This year we produced 32 blog posts, 11 newsletters, 3 free downloads, and 7 episodes of our new podcast All Things Marketing and Education. We tend to talk a lot about how brands can (and should!) provide consistent content and resources that are not only valuable and timely for their audience but also align with their objectives and overall capacity. In 2021, our team was able to do just that. We’re incredibly proud of the resources we provided to our audience this year. Beyond providing consistent value, the ability to create content has allowed us to think even more deeply about the strategies and tactics we use every day for our clients. As a result, a ton of our content is packed full of helpful research of things we find interesting or are curious about in community building, content marketing, and social media marketing. And if we didn’t find anything about what we were searching for, we took it as an opportunity to pave the way!
As the year comes to a close, we’d like to share some of our most popular content of the year. Scroll down to the bottom to uncover our most popular piece of content of 2021. Let the countdown begin!👇🏾
10. This List of Birthdays Will Make Your Q1 Planning So Much Easier
Using birthdays of historical figures or famous people can be a great way to create timely and relevant content. The first step is to identify experts and leaders that your audience will want to celebrate. Remember -- this is a great opportunity to differentiate your brand by recognizing those that represent the causes and topics your audience cares about. The next step is planning content around the birthdays. Read this blog post to get ideas!
9. 25 Benefits of Growing an Organic Social Media Presence
Growing an active presence on social media organically, without relying on paid social media advertising, is something that every brand should consider, but it’s not something that you should step into without making a commitment. Social media is a marriage where you commit to your audience to not only show up consistently but also to provide things that will help them. If your brand is just getting started on social media or if you need to make the case to increase your investment and commitment to grow your organic social media presence, knowing the potential social media benefits of embarking on this journey is critical. In this blog post, we’ve listed some of the many benefits.
8. 11 TikTok Teachers That'll Make You Smile, Laugh Out Loud, and Learn!
It’s impossible to highlight all of the awesomeness happening in teaching and learning on TikTok. We shared some of our favorite educator creators in another post, but with all of the awesome content being created every minute, we thought it was worth highlighting even more educators that provide information, inspiration, and yes, entertainment. Our hope is to introduce you to some educator creators that we’ve learned from and have made us smile recently. :) Dive in, explore, and take some time to learn from these educators. You won’t regret it.
7. How to Create a Twitter Hashtag Strategy: Hashtag Basics
Should you be using hashtags in your tweets? Are you using the best hashtags for your brand? Do you know how many to use or where to insert them? Just like everything with social media, hashtag best practices for each social media channel change constantly. To make your life a lot easier, we’ve gathered the most up-to-date research on what is currently working, especially for Twitter.
6. What’s Your Community’s Purpose? Find it Using the SPACES Model
Communities exist for one primary purpose, to improve the lives of their members. If it doesn’t serve that purpose, it won’t be a successful community That doesn’t mean that additional business value can’t be derived from them, however. But if your business wants to develop a community strategically, you’ll have to first determine the primary focus of your company. In this blog post, we explain how to use CMX’s SPACES Model keep community efforts aligned with the intended purpose.
5. Using These Education Hashtags Will Help Your Tweets Get Seen
Using the right hashtags on Twitter can dramatically increase the reach and engagement of your tweets. In education, there are thousands of hashtags being used every day on Twitter and they’re changing every day. With so many hashtags, figuring out which hashtags to use and when to use them can be daunting. To help, we created this list of education hashtags with the highest reach (in terms of hashtags exposure per hour in impressions, provided by RiteTag on August 18, 2021). We then divided this list into some popular education categories to make it easier to digest.
4. Infographic: Posting Frequency by Social Media Channel
Establishing how often to post on each social channel can be difficult, especially because there are so many factors that play into your social media strategy’s success. In this post, we outline some of the factors that you should consider when deciding on your social media cadence along with some posting do’s and don’ts for each social channel.
3. 3 Things Brands Should NEVER Do for Teacher Appreciation Week
In a year when teachers are feeling particularly undervalued, Lily Jones, LCG’s social media lead, urges EdTech brands to be incredibly thoughtful and take some time to think about what teachers really need right now when thinking about Teacher Appreciation Week campaigns. She lists three things brands should never do when appreciating educators during Teacher Appreciation Week and beyond.
2. EdTech Marketer's 2022 Planner
Our 2021 EdTech Marketer’s Planner was our top downloaded resource of 2021, so we decided to update it and make it even better! The EdTech Marketer’s 2022 Planner includes events, holidays, birthdays, and even conferences that best align with education and learning — all within an easy, downloadable calendar format. Download this FREE Planner that can help you create timely and valuable content for educators, parents, and education administrators.
1. These Teachers On TikTok Will Make You Laugh, Cry, and Yes... Even Dance
TikTok is ridiculously entertaining, but it’s more than just a place for celebs to show off their latest dance moves. It’s impossible to highlight all of the awesomeness educators are creating on TikTok. Our hope is to highlight some teachers that we’ve learned from and who have made us smile recently. :) Dive in, explore, and take some time to learn from these educators. You won’t regret it.
We hope this list inspires you to create content in 2022 and we’re looking forward to creating even more more resources that you find valuable in 2022.