Spring is officially here! You may be asking yourself…where has the year gone? You’re not alone. The EdTech community has still been upended by the pandemic and in addition to dealing with this uncertainty, EdTech conferences have arrived in 2022. On top of all of this, educators continue to battle with intense burnout and lack of support. They find themselves or their colleagues leaving the classroom for the next school year. This is one of many tweets we’ve seen lately.
So with all of this in mind, how do you begin to plan content that’s valuable to your target audience? Our free EdTech Marketer’s Planner lists the most important events, dates, and birthdays you’ll need to create timely content year-round. In this post, we’ve included the events, dates, conferences, and birthdays you should keep in mind from April-June 2022 that are all a part of our planner.
Use these events to have some fun creating valuable and timely content.
K-12 Education Holidays, Events, and Conferences
Our team collected some of the dates EdTech marketers should consider throughout the year and brainstormed some timely content ideas that speak to EdTech brands’ three main audiences (administrators, educators, and parents) for you to make your own. Remember, you should only use the themes and dates that directly relate to your brand and your audience. Don’t try to program something just for the sake of programming something (and that means no bandwagoning on social media trends that just don’t make sense for your brand).
April
Spring has sprung. 🌱 This is a great time of year to talk about all things nature and environmentalism, science, and new beginnings. There’s also a helpful “spring cleaning” angle you can insert into your content and social posts. There’s an opportunity to show appreciation for Assistant Principals during National Assistant Principal Week (April 4-8) and librarians and library media specialists during National Library Week (April 3-9).
Administrators: Typically during this time administrators are working to finalize their budgets but the pandemic has shifted quite a lot of things. Regardless of the exact timing, this is a good time of year to remind school administrators of the impact of your product or service based on evaluation (check out this podcast episode for getting started with evaluation). Assistant Principal Appreciation also falls in this month. And as we start to near the end of the year, also start to share resources on innovative ways to support teachers.
Teachers: There are three months left in the school year and educators would be very receptive to any type of content that engages students (this goes for the following two months as well). Educators this month tend to also celebrate Earth Day in the classroom. Spring can also be a good time to start talking about outdoor appreciation and learning, and possibly the benefits of school gardens.
Parents: Parents may be looking for good ways to get outside, including things like home gardening lessons. You could also curate book lists for specific age ranges or subjects. April fools day can also be an opportunity to embrace humor in fun ways.
Conferences
May
This month is Teacher Appreciation Month, with Teacher Appreciation Day coming up on Tuesday, May 3. All education brands should celebrate Teacher Appreciation this month but also make sure that you’re celebrating teacher appreciation throughout the year. Educators, more than anyone can see through inauthentic posts and gestures. Also, check out our blog on 3 Things Brands Should Avoid During Teacher Appreciation Week.
May is a continuation of April’s spring theme, with a little bit more focus on winding down the school year. Toward the end of the month, we’ll start to celebrate the beginning of graduation season.
Administrators: As the school year rounds down and administrators typically work to finalize budgets for the next year, EdTech brands should focus on speaking to them about the return on investment of their tool or calculation of your product, specifically how your product appeals to school safety and security. Also provide ideas to them about how they can appreciate teachers, both as a brand and as an administrator.
Teachers: The end of the school year can be a really difficult time for educators — standardized testing can occur, students are less motivated and may have anxiety/pressure around their grades, and there is endless end-of-year paperwork. May is Teacher Appreciation Month, and as a brand celebrating, you should keep educator support at the center of your campaigns. Focus on listening to and uplifting educator voices. Share content about teacher relaxation and rejuvenation. You can also share some ideas around how to incorporate movement into teaching, and teacher upskilling.
Parents: Parents will be looking for gifts and ideas to appreciate and support teachers during this time. As their students lose motivation, parents will be interested in helping their child end the school year strong. You could even share out healthy snack ideas or fun activities as parents start to prepare for summer.
June
June marks the end of the school year and the start of summer in the U.S. K-12 education system. It is the wind-down of graduation season and closing out the school year. For EdTech brands, June can be the beginning of a slow, dormant season for educators. Once school lets out for summer, administrators can begin assessing their needs and researching tools for the following school year. Teachers typically work to complete professional development (the biggest EdTech conference, ISTE, occurs at the end of June), may work on lesson planning, and can also be found researching products and services that might help them. This is a great time to focus on building your organic social media presence and adding value to your audience’s lives.
Administrators: In June, talk to administrators about remote learning opportunities and how your brand may fit in. This is also a good time of year to reflect on the school year’s accomplishments. For educator and administrator PD, speak to tech equity within the EdTech market to establish yourself as a thought leader.
Teachers: This isn’t a great time to reach educators about your product. We like to program lighter, more entertaining content to match educators’ mood and priorities of celebrating the end of the school year and taking a break to recharge. You can focus on celebrating this break with them, encourage them to take some time for themselves for genuine self-care, or just make them smile. :) As the school year winds down, many of them will be involved with graduation speeches and transitions. As an EdTech brand, you could also speak to them about options for summer school.
Parents: Many parents are now tasked with keeping their children occupied and potentially learning (if they like to avoid any summer slide) every day of the week. This is a hard transition. Help them by providing simple learning activities and provide any other helpful advice, such as tech screen times. Summer reading lists can be fun as well!
Conferences
ISTE hosts one of the biggest conference in EdTech, and a great time for educators and EdTech brands to collaborate together. This year, it will be in-person in New Orleans and also offer a remote option!
Birthdays
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again — using birthdays of historical figures or famous people can be a great way to create timely and relevant content, and is also a great opportunity to differentiate your brand by recognizing those that represent the causes and topics your audience cares about.
In the full version of the download, we also explain dive deeply into how to create content that can be inspired by birthdays. To summarize, you could do round-up collections of the person’s work, craft inspirational posts, or write a profile.
We hope this list helps you plan relevant and valuable content for your audience. Don’t forget to download our free EdTech Marketer’s Planner for a more comprehensive list of education events, birthdays, conferences, and even content ideas. Also, once you’ve decided on the events you’d like to focus on, make sure you have a campaign-planning process in place. This four-step campaign-planning process can get you started.
