Dear Educators,
If you clicked on this post, you might fit into a category typical of many educators these days:
- You are looking to expand your horizons for the new year and become a content creator
- You are interested in reimagining your current brand and stepping up your game
- You are currently in the business of working with EDU but could use a leg up on your competition.
If any of these fit your description, our webinar will meet all your needs and more! Please read on and see all the details below.
How Do You Sell Yourself to Educators and Educational institutions?
Let me first start by introducing myself. My name is Jeff Bradbury and I have been a public-school educator for the last 20 years serving teachers and students in New Jersey and Connecticut school districts. In 2011, I created the TeacherCast Educational Network to serve educators and EdTech companies as the conduit between what happens in the classroom and the cloud.
What does this mean? Essentially, I have had the privilege of helping EdTech companies reach school districts and teachers and helping teachers use those apps with their students effectively in the classroom.
The one thing that I have learned over the years is that the process of selling a website, application, or brand to a teacher is not easy and is often a game-changer and a game-breaker for so many parties involved.
In today’s post, let us look at how you can properly Build Your EDU Brand with teachers and school districts to help you sell yourself, your product, or your service.
What is a Sales Pitch?
A typical sales pitch has 4 parts to it. You have seen this done on TV several times. Each of these steps happens very quickly so that you do not see them coming at you but when we step back and break things down, you will see how easy it is to not only introduce yourself to someone but share with them your ability and vision for your EDU Brand.
You might be reading this and thinking to yourself that all seems straightforward. But how do you use this information to Build Your EDU Brand?
Let us look at each of the steps above and show you how to build a 6-step program to help you get in front of your customer and Build Your EDU Brand.
Six Steps to Build Your EDU Brand
Identify Your Audience
One of the first things you are going to have to do when Building your EDU Brand is to identify who you are going to be selling your brand to. This could vary depending on what you are trying to do with your services. In business, these people can be called clients or customers, but for today’s post, let us refer to them as “Avatars.”
For example, let us say you are a technology coach and you want to become an educational consultant. You need to find out who in a school district is the person who needs to hear your message. Is it the teacher? The technology director? The superintendent?
Each of these people in the school district has different wants, needs, and expectations that need to be addressed when creating your pitch for services.
Understand the Needs of your Avatar
Once you have found who you are looking to sell your services to, it is time to formulate a content strategy to get their attention and meet their needs.
One of the best ways to start this process is by creating a Needs Assessment survey (or series of) that ask questions of your typical customer to give you not only feedback on your own system but provide you with ideas for how to meet and address the needs of all potential customers and clients.
Build a Fountain of Knowledge
A question that often comes up when creating any business is “Should You Create a Website for your EDU Brand?”
The answer to this is simple … ya ready for it? No!
To be honest, if you have something to sell, whether it be a service, product, or something else, a website is an easy decision.
But when is a website … not a website?
The other day, I was looking for a repair person to fix something in my house. I went to Google and did a search for repair people in my area and found many websites of a variety of conditions. Why would I choose to call one over the other?
Where it is true that any one of the people, I looked up could be highly qualified, I gravitated towards calling the companies that had modern websites, a nice social media presence, and the fact that some of them had videos of them on YouTube showing off recent projects with a description of how they did the job was certainly something in their favor and those were the companies that I called.
What is the point?
When thinking of creating a digital online presence, a “website” alone is not what should be built. You should think of any website where your primary domain is attached to be your “digital hub.” A Digital Hub is not only the cornerstone of all your online information but the center of your Social Media activity as well.
Create Chatter
Once you have analyzed the needs of your Avatars and created a Digital Hub to highlight your knowledge of your industry, it is time to build some chatter about your brand. The best way to do this is by creating content that brings eyes to your brand on Social Media.
But which platform is right for you?
The answer for this can be found in your Needs Assessment survey. By asking your audience which platforms they are on, or by asking them to add their Social Media accounts to the survey you can get an informative read on what platforms you should be placing your time and energy into building content.
If you are going to be creating content that you want to be searched for on Google, it is best to be active on your blog or on YouTube. These are easily indexable and searchable by all search engines. If you are looking to create short how-to tutorials, you might want to add Tik-Toc, Instagram, or Facebook to your platforms of choice in addition to YouTube.
Build A Community
There are several ways to build a community for your EDU Brand. One of the best ways to do this is through an email list. Not everyone is on social media and not everyone checks their feeds every day, but everyone has an email address.
There are several reasons why you should spend a good amount of time building your email newsletter:
- Your Subscriber List is personalized to your brand.
- Email is a long-term investment in your business.
- It is YOUR audience… not some other companies.
Stay Connected with your Audience
To be honest about this entire process, the steps above are the easy part. Once you have everything set up to Build Your EDU Brand the hard part then starts. Keeping your brand up to date and in the eyes of your Avatar is where the challenge lies. This comes through the many steps it takes to manage and support your email list, build your social media profile, and create meaningful content on your blog.
Let us Build Your EDU Brand Together!
Are you looking to Build Your EDU Brand? If so, you are not alone. Many educators are just now waking up to the fact that they have a brand and that their brands have value both in their school districts and in the world of Social Media. If you are looking for help and support, do not worry, I am here to help you.
