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.

Your Quick Summer School PR Guide to Beating the Competition

The main thing I remember from all of marketing classes in college are that you have to market during the good times, and you have to market during the slow times. For us as communicators in education, it is crucial that we conduct our business during the school year, but it is especially important to concentrate our efforts during the summer months as well.

Why is this the best approach? Because most of us don’t do it. By putting in the extra effort during the summer, you can beat your competition that is sleeping in and not working on Fridays.

In this article you’ll get a quick guide to rock your marketing during the summer off-season.

Here are six quick tips to out-market the competition:

1. Interview 10 Parents at 30 Seconds Each

Your parent ambassadors our critical to win over other families. What better way to broadcast the positive message about your district to the masses then by recording quick videos?

Videos are playing a big role in visual storytelling. Not only are they getting big views on traditional video platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo, but they are also doing really well on Facebook. Native video has taken Facebook by storm. Posted videos are in the top categories for user engagement and do really well in their Edgerank algorithm.

The key is to get honest, positive experiences from your parents.  In this day of cell phone videos, your recordings don’t have to be anything fancy. Just have them tell their story. Film 10 Stories that you can post for each of the ten weeks of summer vacation.

2. Fifty Dollars to Target 15,000 Eyeballs

There is no better way to target a specific audience than doing social media advertising.  Facebook seems to be the best when it comes to targeting specific cities or addresses. We have used this many times to narrow our reach. We have found that most traditional advertising can’t be as specific as Facebook and Twitter.

By boosting existing posts, or creating a specific Facebook ad, all you need to do is spend $5 a week to reach an estimated 1,500 people. Numbers will vary depending on the addresses and demographics you choose, but tell me a better plan to target specific groups with specific messages and I will make the switch. It’s a cheap way to reach who you want to reach.

Make it a goal to boost or buy a $5 ad each week during the summer. By targeting these groups when most districts are on vacation, you will get great traction for converting some parents to your school district from theirs.

3. Build a Landing Page for a Specific Program You Want to Promote

Programs can be the life-blood to differentiating your district from the competition. We all have special programs that make our schools stand out. By having a webpage for specific programs, you can create a central location to brag to potential parents.

In my district we created a stand-alone website for our STEM programs and classes called CFBSTEM.com. The landing page offers a brief introduction to STEM and STEM in our district, and then we offer links to our specific STEM programs.

The key addition we added to our website is the link for the parents to request additional information about our programs. In the form we have them fill out their name, child’s age, current school and what program they have an interest in.  By having this form, we can create a database of interested parents. We can then use that database to send them specific ads or content we have created about our programs.

4. Content Marketing Outside Your District

We are focusing on content marketing quite heavily in my district.  Our thinking is that if we help our parents, they will look at us as the experts in education. During the summer months, it is a good idea to have a broad range of topics. Give your parents some things to think about when they are home with their kids.

Our most popular blog post this summer is our write-up of how to have a “staycation” in Dallas for under $50. Our parents loved it. It drove traffic to our blog and our website.  In 24 hours we had over 15,000 impressions and 30 new people liked our Facebook page. We got great numbers from a simple, fun article.

It worked because our parents are thinking about more than education during the summer.  They had a need to fill, and we helped them fill it. Ten weeks is a long time to entertain kids.  Hopefully we provided our parents with a week of inexpensive activities to do with their kids.

5. Send a Phone Call Home with a Checklist

Four weeks before school starts, send a phone call home reminding your parents or important dates and information they need to start the school. Be excited when you record the message. Get your families pumped up about coming back to school.

Some things you might want to include in the message are forms they will need to start the school year, dates and times of major district events, and a list of new procedures that are in place for the new school year.

6. Study Your Insights and Analytics

Always be checking your analytics. You need to determine what is working and what is not working. Study them closely. Look for the trends that will help you develop a strategy for the upcoming school year.

Do you have any other tips or suggestions? Leave them in the comment section below.

'And so it began'… How Jaws Can Change Your Marketing Strategy for the Better

Or How I Started to Love the Shark and it Changed my World

Are you looking for your next blockbuster marketing campaign?

Could your marketing strategy use a jolt of energy?

In this article, I will explore the principals that made Jaws a success, so you can use those concepts in your districts marketing campaigns and communication strategy.

The summer blockbuster was born on this date 40 years ago as Steven Spielberg launched a great white shark onto the world.  Or better yet, he did not launch a shark onto the world (the shark was broken). His film, more of an exploration into the human mind, used suspense to become the highest grossing movie of all time back in 1975.

Now you can apply the same techniques Universal Studios and Spielberg used for box office success in you school district’s marketing strategy.

1. Social Media Target Ads Before Your Event

In PBS.org’s Frontline article Jaws - The Monster Who Ate Hollywood they write about Universal’s advertising strategy before the launch of the film.

Before the summer of 1975, Hollywood studios traditionally did not advertise their movies on network television. It was simply too expensive to do so. Shortly before the release of "Jaws," Columbia Pictures (where Peter Guber was studio chief) bought 42 prime-time TV spots for another film, the Charles Bronson vehicle "Breakout." Despite the advertising expenditures, which reportedly cost $3.5 million, the box-office results for the film were disappointing. Then, for three nights preceding the release of "Jaws" on June 20, 1975, Universal saturated the networks during primetime with 30-second trailers for the movie. This time, for whatever reason (some combination of marketing savvy, timing, and national media exposure), it worked: The film easily surpassed the $100-million mark at the box office and broke the previous records set by "The Godfather" and "The Exorcist." Ultimately, the movie would gross $260 million in the U.S. alone.

Now we have a very strategic approach that in my opinion is better than traditional advertising in some cases. Facebook allows you to target cities and neighborhoods to get very specific about the your strategic areas and audiences you want to send your message to. With Facebook advertising, your district can reach parents with elementary school age children or senior citizens that might be voting in the next election. This is a great approach for specific campaigns or initiatives.

Let’s say you are having an open forum about gifted education in your district which is open to parents with children in pre-school. A week before the event, you can target those parents with a specific message which includes an invite to the event. This is much better than putting in ad in the newspaper that might or might not reach your attended audience.  Think of a mass mailing blast that is digital and on a medium where people are use to interacting.

Here is a great article about how to be successful with Facebook advertising by SocialMediaExaminer.com: How to Get Results From Facebook Ads on a Budget

2. Make Your Marketing an Event

It takes a village to create a successful marketing campaign.  You can’t just rely on your communications department to build your campaign. You need every department in your organization including teachers and administrators to spread the word.  Make your marketing campaign an event with huge energy from multiple stakeholders.

Jaws and Star Wars were the first true "event" movie going experiences. Not only did audiences want to see the movie, they wanted to stand in line and have some fun. People dressed in costumes, they played games in line and they interacted with other fans to create the ultimate summer experience.

You must do the same thing with your campaigns. Don’t just sell the campaign… sell the entire experience.

Have your school mascots dance in the parking lot. Play music to get your audience in the mood to have fun.  Have student ambassadors welcome your guests to the event. Have your school cheerleaders create a cheer to kick-off the event.

It’s all about the experience. Have fun, and your audience will have a blast.

3. Sometimes Suspense is Better than Showing the Monster 

Jaws is full of suspense. We don’t even see the shark to the last part of the film. Not showing the shark created one of the most suspenseful films of all time.  And this was created by a mistake because Spielberg could not get his robotic shark to work properly in the Hampton’s waters. Because of sheer luck, Spielberg created a new way of making movies.

You can do the same with your marketing.  Sometimes building suspense and exclusivity into your campaigns can pay huge dividends in the end.  Not giving away the payoff can get your audience very curious. The more you don’t tell them, sometimes gets them wanting more.

You need to be very careful with this approach. Due to the Internet and social media, we are an information driven society.  This can backfire if you are too secret about your campaign. However, if you are creative, like requiring a password to attend an event, or hiding a message in a puzzle, you can heighten curiosity and have your audience wanting more.

Jaws is one of my favorite films.  I love its approach and I love the colorful characters that inhabit the story.  Now it’s time to create your own story and wow your school district’s audience.

Do you have any questions about this strategic approach? Leave your questions in the comment section below.

10 Periscope Ideas for Your School PR Department [Bonus Post]

Are you currently using video for school communications? If you are not, you are missing out on a great visual storytelling medium.

Broadcasting live might make you nervous, but streaming video could be key in increasing engagement with your audience.

In this quick bonus post, I will list ten ideas for using my streaming app of choice Periscope. Periscope is owned by Twitter, which makes it more appealing than Meerkat in my book.

10 Uses for Periscope in School PR

1. Valedictorian Speeches – not everyone can make graduation. Showcase your brightest student using live video.

2. College Signing Day – not every athlete signing is a five-star recruit whose decision is going to be broadcasting on ESPN.  Add some excitement to the event by airing it over Periscope.

3. Twitter Chats – add an extra punch to your Twitter chats by streaming them live.  Have your district experts answer questions in real-time over video.

4. Guest Speakers – it’s hard to fit an entire school in the auditorium.  Stream it live so the whole school can learn.

5. Fine Arts Performances – just like graduation, sometimes it is hard for parents to attend every event. Allow them to watch it from work or home. Be careful of copyrighted material.

6. Athletic Events – broadcast games live to your fans. Make sure to follow your athletic organizations rules for showing live games.

7. Test Reviews – have teachers give a video review the night before the test.  Students might have some last minute questions they need answered. Get some press by showcasing the dedication of your teachers.

8. School Closings – give some comfort to your parents by announcing school closures by video.  Be careful, there might be a lot of questions from your viewers.

9. School Tours – give a quick tour of your facilities using streaming video.

10. Major Announcements – have a big announcement for your district? Promote it throughout the day, and then announce it live with your own Periscope press conference.

Do you have any other ideas for using Periscope for School PR? Leave your suggestions in the comment section below.

Why Young Professionals Should Learn Yoga Instead of Golf

Want to take your networking to the next level?

Curious about where you should be hanging out to meet your mentors and business contacts?

The golf course has been the meeting place of choice for many business executives for the past 5 decades, but not anymore.  According to Sports & Fitness Industry Association data, golf has waned over the past five years while Yoga and Running Clubs have grown to record levels.

In this article you’ll learn why young adults need to learn the ins and outs of yoga and running before the pick-up a golf club.

Where are the Young Professionals?

I know as I write this young golfers such as Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth are making a name for themselves on the links, but 18 to 34 year olds are not following in the footsteps of these young prodigies.

The study by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association shows that around 5.6 million people between the ages of 18 to 34 are actively playing golf. The only sport with a worse decline year over year is bowling which stills commands 15.5 million participants. Running/Jogging Clubs (24 Million) and Yoga (11 Million) are on a steady rise showing great growth over the past five years.

Go Where the People Are

So why not go where the people are? Why not find that next job promotion at your local yoga class?

To quote Bob Dylan, Times are a changin’. Not only do young professionals not want to take the time for a four hour round of golf, they are finding more added benefits to other recreational activities. They would much rather spend their time at an hour long Yoga class, and then donate their time to a local coat closet or soup kitchen. Making a difference in their body and community.

Value Your Pocketbook and Make a Decision

Golf can also be very expensive.  A set of clubs to get started is not always in the budget for a young professional. They have to make big decisions… a 3 Wood to make par on the back nine, or pay off their student loans for the month. Yoga and running are the fraction of the cost, unless you get the trendy yoga pants at high fashion boutique, golf is going to command a higher price tag.

No Matter What… Make an Effort

If you choose golf, yoga or running, the key is still to break out of your shell and strike up a conversation. Ask what the girl next to you in Yoga class does for a living. Join a Young Executive Running Club and make some contacts. Or, if you still love the game of golf, invite a potential mentor to join you on the golf course to ask some questions between holes.

Whatever you do… Always be growing yourself.  Set some goals and get busy.