mix is key to developing the perfect content marketing strategy.

Here are five examples of other content you might consider:

1. Online Newsletters – sprinkle in blog posts with links to drive engagement

2. Webinars – hosting an educational, online town hall is a great way to educate the public

3. eBooks – we take all of our blog content and create monthly online magazines. This is the “Netflix Binge Blogging Approach”.

4. Infographics – tell your stats in a visual, creative way.

5. Microsites – important programs need their own website and content.

The Magic that Helps Us Convert

One of the best investments we have made in the last couple months in regard to our content marketing strategy is purchasing a plan through Lead Pages.  They are a landing page management system with engaging templates to create quality landing pages.

By having a centralized online location to offer premium content, we are able to build valuable email lists.  Our emails lists give us the power to send targeted messages to groups who are interested in certain topics and programs.  By having someone sign-up to get valuable content, they give us permission to send other content and invite them to events.

Two Ways We Have Used Landing Pages This Past Month

1. Gifted and Talented Parent Tour 

By using a landing page, we were able to target specific parents who might be interested in our specialized program.  Through the landing page, parents signed up to attend a tour of our program while giving us their email address for further correspondence.

We were able to follow-up with these parents sending them educational content as well as inviting them to other events to push them along the sales funnel in hopes of joining our district.

2. Build Our Newsletter List

Lead magnets can be a very powerful tool to convince parents to engage with our content.  To collect more email addresses from our parents and the community, we offered the first three issues of our blog magazine if they provided us an email address. The key was to offer them something of value in exchange for their email address.

Conclusion

Content marketing is not easy.  If it were, more people would be doing it.  If you make the commitment and work hard, content marketing provides a great return on your investment.

Even if you don’t have time to implement all of these suggestions, focusing on one or two will help improve your marketing.  As you get more comfortable you can grow your content marketing strategic plan.

What do you think? Have you tried content marketing? What were the results? What tips do you have to share? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.