Here’s a simple thought: you can create far better adverts to teachers if you know what they are thinking about.
Of course one way to do this is to talk to a teacher. The problem is a sample or one or two doesn’t really give you a feel for what the generality of teachers is contemplating.
To overcome this we set up UK Education News – a rolling news service of stories about schooling that appear in the press day by day.
That doesn’t really tell you what teachers are thinking as such – but it tells you the next best thing – what teachers are reading – and that does lead to a deeper understanding of how one can write an advert that appeals to them.
So UK Education News is a constantly changing web page that gathers all the main news stories to do with schools and schooling in the UK. If you haven’t seen it before, take a look at www.ukeducationnews.co.uk and you’ll get the idea.
This term we are not only reminding schools that the service is there, and once again encouraging them to link to us from their school web site, we are also offering two free bonuses to schools, to encourage enhanced teacher use of the free service.
The first is that schools can put their press releases on UK Education News, and the second is they can also advertise any school vacancies they have, on the site. Our experiments last term suggest that both of these free services will enhance readership greatly.
Among the news stories on the site we also place occasional adverts from our customers. These too can be placed for free, as long as you are doing an email, shared mail or solo mail campaign with us. It is not uncommon for companies to get upwards of 700 people reading the story once it has appeared on UK Education News.
But if you prefer you can advertise directly on UK Education News – there is a rate card on www.ukeducationnews.co.uk/ratecard.pdf Adverts start at just £25 per insertion.
Even if you just use the service to keep up to date with education news, and to see what teachers are reading, I do hope you find it useful. Email Tony@hamilton-house.com if you would like to know more or call me on 01536 399 000
Tony Attwood