Why Working With a Technical College Marketing Agency Is Essential
Over the past decade, the higher education system has changed dramatically. Courses are offered online, highly competitive schools allow students to work full time while pursuing their degrees, technical skills are more valuable than ever, and real-life work experience or work-study programs have become the norm. These changes allow students to become skilled employees faster, while building communities through the talent that fuels their economy. Technical colleges play an important role in this evolution, which is why getting the word out with the help of a technical college marketing agency is so important. Help students discover important educational alternatives High school diplomas no longer hold the same weight they used to, and most high school graduates feel pressured to pursue a college degree. The growing expectations that all students will attend college delays skilled employees from entering the workforce and can lead to an unsuccessful college experience for those who are either disinterested or unequipped to participate in a four-year program. According to the Institute of Education Statistics, 40% of students drop out of four-year degree programs, and 60% of those that do complete their degree take longer than four years to graduate. Ensuring your technical college is easy to find and learn about empowers students to explore alternatives to a prescriptive college experience. A technical college marketing agency can help your school become more search-friendly by enhancing your SEO presence and building a robust content strategy that answers your future students’ questions at every stage in the exploration process, on any device, at any time. Become a building block of your community Technical colleges are no longer a fallback option for high school dropouts. They help talented students who need more scheduling flexibility or more economic education options to get a college degree without strapping themselves with debt. Allowing them to enter the workforce faster and start earning a meaningful wage. But don’t take our word for it. The average earnings for a new technical graduate are $55,270 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is on par with post other college degrees. Because most technical degrees are two-year programs, enrollment in your school will push skilled labor into the economy faster each year. This creates a dynamic job market for both employers and employees. On average, technical colleges are also less expensive than four year programs — which have increased 260% in cost over the past decade. Use a technical college marketing agency like ours to help you build strong relationships between major employers and high schools in your area that will break down outdated stigma about technical colleges. Your program deserves to be top of mind within your community and seen as an affordable, expeditious source of talent in your community. The takeaway Learn more about why a digital marketing agency is a critical partner in building these relationships and recruiting the next wave of talent by clicking here to contact our team. We will share case studies and success stories from educational institutes just like yours and help you build a strong digital footprint to drive success.
3 ways you need to boost your Twitter engagement now
“Help me increase my Twitter engagement” is a cry for help that can excite many amateur social media consultants. In the wrong hands, this intention can lead to sketchy and expensive solutions, including creating bogus accounts and paying a ton of money to artificially and inconsistently boost your presence. The truth is, the power to increase your Twitter engagement rate has been in your hands all along. There are several simple yet effective methods to organically gain more followers, more Retweets and more click-throughs to your site, and they don’t have to cost you any more than some extra time or some of your staff’s time. You might not hit the million follower mark in a month, or be in Lady Gaga/Pope Francis superstar range right away, but you can still see steady and honest growth from lolyal fans who like what you have to say. Try these modern methods to learn how to increase Twitter engagement: Content When you post or how you post are important. But what’s most vital is what you post. The best way to get followers and increase your twitter engagement is to offer frequent and interesting Tweets that people can comment on, Retweet, or ‘favorite.’ Twitter itself encourages this focus in its Business/Solutions section with step-by-step suggestions to leverage your Tweets. The seven-stage method includes picking your tools, designing your content, defining your audience and budget, and keeping track of what works and what doesn’t. A related Twitter blog post shared that, after studying common factors of 2 million Tweets created over a month, common elements in successful Twitter engagement campaigns include tweets that contain photos, hashtags, links, and videos. Tweets that contain at least one digit also seem to perform better than ones without a number. Make it a conversation Social media has enough people expressing opinions regularly, and with Twitter, it’s especially easy to simply churn out random thoughts, or worse, information about your business. The random thoughts aren’t a bad idea, as long as they’re interesting. If an employee is especially witty in under 140 characters, give them this task. Frequent business plugs are also discouraged –Twitter has been compared to a cocktail party, where it’s OK to occasionally mention who you are and what you do, but not talk about yourself all the time. Instead, you need to engage others so they’ll return the favor. Answer people’s questions in public. Join a discussion under a certain hashtag. Go to a Tweetup in your community (or start one). Once people start knowing that you have interesting things to say – and interesting Tweets they can Retweet, (especially if they don’t have to come up with them themselves), the loyalty will grow. Klout, a social media influence site, suggests “paying it forward” by giving public credit to sources if you discuss a topic. Make it easy By creating interesting content and sharing it, you’re doing a favor to people who can’t think of anything to say – they can simply retweet yours and hopefully give you credit. But Entrepreneur says you can do a lot more to encourage your audience, and thereby increase your twitter engagement. This can include making shorter Tweets — if you use all 140 characters, it’s hard for someone to add their own thoughts when they ReTweet yours. It can also include using services like bit.ly or tinyurl to shorten links – there’s no need to take up character space with a lengthy url. You also can simply occasionally ask for a Retweet once in awhile and hope people oblige. Another way to make sure your content catches people’s eyes, besides making a lot of it, is to repost the same post a couple of times a day. Someone may miss your morning Tweet but appreciate that it comes back around in the afternoon. Or, repeat a late-night post occasionally for night owls/early birds/international followers. The social media landscape is continuously evolving, and a Twitter engagement method that may have worked three years ago may not be as effective. Likewise, there are some great tools available to assist you. Ready to learn more? Contact our team of digital marketing aficionados today to start tweeting in the most effective manner!
4 Ways to Perfect Your Content Strategy From BIGEYE
Each day, when I log on to Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, I see dozens of people trying to feed me content. Many of these people are talented, intelligent and hardworking, but at the end of the day there’s just not enough time for everything.[quote]Rather than trying to read it all, most of us pick out the things that seem most interesting to us, if it’s really good, we decide to share.[/quote] The act of sharing is much more likely if the writers have first thought of a content strategy when posting. Some marketers are missing the mark in terms of what audiences are looking for in terms of content. Many times, this is because these marketers haven’t done their homework. Unfortunately, instead of being like the old Field of Dreams adage, “If you build it, they will come,” it works much better to think in terms of “If they like it, they will click.” At our Orlando branding agency, we’ve noticed that many businesses develop their content strategy without doing their homework. They know they need a blog, but instead of trying to hone in on their audiences and what’s important to them, these marketers think about what’s best for them. 1. Identify the best channels When assessing your brand’s content strategy, it is important to identify the proper channels for your brand. Many people immediately log on to Twitter and Facebook, thinking those are their ideal audiences because they are the most popular. Therefore, they neglect growing networks such as Snapchat and Pinterest, which actually might be best for highly visual brands. Consider which networks might be best for your brand by examining each network’s user demographics, and, if you are already producing content on those networks, by assessing follower engagement. If you feel stretched for resources in trying to maintain profiles across all social media platforms, choose one or two that work best for your brand, and focus on those. 2. Establish relationships with key influencers Grow your audience by seeking out influencers in your space. If you can get the attention of the influencer, then that relationship can create numerous ways to connect with your audience. You can often find these influencers through blogs and Google searches, as well as tools like FollowerWonk.com, which gives information about individual Twitter accounts, the people who follow them, and the people they follow. Follow and engage with leaders in your space, and also follow the people they follow in order to help facilitate growth. 3. Rethink your email strategy Then, see how your audience is responding to your email strategy. If you don’t have a strategy for your email list, then start collecting emails and create a strategy right now! Not only can you share your own content, but you can also share others’content, which people tend to appreciate if they find it useful. A digest of your brand’s content can be a great way to offer additional audience touch points to information you’ve already published on your blog or social media. There are numerous email platforms out there, but MailChimp and Constant Contact are two of the most affordable email platforms that also offer email analytics and guides. 4. Cover relevant topics on your blog Blogs are great tools for giving your audience interesting information within your space. Readers come to rely on and trust the blogs they love, which helps solidify the relationship between the creator and the audience. They’re also great for SEO purposes. Make sure your blog is covering relevant topics by staying on top of current events, looking at what interests your influencers and showing that your business is keeping its finger on the pulse of what’s changing in the industry. These ideas can then help your marketing team generate a content strategy focused on the most relevant content portals. Once you start seeing success with this strategy, you can then expand to other outlets or start A/B testing in order to optimize the strategy. You can experiment with messaging, headlines, email lengths and more, in order to help create the optimal experience for the user. For more suggestions on how to conduct research to help improve your business’s content strategy, contact our Orlando marketing agency for a consultation.
Pinterest: Helps companies drive innovation & revenue
A year ago, Pinterest blew up into popularity so fast that even the founders themselves were astounded. However, a leading question on everyone’s mind revolved around a single question: how could the Internet’s pin board help drive revenue? Pinterest continues to grow in popularity because it offers a visual approach to daily inspiration. Particularly popular among adult women, a coveted demographic in the digital marketing space, Pinterest is almost an unexpected success in the tech world. As people are predominantly visual beings, it makes sense that these images offer daily inspiration. Many brands seek to use Pinterest to capitalize on this, pinning photos of visually-interesting items and offering track back features that allow people to purchase those items directly from the website. Even here at our Florida marketing agency, we use Pinterest to help showcase inspirational design. Recently, the company introduced Pinterest for Business, a profile model that stands apart from a personal Pinterest profile. Typically, when companies develop pages specifically for brands, they enable brands to engage with followers in ways that are not available to personal accounts. For example, Twitter brand pages allow customized skins and prominent graphic placement, and Facebook offers brands broader opportunities for sponsored posts and features like multiple page administrators and weekly data roundups. [quote]With Pinterest’s launch of new business pages, it is essentially offering evidence that it is taking the first steps toward creating a possible revenue-generating platform for its company.[/quote] Pinterest launched its business pages alongside several case studies of how some companies have successfully used Pinterest to help lead to customer acquisition, retention and conversion. For instance, Etsy, an eBay-like service for people who sell crafts and other artistic goods, uses Pinterest to help showcase members’ products. This helps members generate sales and thereby helps to keep the Etsy marketplace growing. Jetsetter, a flash sales travel site, helps lead promotions by engaging its followers through Pinterest. The company encourages brand supporters to post their most inspiring travel ideas, which helps them involve their community. During one promotion, Jetsetter invited a team of celebrities to name the top pinners, who won prizes accordingly. Participating pinners pinned more than 50,000 pins in one month. Finally, there’s the gluttonous guilty pleasure site AllRecipes. AllRecipes is a go-to spot for the best ways to cook anything from kale to Rice Krispies Wreaths. Marketers are generally aware of the fact that images often inspire action, and this is tactic is probably most effective when it involves food. For years, advertisers and marketers have been able to capitalize on the comforting sensations that people experience when faced with aesthetically-pleasing food. AllRecipes uses their food photography and the Pinterest platform to help their community share recipes through repins, as well as to drive traffic back to their site so that people could find even more meal recipes. As the Pinterest business pages continue to develop, we will doubtlessly continue to see innovation in how brand pages leverage the Pinterest platform to help make the best user experience possible…. the team at our Orlando marketing agency is “Pinterested” to see what the next generation of business pages holds. Follow us on Pinterest!: http://pinterest.com/bigeyeagency
