With more than 60 million page views in 2019 and 600,000 new followers across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram channels, WeAreTeachers is the online destination for teachers and school leaders. Educators come to WeAreTeachers every day looking for practical classroom ideas, freebies and giveaways, and teacher-to-teacher advice and humor.
Our team of strategists have become trusted partners to customers, ranging from non-profits and cause organizations to consumer brands, technology companies and much more, to help them reach the vibrant education market through custom media services and multi-channel campaigns. Here are our findings of what types of content worked best in 2019 to capture educators’ interest online. We hope this helps you plan your 2020 content strategy and editorial calendar!
Contests & Giveaways
Teachers love
free stuff (don’t we all). In 2019, we continued to see high interest and
participation from teachers in WeAreTeachers’ three Mega Giveaways, receiving more
than 200,000 entries. These contests celebrated Teacher Appreciation Month in
the spring, Back-to-School season in the fall, and giving thanks over the
winter holidays.
The end-of-year Holiday Mega Promotion is an especially fruitful time for brands to maximize their reach by sponsoring a giveaway that appeals to teachers. For example, Moving Minds, which provides innovative solutions for building active classrooms, wanted to increase awareness of their website and showcase themselves as a thought leader in the flexible seating and active classroom arena. So, they partnered with WeAreTeachers to put together a “flexible seating classroom makeover” for a teacher in need. The WeAreTeachers video crew was on site to capture the surprise reactions from the teacher and students, which were incorporated into an article on flexible seating. The video has more than 12,000 views so far! They also tied this promotion into the 2019 Holiday Mega Giveaway and offered the same prize to another lucky teacher.
WeAreTeachers Influencer Network
Education-focused social media influencers are becoming an indispensable part of the marketing mix for brands to reach the education market. These influencers are typically classroom teachers, education enthusiasts, former teachers-turned-professional social media content creators, or edtech experts with established independent credibility on a particular topic. Our customers are realizing the value of tapping into this growing channel, and our team partnered with over 80 education influencers this past year to create unique content and to help our clients reach their goals. WeAreTeachers continues to identify and update its database of more than 1,000 influencers to dramatically extend reach for client initiatives.
Influencer Marketing Campaign
An innovative
example of an educator influencer marketing campaign is the Girl Scouts of the
USA’s Gold Award campaign this past fall. Their goal was to raise the profile
of the Gold Award among educators and inspire more high school girls to become
Gold Award Girl Scouts. MDR coordinated outreach to five leading high school
teacher influencers to help put together a multi-channel social media campaign
using Instagram stories, blog posts, Facebook shares, Tweets, and Pins. The
five influencers reached a collective audience of 524,000 educators and
counting with the Girl Scouts’ message!
Top Trending Topics for Teachers
We saw some common
themes among the top-viewed content posts on WeAreTeachers.com. Teachers were
interested in reading about social emotional learning (SEL), getting free
resources for specific subject areas, finding teacher perks, and getting tips
to advance their career.
Trending content for 2019 was related to:
- Teacher Burnout
- Childhood Trauma
- Classroom Management
- Teacher Humor
- Career Path and Job-Hunting Advice
- Teaching Middle School
- Ways to Save Money and Find Deals
Top 10 Pages of 2019
The most
visited pages on WeAreTeachers.com last year drove a collective 4.5 million
page views, each with more than 350,000 views.
1. 33 Awesome Team-Building Games and Activities for Kids (633,695)
2. Contests & Giveaways (510,593)
3. 81 Back-to-School Bulletin Board Ideas from Creative Teachers (476,426)
4. 11 Times Principals Took Their Rules for Teachers Way Too Far (442,173)
5. 35 Things You Never Thought You’d Say Until You Became a Teacher (429,625)
6. 25 6th Grade Science Projects That Will Wow Your Students (417,168)
7. The Secret to Classroom Management—No Matter Where You Teach (402,297)
8. 24 Must-Share Poems for Middle School and High School (393,765)
9. 63 Awesome Websites for Teaching and Learning Math (392,917)
10. What Teachers Need to Know About Students With ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder) (359,410)
Need help planning your 2020 content
campaigns?
As we are now in the information gathering and research phase of the school purchasing cycle, teachers and school districts will be compiling more detailed information about how they will support existing programs or launch new initiatives for the upcoming year. Educators will be browsing websites to examine sample lesson plans, seeking out introductory offers and exploring professional development offerings.
Education marketers should be using a multi-channel approach to reach educators and get on their short list of vendors for when it comes time to make purchasing decisions. Check out our Best of Content Marketing Reportt for more tips and ideas for your content campaigns.
