How can it almost be Q2 already?! If you haven’t thought much about your content marketing strategy for the second quarter, you’re in the right spot. Take a deep breath and download our free EdTech Marketer’s Planner. The planner is designed to walk educational technology companies through a four-step process to map out the entire year. In this post, we’ll dive deep into how you can create timely and valuable content in the second quarter of 2021.
1. Make note of any relevant birthdays
The first step is an easy win: Think of any relevant birthdays that might resonate with your audience. You can plan ALL sorts of content around birthdays, from quote images to round-up collections to profiles. Be sure to check out this post, where we lay out lots of ideas on how to use birthdays to guide your planning. The birthdays that you decide to highlight will likely be based on your particular audience, but the list below (from the planner) can help you get started thinking about people to highlight in April, May, or June of 2021:
2. Think about upcoming events
Now that birthdays are out of the way, consider other timely events that might resonate with your audience. A big one in Q2 is Teacher Appreciation Week (May 3-7 this year). If you haven’t started planning for this already, start as soon as you can! Then think about other events. Are there relevant conferences on the horizon? How about holidays or other notable dates? For example, you might create poetry-related content for April to celebrate National Poetry Month or you could create content highlighting parents for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. Before you even get started on creating timely content, make a list of notable events and holidays. The EdTech Marketer’s Planner details many different timely events that you can use when brainstorming.
A snapshot of events in June is noted above but you can find events in May and July (and beyond!) in the planner as well. Here are some examples of dates to have on your radar:
April
April 4: National School Librarian Day
April 11: National Pet Day
April 22: Earth Day
April 28: National Superhero Day
May
May 1: School Principal’s Day
May 3-7: Teacher Appreciation Week (May 4th is Teacher Appreciation Day)
May 9: Mother’s Day
May 17: International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia
June
June 1: Stand for Children Day
June 1-4: EdTech Week
June 19: Juneteenth
June 20: Father’s Day
After you’ve highlighted both birthdays and events you might want to focus on, then you can consider what types of content you might plan around the things on your list.
3. Consider what your audience needs RIGHT NOW
Now it’s time to get really focused on your audience. If you cater to administrators, teachers, and/or parents, think about what they might need in Q2. What type of headspace are they in? In the K-12 sales cycle, this is the buying season for districts. If you are a B2B business targeting district-wide purchases, now is your time to double down. How can you create content to help potential customers find their way to your product or service?
Here are content-planning ideas for April:
Q2 is an incredibly important time for educational technology companies, full of ed tech conferences, planning for the upcoming school year, and— above all — purchasing. Make the most of the second quarter by planning content that is both valuable and timely. Grab the EdTech Marketer’s Planner and get started!