Educational Publishers and Social Media: A Perfect Fit

For many educational publishers, terms like “social media” and “Web 2.0 marketing” are foreign concepts.  But these descriptors are more than just buzzwords – they are powerful and easy-to-use tools to get more of your curriculum and supplemental materials into circulation. Because of this, carefully executed social media strategies can give you better traction influencing those who make buying decisions. 

This new type of marketing can even help you make your programs and materials more effective for teaching students, which is critically important to your business.  Any advantage you can capture helps facilitate larger adoption of the products you produce.  Let’s look at a few simple ways social media strategies can help bring you that advantage – for almost no additional investment.

What Is Social Media, And How Does It Work?
Simply put, social media is a new way of marketing ideas and products on the internet.  Gone are the days where you put your information on the web and left it up as a one-way conversation to potential customers.  With the advent of blogs, publishers now have an unprecedented ability to engage in conversation with more people with buying power.  When you post content to a blog (such as information about a new curriculum), teachers and educators can post their comments and reactions to it immediately, creating both a conversation on your website and an opportunity to interact with each other as well – hence the term “social media”.

How to Use A Blog To Get Feedback On Your Programs
When you add a blog to your website, you create articles (called “blog posts”) that describe your programs and materials in detail and invite readers to leave their comments about them.  You could then begin a discussion by asking educators to visit your posts and describe how well your programs are working for them, along with any ideas they have to improve the content.  With a small amount of effort you can foster an ongoing conversation that will give you honest and valuable feedback to improve the effectiveness of your materials.

How to Use a Blog to Influence Schools to Buy More of Your Programs
The primary source of trusted information for teachers and educators has always been the opinions of other teachers and educators.  Whether in schools, at the district level or at meetings, teachers share “social proof” about particular programs with each other that drive the purchases of programs and supplemental materials.  These honest, candid opinions are what educators most trust. If they like something they hear, they will find the information they are looking for.

Most likely, educators will find you on the web. But they want more than your version of your product information. As blog posts attract more comments and conversation from educators who are already using your programs, web searches will increasingly turn up real-world reviews and opinions that will more effectively sell these influential buyers on your materials.  As these potential buyers have a chance to interact with some of “their own,” they don’t feel like they are being sold to, and become more receptive to the positive reviews from their peers.

How to Use a Blog to Increase Your Visibility With Buyers
One of the most powerful features of a blog is the ability to let readers sign up for automatic email updates every time you post a new article.  As readers discover more and more valuable content and conversation on your blog, you can create a steadily growing list of subscribers. This means when you are ready to release a new program, hundreds (or even thousands) of potential buyers can be instantly notified about it in a way that won’t feel like “marketing” to them because the opted in to your online community. The “marketing” just feels like information to them as a result.

Blogs can be set up to allow readers to subscribe to the conversations taking place in the comments, so they can receive new information about the products that matter to them.  This allows you to engage potential buyers who are “on the fence” about purchasing from you and to continually put your products in front of them every time someone comments on them.

Because of the incredible power of social media to create focused communities of people who trust each other’s opinions, you can interact with (and influence) those who make buying decisions more effectively than ever.  It’s up to you to get the conversation rolling.

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Posted in: Social Media, Educational Publishing |