Internet marketing specialist with effective strategies. Been working for years of quality and professional marketing. Hit me up for your marketing needs.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Creating and Improving Lesson Plans With the Help of Free Online Tools
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Sunday, April 29, 2018
Emerging EdTech Tweet Recap, w/e 04-28-18
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Friday, April 27, 2018
Money from pot taxes doesn't fix Colorado teachers' problems
More than money: School vouchers also irk Arizona teachers
Florida school shooting suspect Cruz due back in court
Michigan judge strikes down state aid to private schools
Arizona GOP lawmakers backing Ducey's teacher raise, no more
Massachusetts Senate passes $156M supplemental spending bill
Senate unlikely to confirm Greitens' education board picks
Union votes no-confidence in sheriff after school massacre
La. Senate votes to allow more teacher prayer with students
House to debate bill aimed at bringing more guns to schools
Thursday, April 26, 2018
Charitable foundations chart course for early education
Tennessee lawmakers wrap election-year legislative session
Arizona's only black legislators chastised after race talk
Tennessee lawmakers vote to shield teachers from test woes
Why Teacher Pay Raises Can Prove So Tough to Win
Houston district backs off plan for takeover of 10 schools
Missouri Senate OKs plan for K-12, higher education funding
Arizona unites to care for, feed kids during teacher strike
Court gives Kansas AG more time to file school aid defense
Legislature adjourns, not passing $1 billion in school funds
The Characteristics of Copywriting for Education Marketing
Copywriting is an art that offends the sensibilities of academic writing. That can present unique challenges for education marketers who live in an academic world. To help out, here’s a cheat sheet on what copywriting for education marketing should look like.
Copywriting shares a lot in common with content writing. It’s airy, conversational, and informal. But the main distinction is in their objectives.
- Content Writing Objective: Build your education brand by attracting and cultivating prospective students or donors.
- Copywriting Objective: Persuade prospective students or donors to take a specific action.
Just like content writing, copywriting is a tactic used within the larger strategy of inbound content marketing to accomplish the ultimate goal of moving your school towards its institutional goals.
Just like content writing, copywriting is a tactic used within the larger strategy of inbound content marketing to accomplish the ultimate goal of moving your school towards its institutional goals.
Made For Each OtherContent writing attracts and nurtures prospects throughout your enrollment or gift-cultivation cycle.
Copywriting should be used each time you need your prospect to move from one stage of the cycle to the next.
The ultimate goal of copywriting is ”to convert” or to persuade your audience to a specific action.
Content marketing will not work without strategically placed, well-written copywriting. Without it, your audience will not be moved to do anything.
Having a content marketing strategy without copy is like publishing an encyclopedia. Great content, but no conversions.
And copywriting without quality content pieces will come across as “salesy,” pushy, or untrustworthy.
Copywriting without great content is like pressuring a person to buy a new car without giving them a test drive first. Suspicious…
In our last post, we talked about the characteristics of content writing for your marketing personas.
Today, let’s talk a little about the elements of copywriting for education marketing, an art that’s even farther removed from the formality of academic writing.
Copywriting ElementsAudience Focused. Everything begins and ends with your target audience. Of course, there are the pre-writing questions you should answer before writing like…
- What do they want?
- What is in their way?
- What questions do they have?
And in copywriting, it’s about your audience, so address them directly. Use a lot of the second person singular “you” as if you were writing to a friend about their desires, questions, and challenges.
Check out my blog posts on segmentation and where your audience hangs out for more critical questions you should answer before writing copy.
Clear. In copywriting, you have one clear call-to-action for the audience. Copy is direct and transparent about what it is asking the audience to do.
The art of copywriting is being clear about your request of the audience without pushing, coercing, or misleading. Pushy copy or copy that makes extravagant claims comes across as “salesy” and never works.
Emotive. Successful copywriting identifies the emotional challenges that confront your audience as it regards your area of education. When writing about adult education, we identify with such emotions as concern over balancing ongoing education and raising a family or frustration with a dead-end job.
Reader beware! The emotional element of copywriting makes it hard to use for many educational institutions. The raw emotion of copywriting is different from the objective, neutral language of academia.
A lot of research shows that all of us — including Ph. D.’s — make our decisions for emotional reasons. So resist the temptation to strip your copy of its emotive content.
Hopeful. After identifying with the audience’s emotions, copywriting positions the desired action as the solution to the problem. When you write copy, you have to describe how the action will bring a solution to the problem for your audience.
For example, if you’re writing copy for a landing page, you’ll want to identify the emotions around making a college decision. Here are some possible emotions:
- Excitement
- Anxiety
- Confusion
- Overwhelmed
- Pride
Then, your copy should show the audience how your white paper, ebook, case study, or other offering is going to address their feelings (negative or positive) by giving a solution — an answer — through the information they receive by signing up for your content.
If they sign up for your e-newsletter by downloading your ebook on financial aid, (again, for example) their anxiety over money will be swept away by their newfound information on all the potential aid available.
You Need Powerful CopyWhen you write powerful copy for a landing page, you may get pushback from your academic reviewers from time to time.
But remind your colleagues of just how important this tactic is to the success of your inbound marketing strategy. Show them examples of other schools like yours who have well-crafted copy on their marketing materials.
Your school needs powerful copy, too.
Landing pages, email copy, and direct mail copy are all critical elements of your work to move your educational institution forward.
By mastering the art of copywriting, you can serve your target audience by bringing them to some of the best decisions of their lives, like going to your school.
Need a serious look at the performance of your school’s current copy? We’d be happy to help with a free copy audit. Get ahold of us today for more details.
Featured image by Rawpixel.com via Adobe Stock
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/characteristics-of-copywriting-for-education-marketing/
https://ift.tt/2vO6RWzTuesday, April 24, 2018
Exploring Writable Digital Slates (Anyone Tried Any of These?)
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Monday, April 23, 2018
Why Your Students Should Blog: 6 Powerful Benefits
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Sunday, April 22, 2018
Education and Technology Tweet Recap, w/e 04-21-18
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Thursday, April 19, 2018
Five Special Characteristics of Content Writing for Education Marketers
There are two kinds of writing you need to keep the wheels of your education inbound marketing strategy spinning: content writing and copywriting. It’s important to understand what they are and how to leverage them for your marketing success.
Inbound marketing is a broad strategy that requires a blend of skills, techniques, and tactics to work well for your school.
The goal of inbound marketing is to attract inquiries from prospective students and parents (email, calls, in-person visits) to your admissions office. This is a different approach than going out to find prospectives, which is outbound marketing.
Inbound marketing gives your school’s recruitment team a much stronger chance with prospective students than outbound marketing. Your prospectives are coming to you — they’ve self-identified as leads.
There are many tactics of inbound marketing that education marketers use to attract prospective students. Event marketing, social media marketing, video marketing, , SEO, and PPC, are just few of the many we could mention.
But today, we’ll kick off two posts that get to the heart of all of these tactics: content writing and copywriting.
Writing: The Heart of It AllIt’s no secret. We’re huge fans of rich content like photography, infographics, and video content. But these are not the heart of inbound marketing.
Words are at the center of inbound marketing. They provide the cohesive thread through all the rich media content you publish for your audience.
When you place video content and images in your marketing messages, they should reflect the ideas you convey in the words on your website, blog, newsletters, and print materials.
So let’s begin our series here with content writing.
Content WritingIn one of the most prophetic blog posts ever written, Bill Gates coined the term “Content is king.” And to this day, he’s right!
Content writing provides Internet users with information or entertainment.
Because people are looking for the information that has answers to their questions on the Internet, content writing is one of the most powerful tools you can use to attract visitors to your site.
We like to call it “edutainment.”
“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting. But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.” – Bill Gates
Content writing is where you write the answers that your audiences are looking for from your education brand.
But that doesn’t mean it has to be boring!
Content writing isn’t as formal as academic writing. Here are some the special characteristics your content writing should have.
Content Writing CharacteristicsInformal: Essays and dissertations are formal and have a professional tone. But content writing is marked by its casual, informal style. Content writing stays away from big words, staying at about a sixth-grade reading level.
That doesn’t mean that the content itself has to be simplistic! If you’ve ever read a book by the bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell, then you know the style and tone I mean.
via Amazon Author’s Page
Malcolm’s books talk about complex, profound insights and cite large amounts of data. But his writing is easy to read and hard to put down.
Conversational: Academic writing loves to write in the third-person. Content writing is personal, using the first and second persons freely.
Airy: Good content writing allows the page to breathe. That is, there’s plenty of white space in between the text which helps the reader to scan the content more quickly.
Sentences are short. Paragraphs are 1 – 3 lines thick. And, again, words are kept to a sixth-grade level.
All these tactics keep the content light and airy, enticing the reader deeper into the text.
Discoverable: Content writing uses different techniques such as backlinking and SEO to help it stand out to your prospective students in the ocean of content on the web.
Episodic: Content writing doesn’t cover the entire subject all at once. It’s not comprehensive. It’s episodic.
(Man, I wish I had a sixth-grade level synonym for episodic!)
By writing out your thoughts in smaller “episodes,” you can publish new content more frequently and better keep your audience’s short attention.
Plus, writing out your content in a series of posts instead of one mega post will keep your audience coming back to your site for more.
Content is KingBill Gates was right about a lot of things — and he certainly was right about this: content is king.
Inbound marketing for education relies heavily on content writing to build educational brands by attracting and cultivating prospective students or donors.
You might assume writing would come easily to education marketers. But the rules of successful content writing are different than academic writing, so you need to keep the characteristics above in mind when writing your marketing content.
Most of the time, schools need more help setting up their content marketing than they do running it.
That’s why when we create a new website or a new content creation workflow for our clients, we set it up with user-friendly, easy to maintain technology and train school staff how to write and publish their content online.
For more information, check out our services page. To talk to a live person, get ahold of us!
Featured image by Marek via Adobe Stock
Malcolm Gladwell image via Amazon Author’s page
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/5-special-characteristics-of-content-writing-for-education-marketers/
https://ift.tt/2JZ6tr2Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Alaska Legislature passes school funding bill
Audit finds fault with Education Dept. clearance process
Arizona teachers weigh risks of a strike as they urge change
Tennessee lawmakers grill education commissioner over test
Bug in online system puts school testing on pause
Gay Illinois teacher sparks debate with tolerance talk
Louisiana governor pushing for trained officers in schools
Immigrants optimistic financial aid bill will pass this year
Judge will hear case of student poet from Zambia
School shooting survivor calls for investment firm boycott
Exploring Campus Nexus’ Powerful Forms Builder and Workflow Functionality
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Sunday, April 15, 2018
Academics and Technology Tweet Wrap, w/e 04-14-18
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Thursday, April 12, 2018
5+ Nifty Ways to Market Your School’s Spring Commencement Event
The culmination of a thousand academic journeys is to be realized. Are you ready to make this year’s spring commencement the marketing success it could be?
The academic calendar marches on, mercilessly sometimes. It was just winter break—and spring commencement is just around the corner!
To make commencement the marketing asset that it should be in building your school’s brand and reaching more prospective students, you’ll have to start preparations now.
Events Are AssetsWhen you’re involved in the preparation and organization of any event, it’s hard to see it as an asset. Honestly, it can feel like a burden because of the enormous pressure and stress packed into one moment in the year.
But if you think about why there’s so much pressure on these events for you and your team, you’ll see why events like spring commencement are a critical marketing asset.
Events are a marketing asset because so many people will experience your education brand firsthand.
Not every event on your campus is like this. But events like spring commencement are a pressure cooker where the ingredients of student relations, donor relations, alumni relations, and marketing all come together.
These separate teams have to come together to create a “wow” experience for your guests.
You need people to walk away from commencement thinking not only of little Susanne’s future, but also of that great school that she graduated from.
And this is what makes spring commencement pure, education-marketing gold.
In-Person Access to Your AudiencesIt is one of the few events of the year where almost all of your marketing audiences are in the same place at the same time.
Graduating students and current students will be there. Their young Gen Z siblings will be there. Their parents will be there. Their grandparents will be there. In some cases, you might have members of the general public or local churches there.
All of these audience segments you’re working hard to reach all year long… in one place!
Now, that doesn’t mean that you can go to each of them and gather feedback or marketing insights (that you can do in other ways). They’re on your campus for a very specific reason—to watch someone they love graduate.
But you can take advantage of their presence to leverage the event as the marketing asset it really is.
Spring Commencement Marketing Ideas Event HashtagsSocial media hashtags are an exceptional tool for helping your audience find and participate in the conversation.
If you don’t already have established hashtags for your education marketing strategy and events, take time to think through short tags you can use to label the event. Between now and the spring commencement ceremony, begin raising awareness of the event hashtag by including it in all printed materials, school announcements, and video ads for graduation.
Verbally encourage your graduating students to use the hashtag when posting about graduation. Tell them to spread the word about it so that their friends and family will use it as well when they interact on social media.
Bonus Tip #1: Include the hashtag in your corporate email signatures and in the commencement program.
Bonus Tip #2: Download our FREE ebook, “#HASHTAGS: YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA SECRET WEAPON”.
Rich Content CreationEvents are some of the most opportune times to get your camera out and create new pieces of rich content. Spring commencement especially is full of light, colors, smiles, and faces that can be used across your branded materials, website, and blog throughout the year.
Bonus Tip: Don’t forget to create video assets from the event!
Social PhotographyBesides shooting your own professional content, consider creating a selfie frame where graduates and their families can take pictures and post on Facebook, or better yet, on Instagram. This will help you to brand all of the inevitable social photos that will be happening all over the school grounds.

Another spinoff of this idea is to have a photobooth or temporary studio that offers students and families school-branded props for their family photos.
Bonus Tip: Include your event hashtag on the frame!
Go LiveSpring commencement is the perfect time to go live with Facebook Live or Instagram Live. You can choose to post content to your Facebook Stories or Instagram Stories. Don’t overcomplicate this if you don’t have the time or resources to devote to it. A mobile phone should do perfectly in most cases.
Bonus Tip: Have students or faculty “host” the live stream. They can comment on what the audience is seeing live and interview people at the event like Mario Lopez on the red carpet.

Before spring commencement hits, find stories among your graduating class that you would like to feature in video, blog, or print format. You can then post these on your social media feeds to build awareness of the event and get people talking about it.
For example, feature a story on one of your veteran students who is about to graduate and post it to social media before graduation.
Bonus Tip: Keep these stories and post them on other marketing channels throughout the year, or in future marketing campaigns.
Go Deeper with Commencement SpeakersMost commencement speakers have a good amount of influence and standing, whether in the local community or on a much greater scale. And many of them would be happy to show their followers what they’re doing for your school and what they’re saying to the next generation.
You can send them video content they can post about your school on their social media channels, have them record a greeting to your students that they can post, or send them a recording of their speech that they can post or share on their platforms.
Bonus Tip: Assign hashtags that your speaker and students can use!
Turn the Burden into a BenefitDon’t let the busy, stressful work of spring commencement get in the way of creating these powerful marketing tools for your school. With just a little thought beforehand, you can ensure that you’ll have content assets for your upcoming marketing campaigns for months to come.
Need help creating or implementing your school’s marketing strategy? Contact us today!
Featured image by Monkey Business via Adobe Stock
PSU AgDay image via Penn State News
Red carpet image via ©Mario Lopez/Twitter
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/5-nifty-ways-to-market-your-schools-spring-commencement/
https://ift.tt/2GT547xWednesday, April 11, 2018
Lawyer: Florida school shooting suspect needs public defense
Kentucky attorney general, union sues to block pension bill
Vermont's Republican governor signs new gun restrictions
Arizona teachers demanding raise protest at schools
Gun owners urge Michigan court: Stop school gun restrictions
Michigan board questions Whirlpool's access to student data
State to close New Mexico's largest online charter school
Data: Iowa 4-year high school graduation rate dips slightly
LePage: Bank wrong to fire mayor who criticized David Hogg
More than 10,000 apply for free-tuition program for adults
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
How to Publish a Paid Course Using WizIQ
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Sunday, April 8, 2018
Teaching and Tech Tweet Wrap, w/e 04-07-18
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Thursday, April 5, 2018
Seattle School Board selects Juneau as next superintendent
Baltimore County to announce jump in school security funding
Teachers walk out of school to protest building conditions
Tennessee Legislature passes school spanking bill
GOP senator: Drop voucher petition case against Democrat
Some say teachers risk losing support as walkout continues
Kansas Senate's GOP leaders drop school funding ultimatum
Ban on 'school lunch shaming' wins Louisiana House support
Teachers continue demonstrations for higher pay, funding
Louisiana lawmakers spurn idea to arm teachers for safety
You Need to be Available to Meet With Your Students. How can Technology Help?
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The #1 Reason You Should Be Live Streaming Your Education Events
Previously, only the film industry did live “on-air” video events; but today, it’s an accessible marketing strategy any education brand can utilize. Here’s how to get started with live streaming your school’s events.
According to Wikipedia, the very first live event broadcast on air was in 1929, when the BBC began broadcasting live transmissions. At the time, live streaming was the only way to broadcast.
Videotape technology wasn’t invented until somewhere in the 1950’s. And when it was finally available, it was so costly that many television programs continued to air their shows live until as late as the 1970’s.
What’s the big deal with Live Streaming?So what’s the point of that history lesson?
The point is that we, as education marketers, need to recognize the amazing opportunity that we have in live-streaming technologies today.
Because most video content people see today is recorded and edited before broadcast, live streaming events add value to the audience.
Your audiences are drawn to live events because watching live, stream-of-consciousness thinking from their favorite thought leaders, or the unpredictable or charming antics of their loved ones or the unedited accomplishments of their family members makes the moment special.
Live streaming is the second best thing to being there in person.
And for family and friends of your student body, faculty, and staff, live streaming events means that they can participate in some way with their loved one with the help of your school brand.
Think about that. Your educational institution can make it possible for families and friends to participate in life milestones like graduation, academic awards, and sports events through your live streaming.
And you don’t have to wait for the right television or broadcasting equipment! You can be live streaming with a setup as simple as a mobile phone and an Internet connection.
Very few content mediums have this much personal (and sometimes professional) value in them for your marketing personas.
Live Streaming: Value Rich ContentFor many schools, live streaming is a brand new idea, and you might be hesitant to jump into it. You might be holding back because you don’t know how much it costs, what equipment you need, how to coordinate your staff and students to do it, etc.
But whatever is holding you back, I encourage you to find a way to get live streaming into your array of marketing tactics.
We can help you put together the strategy. We can help you find cost-effective yet quality video equipment. We can even show you what you need to be live streaming, like spring commencement.
But first, you’ve got to see the immense value this medium holds for your audiences—and how it can raise your brand awareness and loyalty like few other marketing channels can.
A Quick Breakdown Live Streaming Equipment- Smartphone or Video Camera(s) for streaming the event
- YouTube Live app
- Facebook Live
- Instagram Live
- Commencement
- Lecture Series
- Speaker Panels
- Sports events
- Homecoming
- Student campus events
- Zany or random events like this national TV sensation on (of all things) firewood
- Community Service Projects
The whole idea of live streaming is about being off-script, right? That’s true, except that it doesn’t work out practically that way.
Real life can be quite boring as it plays out minute-by-minute, so if all you do is broadcast the crowd milling about on graduation day, you’ll bore your audience to tears.
For example, if I were to live stream the happenings in my office right now, you’d be tortured by watching me typing this article. Not much action.
So, you need to have a plan when you live stream your events.
Of course, when you’re live streaming a lecture, a chapel worship service, a panel discussion, and the like, you don’t need to plan how that will work.
But let’s say you want to engage the throng of family and friends that have come for commencement. Or maybe you want to catch up with someone on a campus tour.
For those times, I recommend designating one or two hosts to engage people in the crowd with pre-selected questions or prompts like an on-the-street interview where you can get reactions and comments from family members like this school did:
Now, this graduation video was recorded and edited, but I think you can see how you could do this live just as well.
It’s the action of the event in the background that makes it stand out. It makes the viewer feel as if they’re right there on the school grounds feeling the excitement of the moment.
Go For ItBottom line: You can do this!
Live streaming is an accessible, affordable means to cram incredible amounts of value into your education inbound marketing content to draw family members, friends, and others to your enrollment website.
If you need a hand getting started, or you need a marketing audit to find out where you are and how you can up your education marketing game, get ahold of us today.
Featured Image by pressmaster via Adobe Stock
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/the-no-1-reason-you-should-be-live-streaming-your-education-events/
https://ift.tt/2q7atxuColorado Senate begins debates on $28.9B budget
Governor signs bill to boost Kansas National Guard numbers
Rules to reduce racial bias in student discipline in review
Judge dismisses several complaints in silly string lawsuit
Aide: Governor would sign Kansas House's school funding plan
Santa Fe schools to no longer accept funding from the NRA
Vermont lawmakers review school safety
Maryland Senate panel approves school safety standards bill
Teachers, supporters conduct 'walk-in' at Chandler school
Elko man gets prison time for high school gun confrontation
Tuesday, April 3, 2018
3D Printing Brings Learning to Life Across Subject Areas
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Sunday, April 1, 2018
Education and Technology Tweet Wrap, w/e 03-31-18
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