Reaching educators and engaging them are both an art and a science and, generally, we lean into what worked in the past. 2020 required us all to pivot plans and rethink strategies for communicating with educators. As teachers and the greater education community figured out how to teach and learn in new ways, there were moments when many were unsure about reaching out at all. However, the basic truth of marketing still holds true: be in touch with your audiences all year long.
MDR stayed in touch with educators throughout 2020. In fact, our WeAreTeachers channels grew to 3.2 million followers across Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, with more than 21 million average monthly engagements. The WeAreTeachers website saw an average of six million page views per month.
Here is some of the WeAreTeachers content that garnered the most interest from educators, by month:
January
A post from January 2020 had a simple phrase: It’s not complicated. Ironically, the content could apply to 2021 except we’d remove “not” from the title because this January “It’s complicated”—we wish we could bring back all the play to our classrooms.
February
“Theme Days Schools Should Avoid (and What to Do Instead)” offered teachers advice on a general topic of interest.
March
The shift to content with virtual themes began as the pandemic unfolded in March with content like “The Big List of Children’s Authors Doing Online Read-Alouds & Activities.”
April
Content began to reflect the new remote world even more with posts like “16 Everyday Activities That Count as Learning.”
May
In May, a quick poll on WeAreTeachers asked, “What would it take to make you feel safe returning to schools?” It garnered 1.2 K comments.
June
While the school year was winding down, teachers were already thinking about back to school 2020 as seen in this article, “One in Five Teachers Say They Won’t Return to School in the Fall, Poll Reveals.”
July
As they waited for official word on their back-to-school situations, teachers kept their sense of humor with “16 Accurate Teacher Memes About School Reopening This Fall.”
August
This quote from August captured what many teachers were feeling as back to school approached and the pandemic continued.
September
Teachers were discussing a post that referred to “2020 teacher tired” versus “teacher tired.”
October
Teachers were interested in content like “Please Stop Expecting Normal From Kids (and Teachers) Right Now.”
November
Teachers shared their thoughts in “Pandemic Teaching Is The Hardest Thing We’ve Ever Done.”
December
A teacher got at the real reasons behind teacher burnout in the “Door Principle.”
Educators come to WeAreTeachers for practical classroom ideas, teacher-to-teacher advice, humor and freebies and giveaways, generously provided by education companies. In 2020, they also came for advice on how to deliver the new world of remote learning to their students and for support from fellow educators on managing demands in and out of the classroom. View the top 15 stories from 2020. Take advantage of the traffic, content expertise and community engagement in 2021 to share your solutions and connect with educators where they spend their time online. Remember, it’s not just who you reach, but how and where you reach them.
