Augmented reality is the current buzzword floating around the mobile marketing world. Many marketers are excited by the prospect of using augmented reality in their campaigns. If you are not familiar with augmented reality then carry on reading. If you are then jump to the next section!
Augmented reality is a view of a real, physical environment that has been augmented by a computer-generated overlay. Make sense? Hmmm. It’s probably better if you see it in action!
Starting out on your social media journey can be difficult at times. We often hear questions like ‘how do you get that first ‘Like’ on Facebook?’ and ‘why would someone follow us?’ These types of questions are not just limited to newcomers of the social world but also advanced, long-term members too. Long-term users of social media usually get to a point where they hit a ‘wall’ and it becomes difficult to increase their following – it has reached its terminal velocity, or so it seems.
It is important to have a growth strategy with social media but it is also essential to understand the 3 different types of acquisitions. Without understanding these then you cannot realistically understand your audience and their value to you.
So here they are - the 3 types of acquisitions in social media:
Organic is the purest, truest form of acquisition. When a user is fully committed to your values and mission they will interact with your brand because they want to. They will either be familiar with your brand through offline channels or have found you online, virally.
Your school needs to be delivering a valuable proposition online in order for people to organically engage with you.
Often, loyalty plays a big part of organic acquisition. eMarketer recently reported that 49% of Facebook users deemed a 'like’ as a sign of loyalty to that brand.
Organic fans have a great tendency to be strong advocates for your brand – they are invaluable. This level of advocacy and loyalty is often found with alumnae. These will be the most likely to be your organic fans early on in your social media process.
Value - Very High
In order to receive 'Likes’ and 'Retweets’ it is sometimes necessary to encourage users. “Like us on Facebook” is a common approach but how different is this to Coca-Cola creating a print advert with the copy - “BUY US IN TESCO.” Would that technique work? Well maybe, but there needs to be a value proposition. A person needs a reason to engage with you.
It is often the silent users who look in on conversations but do not participate that need encouragement in order to show the level of commitment required for an acquisition to occur. This makes it difficult to understand the value of these members. They may be just as committed to the cause as the organic fans but as they are silent users they are less likely to be advocates online. However, it is hard to measure their offline influence.
Value - Medium/High
When a brand’s message is not organically strong marketers sometimes resort to incentivising members in order to draw them into their proposition. An example of this occurs when brands create campaigns such as “Like us and receive 25% off your next order” or “Follow us on Twitter to receive a free eBook”.
This is sometimes a useful method in order to ‘get the numbers up’ but how valuable are these members? Are they committed in your message or brand if they have to be incentivised? There is always time for you to convert these members into a more valuable one but it is inevitable that many of these members will be lost along the way as they only signed up for the incentive.
Value - Low
Do you segment your acquisitions into types? Will you be employing this method?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. SEOmoz (an influential SEO site) defines it as ‘the process of taking a page built by humans and making it easily consumable for both other humans and for search engines.’
For most, Google is the first, and sometimes only, place we go to find companies, products, information etc. If your website is not available to search engines like Google then how do you expect to be found online? We find that most schools that are well optimised receive between 70 – 80% traffic from search engines.
We categorise visitors into three types of people:
Most search traffic are from ‘branded searches’ which are searches containing your specific brand name. These visitors may be existing parents/pupils or they may be prospects searching for more about your school.
These visitors are high value traffic as they will most likely be prospect parents looking for a school but have not made a decision. By being high up on Google you will not only receive a high amount of traffic but you will also build reputation. Searchers innately trust Google’s results and being #1 acts as an endorsement by Google.
Parents, pupils and prospects want the easiest route to information. To find out information about your school they will almost always use Google to instantly seek that out. If they want your address or telephone number Google will tell them within a second.
Think of your website as the online version of your school building; it has a structure, a design, an address etc. Would you refuse to give someone looking for your school the name of the street you are on? No, you would most likely give detailed directions to the building. The same applies to your online building, your website. You want to give detailed instructions to search engines not just for the overall building but your rooms – the pages. The content needs to be visible, easily read and well optimised. This is not just good for search engines but for user experience – after all, search engines want users to receive the best experience possible.
Contests are really popular within schools, whether they’re put on to encourage and reward good work, for charity or just for fun! Social media can be an incredibly influential tool for contest promotion, but only when implemented correctly.
Whenever you aim to engage your target audience using social media, you should always think about your overall goals. What is it you want to achieve? We believe having 3 goals is a good starting point. An example could be:
Everyone has them, the followers/fans who will share and connect with everything you create. These are the Super Fans. Much of the content you share will get lost in people’s feeds so share your contest directly to the people who you know will share your contest as well as enter.
Stay involved with your audiences and create opportunities for them to engage with you. This makes it more likely that they will talk about the contest, which is exactly what you want!
How has your school used social media in contests? Let us know in the comments!
Technology advances and shifts in user behaviour mean independent schools cannot wait when considering moving their prospectus to a digital, interactive format. But why is this so important?
Users no longer consume media in the traditional sense. We know this since less and less people are reading newspapers, watching live television, listening to CD’s etc. Why? Because these models of consumption are limited. It is not that these mediums are not good it is that the alternatives are better.
How do we find content in the 21st century? Most of us discover content via search engines or social media. If your prospectus is not online then people are not accessing your content. If Google cannot find you and people can’t share your prospectus then how do you expect to be found?
We all know the traditional method of interruption advertising no longer works. It’s a fact. It is thought the average person is exposed to over 3000 ads per day and how many of those can you remember? Most people would say 0.
By allowing your prospectus to be instantly discovered online, you become highly visible to your prospects and bypass the need to interrupt them with adverts. And how much does it cost to be found through Google or social media? Nothing.
Your prospects are shifting from a world of consuming content, to a world of experiencing content. You want your prospectus to be an experience to remember. The ability to embed rich, interactive digital content such as video, audio, galleries, animations etc. means your prospectus can be a instrument to inspire. You can no longer buy attention, you must earn it.
‘Create content worth sharing.’ That is the goal of most content marketers. Your prospectus is your school’s message; you want as many people as possible to hear that message. By having a tangible prospectus you are limited by supply and by the ability for people to share it. Prospects may in fact want to share parts of your prospectus but they are restricted in how to do this.
This is where social media thrives. Your prospective parents are on Facebook, they are on Twitter, they are online. People have a natural need to be sociable and by creating a remarkable experience within your prospectus, you create something for parents to talk about and share.
Websites are challenging the traditional methods of communication by aligning their designs and functionality with the changes in user behaviour and technology.
Technology has allowed us to use the web as a social platform meaning we no longer see a website as just a place to gain information; we see it as a place to socially experience content. This has subsequently changed our expectations as users in that we anticipate the ability to interact with the website before we have even loaded the page.
What does this mean? Schools traditionally have had control over how information is consumed. A letter may be sent out to parents, an announcement in assembly etc. Students and parents now expect to consume information in the way they choose. This could be via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr YouTube, a blog etc. All these channels of communication can be overwhelming to your school’s marketing person. An interactive school website is designed to contain all these channels into one central hub - your school website. By having all these social media platforms on your site means your end user is just one click away from consuming rich content from one stream.
An interactive website is more than just a means to push content; it excels in measurement and research.
By using Google Analytics you can measure the level of involvement a user has with your site and even specific content. How many people visited our site this week? How long did they spend on our “About Us” page? Why do 75% of people leave our “Request a Prospectus” page? These are all essential questions that can be answered with analytics.
By measuring the level of interaction your users have with your site leads you to find out which content works and which does not. Simple measurements such as the number of comments, sign ups for your newsletter etc. allows your school to engage on a higher level than other schools.
Intimacy analyses what occurs within the interaction between user and website. What are people saying about your school: is it positive or negative? What feedback can be taken from your latest news?
This is one of the most critical tools for measurement. It measures the communication between user and their social audience. For example, a student can ‘like’ a video from your school and it is then seen by their friends. Advocating content is one of the most crucial ways a school can increase their awareness.
With more and more schools creating apps and integrating them into their marketing strategies it is becoming increasingly important for schools to promote their app in order to maximise the apps potential.
In some ways creating a school app is the easy part, the hard part can sometimes be getting people to download it. The reason this can be so hard for some schools is that marketing apps is something they are new to.
Here are 4 easy ways to promote your new school apps:
Remember, this is not an exhaustive list of ways to market smartphone or social media apps. We can help you with your strategic marketing or digital marketing efforts - not only for apps but for websites, prospectuses etc.
Schools are really starting to embrace social media and it is really exciting to watch them expand their networks. It has led to other schools to follow suit and quickly sign up to Facebook but before you do this there are a few things you need to consider.
It is very tempting to just jump into Facebook and start engaging with your audience but unfortunately we all need a plan of action. So before you jump in ask yourself a few important questions:
Use these questions to help form a plan and remember that they are not the only ones you should ask. There are many more so sit down and brainstorm.
Facebook is a direct channel of communication between you and an individual. You need to be available for communication just like you are available to handle telephone calls.
Be sure to check your wall often and respond to all posts. You want to show how engaged you are with your pupils, parents, alumni, community etc.
Most of your parents and pupils spend most of their time within Facebook. They consume and share content with their friends within this platform. By interacting with your audience you create an environment of engagement that feels comfortable by both parties. This ultimately creates advocacy because your parent’s friends will see that their friend (the parent) is engaging with your school.
Just like planning and strategising, you need to analyse and action on your findings. You need to find out what people are saying about your school – are they positive or negative? If they are positive then how can you utilise this? If they are negative then how can you address the problem?
Treat Facebook as a fantastic free research tool that your school can use. Imagine the cost of hiring a company to find out what the public thinks about your school – pupils, parents, alumni, community etc. The costs would be extortionate. Facebook is free and has those capabilities.
How is your school using Facebook? Let us know in the comments below.
It doesn’t matter which kind of event you are promoting – sports, concert, alumni etc. - social media can be an inexpensive and cost effective way to create hype and fill seats. Here are 4 social media tools your school can use to promote an event:
Make sure you are always blogging about the event - before, during and even after.
What better way for people to remember your event that with photos. A post and tagged photos of your event on Flickr helps generate interest in your event from those that attended and followed via your social channels.
You can obviously update your status about your event, but do not overlook the power of Facebook Events. Simply create an event from your school’s Page and you are on your way! Offer competitions to entice sharing and create a buzz.
A great way to promote your school event via Twitter is by creating a new hashtag. To create a hashtag just simply use #EventName and encourage people to tweet using your hashtag. Give people reason to tweet or retweet your hashtag by offering free passes, prizes or giveaways etc. for a lucky hashtagger.
Twitter has obviously taken the world by storm. It is highly popular with people to keep up to date with news, blogs, articles etc. but one of the lesser known tool Twitter possesses is the fantastic ability it has to help learn.
Twitter is a digital communication network that is formed around shared interests. This social hub in which experts share and curate content from their field of work creates a feed of information which students should use to form their own knowledge.
Students are busy trying to educate themselves with relevant content. As Twitter uses only 140 character it enabled students to quickly filter out irrelevant information. By looking at a short and sweet title we can all instantly learn what a link contains without the need to click through.
The hashtag enables students to follow subjects that they feel most interested in. 3 ways to do this is via:
To get started you need to find some people to follow but don’t sweat, this is an easy (and fun!) task.
First of all, find a couple of people who have similar interests to you – to do this use Twitter Search and input your interests. Follow this people and then look at whom they follow, tweet and retweet. Then follow the people who you think could be of interest. Begin to share content and engage with these people and you will find that they will start to follow you back!
Following these easy steps can ensure that you get the most out Twitter for learning. Do you have any more tips or any examples of how Twitter has helped you in the education world? Let us know below!