School Marketing Trends to Own in 2017

With the first semester coming to a close, it is time to start thinking about what strategy we will have in place for 2017.  

Last year saw quite a few changes in the why and the how school districts are marketing to their parents, students, employees and community. Marketing is an investment all of education will have to adopt going into the new year.

This is part one of two focusing on the first five trending areas.

Part Two Can Be Found Here

Here are my first five thoughts of where school districts should concentrate their marketing in 2017:

1. Tell Your District Stories

You have to stand out.  You have to differentiate.  What makes you stand out from all the other school districts, charter schools, and private schools are your stories.

Your audience wants to feel an emotional connection to the content you’re publishing.  Since the dawn of time, people have communicated with stories.  People remember a good story.  People remember stories that make a connection or they can relate to. This is why it is important to treat your department like a newsroom.

Read my post: In 20 Years... A School District Will Buy a Local Newspaper

Your team must track down the emotional stories that will make your district rise above the rest.  And when you do find these impactful stories, you will see engagement with your content go through the roof. 

Read my post: Visual Storytelling: Part 3 - Tell a Story

2. Unlock Your Education Influencers

Your department is no longer the public relations department or the District Communications Department. Your department is the whole district.  Use the experts in your district to tell your stories and create your content.

We are not all experts of everything in education, but I do know there is someone in your district that can make you look like you are. Influencers are a huge talking point for the future of marketing.  Lucky for us we have a whole district full of them.

We have educators, administrators, parents, senior citizens, students, voters, and many different community members that can tell a much better story about their niche than we can.  Use them… and don’t hide that you are using them. People tend to trust outsiders rather than listen to a paid spokesperson.

Make a list of all of you influencers and start tapping into their expertise.  Have them write a blog post, or maybe give a testimonial.  Utilize their power to make your district standout.  

3. Paid Social to Engage

The dreaded algorithm… Facebook has it. Instagram has it.  Twitter is developing one.  Sooner than later we are not going to be able to reach everyone we want to reach. It is going to eventually lead us to paying to play on social media.

Yes, you are going to have your moments of a stellar organic vial post, but that is not the norm anymore.  Social media advertising is going to be key in reaching what we want to reach.

The beauty of social media advertising is that can pinpoint a niche that we want to target with our promotions or ads.  Did you know on Facebook you could send an ad to mothers who have two kids that have researched private schools in a certain zip code? You can even narrow it down to if they watch General Hospital in the last week. Niche targeting is a very powerful tool.  Use it to your advantage.

Watch a video on my thoughts of Social Media in School District

4. You Must Have Video

Video is a must! What was once a nice to have in school districts due to the large cost and massive undertaking is now vital tool to communicate with your community.

Video does not have to be a Hollywood production. Your smartphone is a powerful tool that allows you to plan, film, edit, and publish your video masterpiece.  Story is key, with good sound quality a close second. You image is not as important as you might think. 

Read my post: Camera Basics to Tell a Better Story

So many people are use to smart phone videos that having an expensive camera for your productions is a thing of the past. Nobody cares if you are Steven Spielberg, as long as you tell a compelling story they can understand and hear.

Live streaming video on your social platforms is a must in 2017.  Facebook, Twitter, and now Instagram all have some form of a live video component.  Live video is becoming so important that for the first time, Facebook has invested millions in television commercials to promote Facebook Live.

Read my post: 12 Easy Facebook Live for Your District 

5. Develop a Strategy Around Your Analytics

There is no excuse not to study your analytics while making decisions about your school district’s marketing. There are so many powerful tools that are free and easy to use. Data is a very powerful mechanism that should drive your strategy.

Your districts first step is to make sure your website is connected with Google Analytics. It does not matter if you did not create your own website. Apply this free tool from Google on all of your sites.

Your second task is to make sure you are using your insights and analytics within your social media platforms. It is vital that you know which posts and tweets are having the biggest impact with your followers.

Once you have mastered some of the free analytic reports, it might be a good idea to use some pay services that dig deeper into your data. Sprout Social, HootSuite and Buffer are some tools you might consider. The key is not to be afraid of data, but embrace your data.

Read my post: My 6 Job title Predictions for School PR 

Part Two Coming Soon

These are my first five trends in school marketing for 2017.  Make sure to check back next week when I reveal my next five trends. Have a safe and relaxing winter break. 

Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Why CFBISD Redesigned Our Website from Scratch and How it Became a Powerful Marketing Tool

We are very excited to announce the launch of our newly designed website at www.cfbisd.edu.  The site’s homepage features bright colors, strong visuals, and an easy to navigate, uncluttered design. We wanted to make the new website faster, easier to navigate, and more user-friendly. Instead of studying other school district sites, we wanted to borrow ideas from innovative companies and organizations.

The newly designed front page was created to make navigation on our website quick and simple. Instead of endless rows of menus and text-heavy pages, we have chunked our content into hubs, using strong visual graphics and icons, so our community can find what they are looking for as quickly as possible.

Some of the highlights of the main homepage include:

Easy to Navigate Column Menus

We designed our menus to be easily navigated to find the information you are looking for. We did away with the traditional waterfall menus, which are not mobile friendly. Our new column menus make it easy to see all the content that is most important to our users.

Plus, our “Department Menu” is an index listing of all the important categories in alphabetical order to make finding what you’re looking for easy. The index is based on keywords that were created from our most-visited sites determined by webpage analytics and statistics

Big Menu Buttons that Direct Our Users to Our Highly Visited Sites 

These big, multicolored buttons link to our most visited sites. When clicked, they take our audience to "hubs" for specific sections and links just for them.

Clicking on the “School Button”, takes you to an index listing of all our campuses and centers. We know parents love to visit their personal learning community, and want to make it easy to get there. You will also notice our newly designed school pages patterned after our front-page design. 

The “Parents and Student Section” takes you to hubs with information and programs designed to make your school year a success. We spoke with students and parents about what type of content they want to see on their page, and then created a hub around those in-demand webpages.  From these hubs you can get to things like parent and student self serve, library resources, useful calendars, and much, much more.

The “Opportunities Section” is continually being update everyday with links to programs and special events for students, parents, job seekers and the entire CFB Community. Visiting this page will give you a glimpse of the wonderful opportunities CFBISD has to offer.

Trending Section with Important Announcement and Events

The “Trending Section” on our website is a place with our most important events and programs.  No more searching through calendars, written text or lengthy menu options.  The trending section will highlight important information our entire CFBISD family needs to know about. Located toward the top of the webpage will make it easy for visitors to know what is happening in CFBISD.

Calendar Section that Focuses on Important Weekly Events 

The “Calendar Section” on the front page is a weekly event calendar of awesome events happening in CFBISD.  Everything from fine art programs to athletic events will be featured on our main website in this section. The weekly calendar will give our community a snapshot of great things happening in our district.

Click on “Show More Events” and visitors will be taken to a monthly calendar with a chronological listing of events happening in CFBISD. Each school website has this feature as well, concentrating on school specific events for that campus.

News Section Featuring Recent Accolades and Important Events 

The “News Section” on the main website will feature awesome accomplishments and breaking news stories happening in CFBISD. Using visuals instead of paragraphs of written text, the news section delivers content that is fresh and exciting. We encourage everyone in the community to send us great things happening at our schools and around the district. And to encourage sharing, we added social share buttons to all of our news posts. It's an easy way for our visitors to share our content.

Community Section for People Who Want to Get Involved 

The “Community Section” on our front page is a wealth of resources for the entire CFBISD community. There are special sections for realtors, volunteers, business partners, senior citizens and both student and adult ambassadors.  Webpages in the “Community Section” allow people to sign-up to make a difference in their community

No more searching through endless menus to find the information you need. The website is designed to get you where you need to be… plus, it’s mobile friendly for your tablet or smartphone device.

Come visit our page and scroll through our awesome site at www.cfbisd.edu

My Thoughts on Social Media and Marketing in the Public School Arena with SCN

 "School marketing expert Jason Wheeler urges communicators to use social media constantly in the public school arena."

Here is my interview with School Communicators Network during their SCNLunchinar:

5 IFTTT Recipes That Can Really Help Your School PR and Marketing

If there was a magic recipe that could help streamline your social media or school PR and marketing would you use it?  What if I said that recipes exists?

I think it is time you visited IFTTT.com.

IFTTT, or If This Then That, is a free web-based service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called "recipes", which are triggered based on changes to other web services such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. (Wikipedia)

In simple terms, it lets you automate small tasks between Internet-connected services.

Here is a list of five recipes I compiled that will get you started on the service and help streamline school PR and marketing tasks:

1. Sync new contacts to a Google Spreadsheet  

Automatically save new iOS Contacts you add on your iPhone to a Google spreadsheet for easy sorting and searching.   Find It Here

2.  Save a copy of new photos you take to Dropbox

Make sure you never loose your precious photos by having them automatically uploaded to a Dropbox folder for safe keeping.  Find It Here

3. Save Your Instagram Photos to Dropbox

Automatically backup all new Instagram posts directly to Dropbox. Keep in mind, it works only for photos you post going forward.  Find It Here

4. Save Every Tweet

Archive your new tweets into a Google Drive for simple and easy tracking.  Find It Here

5. Track mentions of a specific #hashtag in a Google Spreadsheet 

Keep track of what people are saying about your business on Twitter by automatically saving new Tweets with a specific #hashtag to a Google Spreadsheet. Find It Here

These are a few recipes to get you started. Do you have favorite recipes you use with IFTTT? Post them in the comment section below.

Examining College Marketing to Help with Your School PR

In my marketing studies I try to examine all industries as I develop the best course of action for our School PR and marketing for CFBISD.  I have been very impressed with the college marketing targeting high school students in our district. Colleges and universities in the United States have begun to embrace modern marketing including two of my favorites, Inbound and Content Marketing.

In the following post, I will break down the components of a mail campaign by Baylor University in Texas.  Many of the top universities have similar personalized mailers going to millions of high school seniors.

The letter below is a great use of Inbound and Content Marketing. At the end of my article I will post a better view of the letter.

1. College Logo

College and universities always have to be thinking of their brand.  Students and alumni are very passionate about their schools.  Word of mouth and family traditions can play a big role in the decision making process.  However, branding (and how well your football team plays on Saturday) can be a big factor as well.  Make sure to develop a logo and brand that sets you apart from the competition.

2. Advertise Your Lead Magnet

Content marketing is not just for big corporations with 20 blog writers.  College use it, and so does our district.  In Baylor's letter, they waste no time introducing their piece of content.  Baylor's contents is called, "5 Strategies for Choosing a Major".  What a great piece of useful content for high school seniors and juniors.  How does a 17 year old kid really know what they want to do in life.  Baylor is attempting to help them. And help is all what Content Marketing is about.

3. Personalized Greeting

This is not 1978.  Computers and computer programs have made it very easy to personalize your letters. A generic form letter is not going to cut it. Always, always make sure you address the letter to the student. And make sure to spell their name right.

4. Landing Page - Get Their Email

The key to Inbound Marketing is to get their permission to send them more stuff.  Baylor does a great job setting up a simple "Landing Page" website for students to get their Major Guide, and at the same time collecting information about interested students in their school.  We use LeadPages in our district to create slick micro-content websites to build our email database.

5. Personalized Password - Make them Feel Special

This is a great way to add more exclusivity to your marketing.  Giving each student their own password makes them feel special like they our in a secret, exclusive club.

6. Strong Introductory Sentence

You need to spend a great deal of time developing your opening sentence of your letter.  many students won't read pass your first couple of lines. Make sure they are strong to keep them reading.  Tell them how you are going to help them.

7. Formally Introduce the Lead Magnet

Baylor teased the "Free Prize" earlier in the the letter.  Now it is time to expand on what you can offer them to make the best choice when choosing a college.  You must tell them why your content marketing piece is so useful.  How is it going to change their lives?

8. Discuss Your Benefits

Hopefully Baylor sold their recipients on the benefits of downloading their lead magnet.  Now it is their opportunity to sell the students on their university without getting long winded.  It is a great idea to tie-in the lead magnet you are offering.  Baylor uses two paragraphs with a couple of sentences each to sell their school.  This is not a dissertation. The whole point is to get them to take the next step, and then send them additional content in the future.

9. Close with Your Lead Magnet

Just like a good English paper, always restate your opening paragraph to close your letter.  Baylor uses the last paragraphs to once again remind the reader about their awesome college major guide.  Hopefully, one more reminder will encourage the readers to take advantage of the free content.

10. Personalized Signature

Take the time for someone important to offer a signature.  It doesn't have to be fresh ink, but it better look that way.  If students think the Senior Director of Admissions at Baylor took the time approve this message, it might feel a bit more important to the student. Have your superintendent or principal sign your letters.  They are more important than you... haha.

11.  P.S. Remind them How Great You Are

Baylor takes the opportunity to remind the reader how great they are and reminds them of the "Lead Magnet".  And to tell you the truth, the post script might be read first by some students.  Make it strong, and sell your program.

12. Contact Info

Make sure you give them some contact information for your program.  It won't be read much, but some of your more anal students will take advantage of knowing your address.

Colleges and universities are starting to spend big bucks to market to high school students.  It is a great source of inspiration for K-12 School Public Relations and Marketing.

Here is a closer look at the Baylor letter:

5 Things I Do to Start my Day to be Successful

I am a morning person.  I like to get to the office by 6:00 a.m. each morning.

Getting to the office this early allows me to get things done before most of my staff arrives to start the day.  The quiet time with no disturbances from co-workers means I can get a lot done.

Here is my morning ritual during the first two hours when I arrive at work.

1. Energy Boost for the Day

I do not dive into my work when I first walk into the office. I have to have my morning coffee.  Walking to the break room allows me turn on all the lights around the administration building while I take a deep breath before I dig into the day.

I always fix my pecan-flavored coffee with no sugar and a bit of cream.  After my levels are correct, I crack open my laptop and begin my workday.

2. Current Events and my Love of Marketing

I am obsessed with news.   I want to be in the know.  This is why each morning I read the headlines and jump over to my favorite blogs to see what is trending in marketing and social media.  It is crucial to stay current with your industry and see what is hot. 

Here are some of my favorite blogs to read in the morning:

Social Media Examiner

CMO by Adobe

Content Marketing Institute

Hubspot Marketing Blog

I highly recommend bookmarking these pages to get your daily dose of marketing and social media tips. They are great reads by industry professionals.

3. Moneyball my School Marketing

My second obsession is data.  I love numbers and I love spreadsheets.  That is why I always check my website and social media analytics each morning.  My big three are Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and Twitter Analytics.

Google Analytics is my go to analytics platform for my website visitor data.  I use Google for both our main district website and our School-A-Hoop parenting blog.

My favorite dashboards and numbers to look at are:

• Content Analysis- what were the most popular sections of my website
• Referral Traffic- how did people get to my website
• Bounce Rate- are they exploring more of my site, or one and done?
• Location of Visitors- where do my visitors come from? Local?
• Navigation Summary- what did they do once they made it to our site?

Most of our parents are on Facebook. This is their social media platform of choice.  That is why it is crucial that I check Facebook Insights each morning.  It gives me a great breakdown of how people are engaging with my content.  It also lets us know what content is working and what is not working.

My favorite insights are:

• People- who was my audience for the last seven days?
• Reach- how far did my content go? Did it go beyond my fans?
• Engagement- did my post cause the audience to take an action
• Competitor Analysis- always check to see what other districts are doing

Although Twitter is not as powerful when it comes to audience engagement for our district, I still like to analyze the numbers to see what content is working for us.

Here are the statistics I look at:

• Tweet Impressions- how many people saw my post
• Follower Count- check to see how my content pulled in new audiences
• Engagements- see how people are interacting with my posts and my CTA’s

Remember, numbers are your friends.  They can help prove the effectiveness of your campaigns and social media content.

4. Social Media for the Carpool Crowd

Every morning during the school week, I plan a Facebook post and a tweet to be delivered during our morningcarpool.  It’s a great way to target a captivated audience as they wait for the school doors to open.  

My morning ritual for social media is to find engaging content that is most likely going to be shared, and then write a eye-catching headline for the post.  An awesome visual is a must for my posts.  I never post on social media without a visual.

The content always determines what time I schedule my post.  If it is an elementary school story I post during their carpool.  If it is a middle school story I post during their drop-off.  If the morning story has to do with one of our high schools, I will post about 15 minutes before the first period bell rings.  High school students love to hang with their friends and their smartphones before school starts.

Another great time to schedule a social media post is during the afternoon pick-up times.  Parents typically have to wait in front of the school much longer waiting on their child.

5. Exercise While I Podcast

The last fifteen minutes before my team arrives for the day is my daily walk around the board room.  This allows for me to get some steps on my Fitbit before I start my morning meetings.  It also allows for me to listen to marketing podcasts while I exercise.  Most of the time I finish a podcast that was not quite finished during my morning commute.

I love catching up on all the industry and marketing trends while I walk.  The majority of the time I listen to marketing or social media content, but occasionally I will listen to some MLB podcasts to get he latest headlines for my favorite sport.

*Creating Content Marketing Gold

The above rituals are the norm four of the five days of the week.  Wednesday is a tad bit different.  On Wednesday I put on my publisher hat and edit blog posts for our School-a-Hoop parenting blog.

Every Wednesday I will take an expertly written piece of content from teachers and administrators in our district and I will prepare it to be published on our blog.

Here the editorial steps I take to get it ready to be published:

• Read for Grammar- I always read for typos and grammatical mistakes
• SEO Optimization- I write my headline and create SEO tags for the post
• Photshop my Visuals- I always prepare visual content for my posts
• Prepare a Social Media Post- I create a separate visual and engaging copy

Writing the article is only the first step when you write for a blog.  You must prep your article to be seen by the masses.

My First Morning is Now Complete

The stuff above is usually accomplished before my co-workers hit the office.  I am tired by the end of the week, but I always feel accomplished. Luckily I have my own key and alarm code for the building.  It would be pretty lonely waiting in the parking lot trying to find a WiFi signal.

What the Best Television Show of All Time Can Teach Us About School PR

The Wire, which aired on HBO, is hands down my favorite television show of all time.  The gritty drama that told the story of the streets of Baltimore felt so real.  A textured portrait of an American city in decline, told many stories, and taught us many lessons.

Reexamining the show many years later, I realized it not only taught us lessons on life, but it also taught lessons we can use in School Public Relations and School Marketing.

Here are my thoughts as I use quotes from the shows most interesting characters:

“Where’s it all go?  The money, where’s it go?”

- D’Angelo Barksdale

The higher ups never look at marketing and public relations as an investment.  They always want to put an expense on our work. It is hard for them to realize that what we do makes the district a better place for our staff, students, parents and the community.

The best way to prove your worth is to show them a return on their investment.  Show how your work is making an impact on your district.  Learn and be able to prove how your work is making a difference.

“You cannot lose if you don’t play.”

- Marla Daniels

The way our profession operates is changing all of the time.  It can be very scary to try the newest communication or marketing tool on the market.  But just remember, if you are not trying new things, you might not lose, but you are certainly not going to win.

You need to examine the trends. Try the new tools.  Today’s  “never in a million years” idea, could be you main "Go To" tool tomorrow.  Anyone remember when your district blocked Facebook for your students and employees, including your department? Don't knock it until you try it. That's my motto.

“Them days are gone…”

- Horseface Pakusa

“They use to make steel there, no?”

- Spiros Vondas

“Don’t matter how many times you get burnt, you just keep doin’ the same.”

- Bodie

School PR and School Marketing are more than just putting together a weekly newsletter.  We must be pros in social media, content marketing, web design, branding, graphic design, video, analytics, publishing, email marketing, and much, much more.

Some people in our profession are fine with doing what they are comfortable with.  That is the quickest way to get destroyed by the competition.

Expand you tools.  Learn everything.  We are the voice of the district.  We are the storytellers.

“What they need is a union.”

- Russell

“Just cause they’re in the street don’t mean the lack for opinion.”

- Haynes

We might be the experts, but we need strong partners in our quest to tell our district’s story.

It is vital we partner with our parents. It is vital we partner with our community.  In our district we call them Ambassadors.  They are the trusted voice of the district.

People don’t believe salespeople anymore.  They will, however, trust other customers.  It is very important to establish a community the spreads the good things that are happening in your district. And that community needs to be the people have children or have an investment in our schools.

“You play in dirt, you get dirty.”

- McNulty

You have to get dirty.  It is very important to get in the sandbox to know about all the new toys.

That means we must live in the schools to know what is going on in modern education.  We can’t pretend to know.  We need to tour classrooms.  We need watch our teachers interact with our students.  We need to see what our parents are saying at the PTA meetings.

There is no way to win if you sit on the sidelines.  The best way to tell a story is to know what your story is about. Visit your schools.  The stories will be there.

“Buyer’s market out there." 
- Templeton

If you are not telling your story, someone else is.  Parents and potential parents have so much information at their fingertips.  People can Google pretty much anything they want to know about these days.  That is not good for the seller.

Before parents even step foot inside your schools, they already know so much about the building and its employees.

This is why it is very important to tell your district’s story. You must provide accurate information on your website and social media so the community knows the real story.  Be the trusted expert before your competitors do.

“They don’t teach it in law school.”

- Pearlman

In conclusion, remember this.  Unless you graduated from college today, your studies probably did not prepare you for today’s marketing and public relations.  You must educate yourself on the trends and most current tools on the market on a daily basis.

That means you need to read articles and journals, listen to podcasts on the industry, read leading blogs on marketing and school PR… do whatever you can to stay current.  Always continue your education, so you are not left in the dust.