Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Decision requires RI to provide adult special education
Wyoming one-kid school in Albany County
Enrollment in Wisconsin's school voucher programs increasing
6 Things Schools Need to Know About Interoperability
Interoperability: Tips to Consider, Mistakes to Avoid
Lack of Clear Standards, and Money, Trips Up District Tech Leaders on Interoperability
A District CTO Talks About Her District's Winding Path to Interoperability
Even for Districts Leading Interoperability Push, Journey Is Just Beginning
NY to spend $10M on security at religious schools, centers
School superintendent fired after misconduct investigation
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
7 Fun and Creative Ways for Students to do Research Projects
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Digital Display Advertising Increases Local Leads
Get Digital Display Advertising Help https://ift.tt/2SsKqNL REACH MORE CUSTOMERS WITH MOBILE & WEB ADVERTISING DONE RIGHT - https://goo.gl/9ii6p6 Get more customers driving fresh interest-based traffic and warm retargeted traffic to your website. See results immediately. Brand Your Business And Get More Customers With Us By Driving More Traffic And Retargeting 100% Of All Your Website Visitors. Display Campaigns - Show your ads on millions of desktop viewed websites. Mobile Campaigns - Reach prospects anywhere via mobile marketing ads. Retargeting Campaigns - Capture 100% of all your website visitors and re-engage them with new ads. Get More Customers Automatically - Our solutions give you the ability to market to your perfect targeted audience on a local and global scale by maximizing your reach impact across devices, interests and locations. Measure Your Success - Our analytics and reporting drive increasingly better results. Campaigns are optimized for performance based on audiences, ad-type, ad-copy, design, and day-parting. READY TO 10X YOUR MARKETING FOR LESS THAN THE COST OF A POSTCARD? OUR PROPRIETARY 10X RETARGETING STRATEGY…. What Is Retargeting? Retargeting is the ability to capture 100% of the visitors that come to your website, blog and landing page offer and market to them “LONG AFTER” they have left your page. OUR PROPRIETARY 10X RETARGETING STRATEGY GIVE YOU… The Ability To Maximize Your Brand And Convert Your Visitors With Multi-Channel Multi-Messaging Approach For Less Than The Cost Of A Postcard. FACTS ABOUT RETARGETING - Less Than 4% Of Visitors Contact You… Losing 96% Of The Potential Customers - You Can Capture 100% Of All The Prospects That Visit Your Website With Retargeting - Less Than 12% Of Sites Retarget… Giving You An Edge On Your Competition CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE We assess the effectiveness of your campaigns to make future ones smarter. How? By analyzing success metrics and optimizing on campaign elements. Measurement & Reporting Reporting goes beyond measured results to create actionable marketing tasks. Expert Marketing Insights Our expert insights provide strategy for your campaign purpose and direction. Optimizations Each campaign element goes through incremental improvements to achieve optimization. BANNER AD PERFORMANCE The secret to every successful campaign are banner ads that build your brand and drive qualified traffic. How? By applying 1000’s of hours worth of research and proven techniques. Proven & Effective Ad Design We’ve researched over 10,000 of the worlds highest converting banner ads to make sure that the ads we create for you are effective. Split Testing Based on your targeted goals we split test each ad feature and size by rotating the ads to optimize each one. Articulate Ad Placement Unlike most companies we don’t create 2 or 3 ad sizes. We create over 16 different ad sizes designed for different placements on a page and different devices like mobile, tablet and desktops. WE TRACK YOUR WEBSITE VISITORS ACTIVITY, INTEREST AND INTENT. - Home Page - Product Page - Checkout Page STILL NOT CONVINCED?… LET US PROVE IT WE WILL CREATE A HIGH CONVERTING BANNER AD FOR YOU $499 VALUE For A Limited Time We Will Give You Access To Our Professional Design Team That Will Create A Free Banner For You! https://ift.tt/2zcEXSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uTdefjKnF4
Monday, October 29, 2018
Garage Door Repairs Pittsburgh (412) 504-7100 Steel City Garage Doors
Pittsburgh Garage Door Repairs 412-504-7100 Steel City Garage Door Repairs in Pittsburgh https://ift.tt/2OfNDx1 Steel City Garage Doors Pittsburgh 5 Star Reviews Steel City Garage door really seems to understand what good, old-fashioned customer service really is. Our garage door went ka-put! However, when they arrived, they checked out everything very thoroughly before letting us know that there wasn’t anything they could do to fix it. They were honest about the evaluation of the door and gave us a fair quote on a new door. We also got a garage door opener and my wife can’t stop pressing the button. I swear she went to the store 4 times today just so she could come home and open up the door from her car. Thanks again for your amazing customer service. Steel City Garage Doors https://goo.gl/maps/1n4y1hbs9vt Pittsburgh PA 15237 412-504-7100 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHm9JLPKVWY
5 “Spooky” Tech Trends – From AI Dreams to Virtual Influencers
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Sunday, October 28, 2018
Interesting Academics and Technology News From Across the Web, w/e 10-27-18
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Interesting Academics and Technology News From Across the Web, w/e 10-27-18
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Thursday, October 25, 2018
How to Unlock the Power of Google AdWords for Education Marketing
What if you could make your Google AdWords campaigns as powerful as in-person recruitment meetings? Google’s responsive search ads can help you boost the results of your Google AdWords for education marketing.
If by now you’ve established the basic elements of your digital marketing strategy, you’ve probably jumped into some form of Pay-per-Click campaign (PPC) to increase your brand awareness.
And if you haven’t yet, you should really think about putting some money in your marketing budget for paid ads in search engines and social media.
While your content should be optimized to bring in as much organic traffic as possible, organic traffic is not enough.
Benefits of Paid TrafficPaid traffic is the perfect complement to organic traffic (web visitors that come because they found you in a search or through a link on someone else’s page). Because if you’ve put in the time to make the content suitable for an organic approach, then it will be the highest quality content your visitor will find to answer their questions.
In other words, create quality content for your audiences as if you only had organic traffic to rely on. Then, drive traffic to your content with paid traffic.
Paid traffic (a.k.a. Search engine marketing–SEM) does more than supplement the traffic you’re going to get organically.
Done right, PPC campaigns, like Google Adwords for education marketing, can also increase your organic traffic.
Paid ads and content marketing are a powerful mix that can help motivate prospective students and parents to consider your college, university, or independent school. You really need both of them working together to get prospects into your enrollment pipeline.
That’s where the real magic happens.
Marketing is a powerful tool to get new students enrolled at your school.
But marketing cannot hold a candle to the persuasive effect of an in-person meeting with one of your recruitment officers, or a visit to your campus.
Almost every time, one-on-one communication is more effective at getting a prospective student to say “Yes!” to your school than a marketing campaign.
It’s not that you don’t need education marketing. You’ve got to market your education brand!
But the point is as marketers, we have to keep our eye on the prize — making that one-on-one meeting with the recruitment officer happen.
Getting Personal with Google AdWords for Education MarketingSo why is the personal meeting more effective than our marketing?
Because in personal communication, you can customize each message to fit the person to whom (audience) you’re speaking and the situation (context) to which you’re referring.
It all happens in real time.
They give you information about themselves, their dreams, and their goals. You process that information and offer them a fully customized answer within seconds.
The number of questions they could ask you are unlimited. And the number of answers you could give are unlimited.
The ability to respond uniquely to a visitor’s question in real time is one reason personal communication is so powerful.
What if you could make your Google AdWords campaigns more like a personal interaction?
That would make your search engine ads more effective for the same amount of money, right?
That’s why I’m excited about Google’s new responsive search ads.
How Responsive Search Ads WorkBasically, Google responsive search ads are a collaboration between you, the education marketer, and Google’s AI.
(That’s right. You can recruit a robot to help you get the right message to your audience at the right time. It’s really that cool.)
According to the Google blog, you simply have to provide Google AdWords the content for multiple ad elements, and then Google’s machine-learning software pieces them together in various ways to optimize your results.
“Simply provide up to 15 headlines and 4 description lines, and Google will do the rest. By testing different combinations, Google learns which ad creative performs best for any search query. So people searching for the same thing might see different ads based on context.” – Jerry Dischler, Google Vice President, Product Management
It seems that these responsive ads can try out new variations of your Google AdWords for education marketing depending on who the search engine user is, where they live, the search engine terms they entered, etc.
And that gets your marketing closer to the power of personal interaction.
Making Google AdWords Work for YouNow that we know how it works, how can you take advantage of the value of this cool new tool?
I highly recommend that you revisit your school’s AdWords account. Responsive ads are still in beta, so it’s being rolled out to new accounts everyday. You may or may not have access to this tool yet.
But if you do…
Step 1: Look at your current campaigns and choose the ones that are performing the best.
Step 2: Create variations of the ad components for each of those ads (headlines, calls to action, and descriptive text).
Step 3: Launch at least one responsive ad in each of your ad groups. An article on the Search Engine Land’s blog says, “One responsive search ad can include 15 options for headlines and three options for description lines.”
That should be enough for Google to work with as it learns which variations of your ad perform well and which ones don’t perform well.
Step 4: Keep at least one static text ad in each of your ad groups.
Because responsive ads are still in beta, Google doesn’t always implement them. You’ll need a strong text ad (like you’ve been creating) for Google to show users if it doesn’t show your responsive ad.
Using Google AdWords for education marketing is becoming an even better tool for education marketers.
Let me know if you’re already using this incredible new tool and how it’s working for you!
Want to Improve Your Digital Marketing Results?Then you’ve got to know how to write for the web. That’s why we want to send you our latest ebook: Writing for the Web: 7 Secrets to Content Marketing Success for Education Marketers!
With this helpful resource from Caylor Solutions, you’ll learn how to:
- Grab your reader’s attention immediately
- Pull your reader’s attention deeper into your content
- Write so that Google (and other search engines) find you easily
- Increase your website’s conversion rates
In short, you’ll be able to write the copy that makes your digital marketing strategy work for you. Download your copy today!
Featured image by worldwide_stock via Adobe Stock
Robot hand image by LIGHTFIELD STUDIOS via Adobe Stock
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/google-adwords-education-marketing/
The post How to Unlock the Power of Google AdWords for Education Marketing appeared first on edSocialMedia.
https://ift.tt/2qcFdwQWednesday, October 24, 2018
San Francisco is allowing noncitizens to vote, but few will
Sanctions upheld against band after questionable program
How to Publish a Free Virtual Campus Tour with Google Maps
Too often, the name of the game for education marketers is “do more with less.” In the spirit of helping you do just that, I’m going to show you how to create a virtual campus tour of your school with a free tool: Google Maps.
As we’ve discussed before, one of your biggest distinctives is your campus. No matter if you are located in rolling hills or the busy streets of a big city, no other college or university has a campus quite like yours.
Unfortunately, not every prospective student can make it to your campus visit days, or to your campus at all before they decide to enroll.
However, education marketers can provide virtual campus tours to allow prospective students a chance to have a look around. And with some of today’s modern tools, like 360 photography, it gets your prospects awfully close to being there.
Of course, if you have the money, investing in an elegant tool like Brown University’s virtual campus tour will certainly do the trick.
Unfortunately for many private institutions, this kind of virtual experience could break the budget.
But fear not, my friend!
Cutting-edge digital marketing can be done on a shoestring budget, and as I’ll show you today, sometimes you can do it for free.
Google: Ubiquitous and FreeIf there’s one company that’s marked the life of pretty much everyone, it would be Google. Besides the Google search tool, you’re probably familiar with Google’s organizational offerings like…
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- Google Drive
- GSuite, Google’s white-label business solution for for profit and nonprofit organizations
- YouTube
One more tool I’m sure you use all the time is Google Maps.
At first glance, you might think Google Maps’ primary function is to spit out directions on the fastest route to the gym, but Google Maps is so much more than that to the average user.
Google Maps isn’t a map. It’s a search engine… that happens to have a map.
Sure, people use Google Maps as a way to get directions, but they use it most often to explore their local area.
People go to Google Maps first and foremost with a question, just like they would when they go to Google Search. They want to know if there’s a brick and mortar location that will serve a need or desire that they have.
They go to Google Maps to find places that would likely have the answer to their questions.
If I want to hang out with my friends, I ask Google Maps if there are any good coffee shops nearby. If I need gas, I ask Google Maps if there’s a gas station close by (gas prices included!).
And if I want to find a school within driving distance…
It’s almost a given that prospective students will use Google Maps as a way to explore their area for local colleges and universities during their college search. This makes it extremely important for you to have your school’s profile up and running with correct information on Google Maps!
So if you haven’t done so yet, add or edit your business information in Google Maps.
Encourage your students and faculty to leave positive reviews to increase your Google ratings.
Even if a prospective student found out about your school through another marketing channel, odds are that they will still look you up on Google Maps to either find where you’re located, get directions to visit, or check out your Google ratings.
But there’s another vital piece of information that prospective students will be looking for: What does your campus look like?What’s it look like to live there and be a student?
Since Google Maps is so much more than a map, it can give your prospective students an answer through the photos in your profile, so make sure you are posting relevant and current photos often.
But you can also go much further and take students on a virtual campus tour right in Google Maps — and it won’t cost you any more than you’re paying now! (*ahem* It’s free.)
How to Set Up a Virtual Campus Tour in Google Maps
Let me walk you through how to set up a virtual campus tour with Google Maps just like Franklin College.
First, you’ll need to invest in a quality, yet affordable 360-degree camera like the Ricoh Theta S Digital to take the kinds of 360-degree photos that allow students to really explore the campus.
Go throughout the campus at certain locations taking pictures with the Ricoh Theta S Digital camera and then upload them to your business listing profile in Google Maps.
The camera is smart enough to match the geographical coordinates of your pictures to the exact place on Google Maps. When the user clicks on Google Maps’ street view icon (the little yellow man in the corner), all of the locations you shot with the camera will show up as blue dots on the screen.
When your user hovers over the blue dots, they get a preview of the pictures you took.
Then, when your user clicks on the photos, their screen switches to Google’s photo slider where they click to move the photo around for a full 360 degree experience.
Check out the YouTube video I created below to show you how it works in real time.
You can create these 360-degree photo experiences inside of your buildings, across your campus lawns, inside of dorms, or inside sports facilities. These can be both photo and video…so if you want to show off a dorm room with a narration, this is the tool.
You can make these 360 virtual campus tours available to prospective students who find you on the web in just one afternoon. You can even send prospective students to Google Maps for a virtual campus tour until you want to invest in a more professional solution (if you ever decide to go that route).
So what are you waiting for?
Go get your camera out and start building your free virtual campus tour!
Your Source for Education Marketing SolutionsAt Caylor Solutions we’re committed to helping education marketers like you break through barriers to your marketing success. To get a free consultation with me or someone on my team, please get ahold of us today!
Featured image by georgejmclittle via Adobe Stock
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/how-to-publish-a-free-virtual-campus-tour-via-google-maps-education-marketing-hack/
The post How to Publish a Free Virtual Campus Tour with Google Maps appeared first on edSocialMedia.
https://ift.tt/2EFexi4Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Lame-Duck Indiana Chief Frustrated Over K-12 Governance
What Betsy DeVos Can Learn From Bush-Obama School Reform
Research Feeds Quest for Balance in Crafting of Pre-K Curricula
Citizen Activists Push to Revise History Textbooks
Hurricanes Deal Deep Blow to Schools' Finances
San Francisco to allow noncitizens to vote for school board
Lamont, Stefanowski promise no changes for teacher retirees
Report faults afterschool funding, suggests pot tax be used
Arizona leaders adopt new history, science standards
Sandy Hook survivor, parent, to speak at school safety panel
Getting to Know Perceivant – a Uniquely Effective Approach to Higher Ed Content
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Monday, October 22, 2018
5G Wireless May be Harmful to Humans, so why is the US Rushing to Roll it Out?
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Sunday, October 21, 2018
Teaching and Tech From Across the Web, w/e 10-20-18
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Thursday, October 18, 2018
Seven Compelling Reasons to Invest in University Environmental Design
In the Age of the Internet, it might be tempting to relegate signage to the backseat of your education marketing strategy. But here are seven compelling reasons you should invest in university environmental design from a marketing standpoint.
If you’re familiar with the Caylor Solutions blog, this post might throw you. Digital marketing has been a passion of mine for a long time.
However, offline forms of marketing, like print, are still powerful marketing mediums!
In fact, print and digital marketing are much more successful when they are used together within integrated marketing strategies. You can also combine print and social media marketing campaigns to boost your social media results.
I think most education marketers get how important print marketing is. Brochures, viewbooks, postcards, flyers, one sheets — you name it. We all understand that these print mediums are necessary for a robust education marketing strategy.
But there is a part of offline or real-world marketing that is often undervalued: university environmental design.
University Environmental Design is marketing that lasts for generations.On many campuses, university environmental design is an afterthought for marketers. We’re not architects, and normally we’re not involved in campus planning or building renovations.
So for most of us as education marketers, university environmental design is a term relegated to nothing more than signage or “wayfinding.”
Now perhaps you love sign design. Or, perhaps you only do it because people need to find their way around the campus. No matter how you see it, I challenge you to take a deeper look.
Signage should be considered as “university environmental design,” because that’s exactly what you’re doing: Creating an environment that helps prospective students make their enrollment decision.
And if you think about it, university environmental design is a marketing workhorse.
How long have the signs, monuments, and art around your campus been hanging high, visible to every prospective student who comes for a campus visit?
University environmental design isn’t about disposable signage projects. It is the thoughtful placement of artful, useful expressions of your brand distinctives that can last for many class generations. It is an investment.
So here they are — seven compelling reasons you should take university environmental design on your campus seriously as an education marketer.
1. Environmental design improves brand awareness.The number one reason to invest in signage is that it raises your education brand awareness. Not only does common sense tell us that a sign outside will tell people about you, there’s been a lot of research to prove that investing in high-quality, durable exterior signs really does make a difference for the bottom line of your private college, university, or independent school.
In 2012, FedEx conducted a study that found that…
“…eight in 10 (76 percent) American consumers enter a store they have never visited before based on its signs, and nearly seven in 10 (68 percent) have actually purchased a product or service because a sign caught their eye.”
A report from the Economics Center at the University of Cincinnati produced a similar result stating that “Signs are among the most important elements of visual communication… Effective signage can drive job creation, generate tax revenues, and provide quality access to goods and services.”
- Sign changes generally had significant, positive impacts on sales, number of transactions and profits. Roughly 60 percent of businesses reported increases averaging about 10 percent.
- Sign changes also led to small positive impacts on employment. Nearly a quarter of respondents reported hiring more people.
University environmental design isn’t cheap. Tight budgets may balk at the idea of spending on changing signs with outdated brands.
But according to the studies above, it’s worth it.
These studies show that high-quality signage can be a powerful lead generator, especially for local prospective students.
2. Environmental design brings in the locals.One of the key insights in the UC study above is that location plays a significant role in the marketing power of signage. A relatively high percentage of people who saw the signs would go in to the businesses to investigate what they had to offer.
As you’d expect, university environmental design is most influential on those who live within the local area and can see your education branded signs.
When you look at this unchangeable fact next to the almost limitless reach of digital marketing, you might be tempted to scrap your signage budget all together. But that would be a bad idea!
An American Council on Education study showed that a large majority of freshman students choose to go to a private college or university school within 50 miles of their home.
That is something to really chew on for all of us who are nuts about digital marketing (which I am!).
It’s almost guaranteed that every one of those local students will land on your website at some point, so having a proper digital content marketing strategy in place is essential. But knowing that the majority of your student body will be recruited from the local market means that marketing to this demographic is key to your success.
Bottom line: Ignore environmental design at your peril.
3. Environmental design attracts attention.The main signs on your campus simply mark the boundaries of your physical space, like your entrance sign. Most often made out of stone, marble, or some other durable material, these boundary signs are great for establishing the longevity, seriousness, and elegance of your brand.
But they don’t do all that well at catching attention. For that, you need something more engaging.
University of St. Thomas waving their flag via https://ift.tt/2CsMXSM
Sports, alumni events, freshman orientation weeks, and other such high-energy events are perfect opportunities to create and distribute flashy, personal signage to those in attendance.
For example, create branded flags for your fans to wave wildly at sports games.
Feather flag featured on https://ift.tt/2CSDW6y
Feather flags are also a great way to catch the eye of attendees at your next event on campus.
A robust strategy for university environmental design includes high-energy, colorful and cheery attention-grabbers like these to help you get people excited about your school’s brand and what you stand for!
This kind of signage helps turn event attendees into ambassadors as their social media friends and family see them waving your colors at their favorite sporting event.
4. Environmental design makes people feel important and cared for.Of course, this obviously applies to welcome signs, but it goes right to the heart of hospitality when it comes to directional signage.
But what does that have to do with feeling cared for? Let me explain.
I bet there’s been a time in your life when you needed a restroom… but you couldn’t find the sign.
Frantically, you searched everywhere, but couldn’t find what you needed.
Or perhaps you’ve been on a campus trying to find an event or arrive at a meeting, but you couldn’t figure out any of the buildings. So you wander around until someone takes pity on you and directs you to where you need to go. Or you go online to the school’s website to try and find the campus map.
How did each of those situations make you feel?
Frustrated? Desperate? Vulnerable?
But if there had been a sign, you would have felt something altogether different.
Directional signage to the facilities, to the buildings, or even the info desk, would have made you feel important, welcome, and comfortable.
And aren’t those the exact feelings you want your prospective students to have when they get to your campus? If so then, you’ll need thoughtful, helpful signage.
5. Environmental design can boost web traffic.There are so many ways you can drive traffic to your digital marketing assets through the elements you create in your school’s environmental design by placing your URL or a text short code on the various signs, vinyl, and print media you have around campus.
Now that the Internet rests in their pocket, it’s easier than ever to drive online traffic through offline marketing.
I highly recommend creating landing pages specifically designed to welcome site visitors who land there from one of your physical spaces. Make sure the landing page content is exactly what they’re expecting to see and gives them the information they’re looking for.
Quick Idea: Brand your school vehicles with your URL.
Don’t just place your logo or education seal on it. People (especially high school students in the backseat) need to know where to go when they see you.
A vehicle wrap by https://ift.tt/2CrUpgX
Think about how many people you see on the road every day. That’s how many impressions you can get with a simple paint branding or vinyl vehicle wrap.
And while you’re at it, consider branding the admissions golf cart…
Check out this cool golf cart wrap at https://ift.tt/2CWgLbk
One of my favorite benefits from using signage is that you can create spaces with them, much like how a museum creates exhibits.
When you’re in a museum exhibit, you’re in the same building, often in the same room, as other exhibits, but you feel somehow that this space is all about dinosaurs while the space 10 feet from you is all about cavemen.
Boy looks at a dinosaur at the museum
At your next campus visit day, think of how you can create spaces where prospective students can be surrounded by stories, images, and branding that shows off your brand distinctives.
For example, set up an “exhibit” showing your university’s history. Or one that showcases various service activities. Or series of banners that regale them with your study abroad or student missions programs.
You can also create spaces for parents that demonstrate campus safety or career opportunities for your graduates.
The different kinds of spaces you can create on your campus for your various audiences is only limited by your imagination.
7. Environmental design creates experiences with your education brand.The whole point of creating spaces on your campus for various audiences is not so that your campus will look cooler than the other campuses that prospective students will likely visit, although creative signage will help you stand out.
The point of creative signage is to create an experience for your prospective students and their families that will make a lasting impression on them.
You and your staff cannot be everywhere all at once, but your signage can be the friendly face, the colorful attraction, or the helpful guide that they need to make an informed decision about their educational future.
Essentially, all education marketing is an attempt to create an experience with potential students that endears your brand to them and promises them similar experiences in the future if they decide to come to your school.
Key Takeaway: Make sure your signage conveys all of your brand distinctives to your audience in a way that will “Wow!” them.
For a really cool idea that would work great on a college campus, check out this innovative sign tool:
Marketing colleges, universities, and independent schools is our thing.If you like what you’re reading here on the Caylor Solutions blog, why not reach out and contact us?
Helping education marketers like you reach your marketing and recruitment goals is all we do. Your consultation is free, and there’s no obligation.
Featured image by Natalia Bratslavsky via Adobe Stock
Dinosaur Exhibit image by Arkady Chubykin via Adobe Stock
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/7-compelling-reasons-to-invest-in-university-environmental-design/
The post Seven Compelling Reasons to Invest in University Environmental Design appeared first on edSocialMedia.
https://ift.tt/2Cu8af9Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Program to give parents $50 for college savings
Texas Students Required to Watch a Video on How to Interact With Police
What the Trump Administration's Latest Attack on Immigrants Means for Kids
Video: School staffers drag autistic student through hall
Math Scores Slide to a 20-Year Low on ACT
Why Principals Need to Make Student Mental Health a Priority
The Important Role Principals Play in Special Education
How Principals Can Banish Toxic Adult Behavior
What Principals Can Do to Keep Schools Safe Amid Shooting Fears
A Principal's Guide to Work-Life Balance
15 Simple Tricks To Improve Your Presentation Skills
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Sunday, October 14, 2018
Digital and Instructional Tech from Across the Web w/e 10-13-18
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Thursday, October 11, 2018
NYC teacher contract includes bonus for hard-to-staff posts
Mississippi education board approves letter grade ratings
Connecticut survey finds increase in teen vaping use
Native American graduation rate improves in North Dakota
More schools allowing applicants to self-report test scores
Candidate calls for changes to public school funding
Delaware teachers union head resigns over old blog posts
Transgender girl barred from all locker rooms gets apology
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
ACLU takes legal action in bus drivers' strike
Students quiz Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidates
School board member defends Cosby, criticizes 'whores'
State superintendent calls for capital gains tax for schools
School system says advanced classes law falls short
Vacant Office Parks Are Being Repurposed as Schools
Kansas gubernatorial candidates trade barbs in debate
Feds Probing Transgender Policy, Alleged Assault
Public School Students Need to Study Religion
DeVos Takes Message on Southern Road Trip
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Foster Better Teacher-Student Collaboration with Easy Distance Learning Program Set up
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Monday, October 8, 2018
Police: 2 wounded in shooting near high school football game
Pilot program will give breakfast before standardized test
Hawaii education officials propose stricter bullying policy
Connecticut teaming up with group to combat school violence
Public school reputation weighs on Air Force base in Alabama
Indiana school tries new methods with autistic students
Official says graduation changes limit special ed students
Indiana getting $1M grant to help prevent school violence
Teachers bring moving trucks, vow to 'move out' lawmakers
Supporters back teacher on leave over school gun incident
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Teaching and Tech from Across the Web w/e 10-06-18
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Thursday, October 4, 2018
Back to the Future Quotes to Inspire Your Inbound Education Marketing
Tonight our family invested in another viewing of Back to the Future, the classic 80’s tale of the Delorean time machine and our hero, Marty McFly. Marty is transported to 1955 and has to see that his parents fall in love to assure his future existence.
To be honest, I have been looking for a reason to blog about this movie. It was the movie of my youth. One that influenced me and has remained one of my favorites. I have also found that when I “geek out” on the 80’s, I tend to get a tremendous amount of traction on my blog posts (see my MacGyver post).
My kids and I thought it would make a great post to illustrate some of the best practices of inbound marketing for education. My oldest boys have started to really get excited about sharing their opinions about what is important to them as they start to shop for colleges and are in full agreement that inbound is the future of marketing.
With that, we collaborated on this post and decided to use our favorite quotes to set out best practices and strategies for inbound marketing for education.
“The way I see it, if you’re gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?”Doc Brown had his vision for the Flux Capacitor after slipping from the toilet and hitting his head on the sink in 1955. That vision developed into his greatest invention: time travel.
While moving your marketing from an outbound focus to an inbound focus, there are several things we can take away from this quote:
– Be sure that your website, emails, and social media are done with style. Pay attention to design, typography, images, and color. Prospective students understand and appreciate style and high quality.
– Style is the vehicle for engagement. Remember that your prospective audience wants to learn more about your institution, but doing so with excitement, entertainment, and style will create opportunities for engagement. Be sure to do so in an authentic manner that reflects your brand.
– Style without substance is just a shallow fad and won’t produce the results you intend.
Takeaway: Develop your inbound marketing materials with style and quality. Doing so will best reflect your brand and create authenticity and engagement opportunities.
Those words were uttered by Emmett Brown at 1:15 a.m. at the Twin Pines Mall while engaging in the Temporal Displacement experiment. He had done his homework, reviewed the metrics, and understood his potential for return.
Is your current marketing strategy and plan as measured? With outbound marketing, schools often rely on the “spray and pray” mentality: send out the brochures, the emails, and pray that the prospects will start trickling down the funnel. Inbound marketing can change that.
– Create compelling, relevant, and timely offers in exchange for moving to the next part of the funnel. Discover what drives your prospects and provide them information to answer those questions. Would an ebook devotional guide be worth putting their name on an inquiry list? Would a guide to “20 questions to ask during your campus visit” be useful to move them to sign up for your visit days?
– Utilize the correct tools and techniques to leverage inbound marketing to its fullest.
– Measure and modify. By doing your own calculations on the metrics from all aspects of your program (website, social media, email, conversions on landing pages, etc.) you can confidently predict your serious success as well.
Takeaway: Use the inherent metrics available in digital and inbound marketing to confidently modify and see sustainable results with your marketing programs.
Powering time travel takes a tremendous about of power and energy. For Marty and Doc it came down to either plutonium or lightening. Regardless the method, it is a lot of power required to fuel the Delorean.
Your inbound marketing program will require just as much power. Your fuel comes from content.
– Content marketing is a key driver of inbound marketing. With Google’s algorithm change over the past 12 months, consistent content around the same topics drives search results. Blog posting is one of the best ways to consistently rank for your keywords (i.e. marquee academic programs).
– Content is also the fuel for your social media and email programs. Answering the questions that students and parents have is a great way to start to build your content library.
– Content can come in various forms…it does not have to be only copywriting. Consider video, infographics, photography, quotes, statistics, audio, and other rich media options to provide depth.
– Provide breadth to your content by leveraging various delivery methods including long-form narrative, storytelling, lists, interviews, etc.
Takeaway: Develop a content strategy to fuel your overall inbound marketing program. Successful inbound marketing takes power and fuel…and the only fuel that works is consistent, high-quality, relevant content. Contact us to schedule a content training for your team.
Huey Lewis, in his cameo appearance, uttered these words concerning his hit “The Power of Love” as Marty and the Pinheads performed during the Battle of the Bands audition. He made a great point about using social media in your inbound marketing plan: avoid being to darn loud.
Social media amplification is a critical part of your inbound strategy. You have to engage users to your social media channels and provide links to the website, landing pages, and other conversion opportunities. Your institution starts to get “too darn loud” when you promote only yourself.
– According to studies, 70% of prospective students found a school’s social media channels moderately to extremely influential in their research about college. Only 40% found the content relevant to their needs, meaning that the content was too loud in self promotion and not addressing the questions that they had.
– A good rule of thumb is 80% of your social media content should be shared from other sources (i.e. Real Simple ideas on dorm room essentials, the truth about the Freshman fifteen, or common sense about campus safety) and 20% should be your school’s press releases, events, and original content to drive conversion points for inbound marketing for education.
– Use social media correctly to build the following and become a true resource for your prospective students and parents.
Takeaway: Be helpful in your inbound marketing.
After George McFly was encouraged by Darth Vader, an extraterrestrial from the planet Vulcan, to ask Lorraine to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance, he consulted with Marty, gathered up his confidence and boldly asked her out. While his wooing wasn’t as smooth as it should have been, he understood the importance of persuasion.
There is a good chance your school is the destiny of your prospective students as well. Just as George used the power of persuasion, your inbound marketing for education has to provide compelling offers to woo your audience.
– Create compelling and engaging headlines. Creative headlines coupled with photos will be the most engaging social media posts and emails with the most opens.
– Provide offers that your audience can’t refuse. Your inbound marketing should include content that the audience wants and needs that is exchanged for the permission to provide them additional communication and offers.
– Approach your audience with the benefits of why your college is the best fit for them. Benefit-driven marketing, through their eyes, will help them to connect and see how they can best fit on your campus.
Takeaway: Understand that your marketing is the opportunity to woo your prospective students and parents with the unique benefits of your school and brand.
In the final scene, Marty gets carried away while playing “Johnny B Goode” and throws in elements of 80’s rock-and-roll. The 1955 crowd stares in unbelief as he utters these words.
Remember that in your inbound marketing, you, too, have to walk a tightrope of appealing to multiple generations. What the donors and administration might not be ready for inbound marketing, the “kids are gonna love it.”
– When building your inbound plan and elements, recognize that your website and your social media has multiple audiences. You cannot be all things to all people.
– Be relevant to the audience and address them appropriately by segmenting your channels, lists, and messages. There is no reason you should limit your institution to one social media account: you may need a Twitter account for prospective students, one for parents, and yet another for specifically regarding donors and friends of the college.
– Take time to segment your lists in the same way so that your emails contain the specific and needed communication that is relevant and meets the need for the particular audience. Use data variable elements in your communication to assure that the method and message work in harmony.
Takeaway: Be relevant for your particular audience, recognizing you have multiple audiences.
Marty and Jennifer were anticipating things being the same in the future when they inquired about not having enough road to get up to 88 mph. While we weren’t anticipating flying cars by October of 2015, things have changed. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not points out numerous predictions from Back to the Future that have come true.
For our purposes surrounding your inbound marketing, the main point is to understand and get comfortable with the consistent change in digital marketing. Embrace that change and put it to work for your marketing efforts.
– Rely on experts to provide you regular updates on the best practices and next practices for your marketing efforts. You can’t do it alone.
– Learn new skills. Jay Baer, in his book Youtility, illustrated a great point: at one point there were dedicated jobs for typing and making copies. These have now been migrated to skills that professionals need to possess. Social media is a job that will soon be a skill. Understand it and learn it.
– Be sure your processes and techniques are adaptable for new opportunities. Remember, content is the fuel; your vehicle may change.
Takeaway: Embrace change and build your processes to allow for continual improvement.
Throughout the movie, Marty repeatedly gave this advise to the younger George McFly in 1955. Upon his return to the revised 1985 with George as the confident father, Marty is on the receiving end of the same advice.
Remember that you if you set your goals, measure your results, and have the willingness to constantly modify and improve your programs, you can accomplish your inbound marketing goals as well. It will be different than what you may have done before, but with a sound strategy and solid tools, you, too, can accomplish anything.
– Establish goals, strategies, tools, content subjects and calendars.
– Regularly review your metrics and provide constant improvement on your system.
– Create a pilot project to establish baselines against your other marketing efforts.
Takeaway: There is no time like the present to start realizing how inbound marketing for education can impact your success this year.
Want to get your education marketing off the ground and running at full speed? Get ahold of us — it’s free and there’s no obligation.
Featured image via wikipedia
This post was originally published at: https://www.caylor-solutions.com/back-future-quotes-inspire-inbound-marketing-education/
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
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