Online Marketing Basics - Part 1 of 3

During the crucial planning year, you need to get your marketing game on. After all, the most important measure of your success is student enrollment. And unless you are deeply connected to your proposed student population through some other non-profit association or group, that means doing some good old fashioned marketing.

There are many ways to do marketing and I don’t pretend to be a marketing expertise. My experience with those who make such claims is not favorable.  However, when it comes to the basics of online marketing, or marketing driven primarily by the Internet, there are some reasonably well established ways of doing this.

Let’s consider three areas you might want to review with respect to your Internet oriented marketing strategy, we’ll review one each week:

1. Your website as a marketing machine
2. Email marketing and online communications
3. Social media sanity

Your website as a marketing machine

 

The notion of a “well designed” website is a bit  subjective. It starts with artistic style, design elements, and color combinations created by an experienced design team. But it also assumes an underlying quality of hosting platforms, server technologies, and functionality. And it assumes dynamic and current information that is relevant to your potential site visitors.

 

There are several articles on this blog addressing website construction, but let’s set that completely aside and focus on your website purely from a marketing perspective.

 

From a marketing perspective your objective is pretty simple. Help potential students (or their parents),  find your school online, make it easy for them to engage, develop a relationship with them,  harvest or gather their contact information, and develop a process to follow up and answer their questions and guide them through enrollment. You will want to automate this process as much as possible to keep costs down.

 

Improving the ability for potential students to find your school on the Internet is often referred to as search optimization. Doing search optimization well is an ongoing challenge and consists of two general categories of activities – paid optimization (such as Pay Per Click advertising) and native or organic optimization. In my mind free is always better, but good optimization always comes at a cost. You either spend money for search optimization advertising, or you spend time placing high quality content on your website that produces high organic search results. In real life you will probably want to do both, this is particularly true for new schools.

 

One of the most frequently overlooked features that will improve organic search results is to place video on your home page. A recent study I found suggested a 1200% increase in search results by using this technique alone. In addition to that you will want to tag (label) or provide keywords called meta data on each page, use sufficient headers in your articles, label each and every image or video on your site with accurate and descriptive words,  and of course write useful content. All of these things will make it easy for search engines to properly index your site. Indexing is an ongoing process by which search engines crawl or evaluate your site and quantify relevance of your content, these measurements will determine your placement on their service.

 

There is an entire industry on the Internet, indeed an inexhaustible supply of individuals and groups who claim to have expertise in Search Engine Optimization. No doubt someone out there has to be an expert, but in every case (and we have tried more than a few) that we have hired these so called “SEO Experts”, they have collected a lot of money and without exception delivered little in the way of improved results.

 

Google and the other search engines closely guard the metrics associated with search optimization, in similar fashion Coca Cola closely guards the formulation of their products. And they (search engines) are continually changing the formula for search optimization to produce better results. Good quality content that is fresh and relevant and linked to other sites and networks will eventually produce good organic search results, in the interim you may want to do some search word advertising.

 

Want to take a simple test to see how well your school does in organic search? Just open a fresh browse and clear all of your cookies and cache, then type in a few key words that you would use to find your school (hint: don’t use your school name – that’s cheating and a prospective student would not know that information). Now count the pages of results and if you don’t appear on the first few pages, you have work to do.

 

Bottom line is that a free web site put up by one of your parent volunteers, while an admirable effort, may not garner the kind of organic search optimization you need. And with that quality of website construction, you may need to spend significantly to buy search optimization.  This of course, assumes the volunteer is not one of those hard to find SEO experts!

 

Measure your progress

 

Google analytics is no doubt the industry standard tool to measure your site traffic. But many website authoring frameworks provide their own measuring tools, often in the form of raw page counts. However you choose to measure your website traffic, do so regularly. Even with just basic page counts, you can quickly determine which content on your website provides the most interest for site visitors.

 

Don’t forget the mobile platform

 

The statistics associated with mobile devices as a share of Internet search makes a very compelling argument to optimize your website for mobile devices. Mobile access is the fastest growing segment of Internet traffic. Accordingly, it would be a very good idea to ensure that your website is mobile friendly.

 

There are several ways to do this and the techniques are outside the scope of this article, but a good start is to take a look at your website through your mobile phone or smart phone.  Then enlist your friends, with different brands of phones to do the same.  Taking a look at your site and attempting to navigate it will provide you a great deal of insight into what works and what does not.

 

The simplest way of managing the mobile access on your website is to use the right technology in the first place. Mature open source platforms, such as Word Press or Joomla do a very good job of mobile optimization right out of the box. “Build your own website” tools on many of the popular hosting companies may not do an adequate job.

 

If your budget allows, it is possible to place code on your website that senses a mobile device and redirects site visitors to a portion of your website that is designed specifically for mobile web browsers.

 

Summary

 

Your online marketing begins with a well designed and constructed website with fresh and relevant content, particularly video. Your website should be the communications hub, much like a bicycle wheel, that serves as the end point for all of your Internet communication. Invest the time and money necessary to develop the search results you need. This may include paid search word advertising, Facebook Ads, and other venues. And don’t forget the ever growing audience of mobile users.

Next week we will address email and other forms of communication that will improve your marketing reach.

Learning Management Systems - Are you missing the obvious?

OK, its POP Quiz time: What percentage of Charter Schools has a LMS in place?
Hint: This is not a FaceBook (Like My Status) related question!
Answer: I have not a clue, but my guess is not many.

I don’t know entirely what seems to be driving the LMS conversation lately, but over the past few months we’ve heard a great deal of discussion regarding it. This past week I spent significant time trying to understand the concepts, the key players, and the benefits.

If you are a Charter School administrator, you really ought to know about Learning Management Systems. It is something that will improve the quality of instruction and make life better for our front line teaching staff. It will also provide benefits to administrators as well.

A Learning Management Systems (LMS) is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content. I suppose you could (and maybe have) used a collection of three ring binders for this purpose, but as we continue to digitize things, a computer based version of this process will probably be in your future.

A slight variation of this definition would include content, as in a system that helps create the content upon which all of the management described above depends. A content concentric system would be labeled a Learning Content Management System (LCMS). For purposes of this article, I refer to both.
Are you considering a Learning Management System? It’s a great idea and here are some suggestions that might help.

But before we get started, there is the obvious. Is your learning environment driving the requirement for an LMS or is it the other way around? If you are considering an LMS for the sake of the LMS technology, you have it all backwards.

The overriding consideration in your LMS evaluation should be the curriculim. If your curriculim is elearning oriented, your staff technically inclined, and your coursework primarily digital, then this could be a very good idea.

If not this could be interesting, to say the least.

Start with a candid evaluation of your ecosystem

Why are you evaluating a LMS?  Where do you start? Are your teachers clamoring for it, or is the conversation being driven by an ambitious sales rep? Do you see the vision of a successful implementation or is this just the latest “Hot” idea brought to you by your IT providers?

Your schools mission and curriculum emphasis will be one of the core considerations. While possible, it is a little more challenging to manage the performing arts in a digital world. But technology driven schools will benefit greatly.

One criterion would seem obvious, but may not be. You might first want to evaluate how much of your course content is eLearning capable, or at least presentable in a digital format, versus traditional learning. In other words, if you conduct most of your instructional hours with chalk boards, or whiteboards, paper, pencils, and other traditional education tools, the relative value of a LMS is diminished.

Start with a candid evaluation of your faculties approach to their teaching profession. Are they young and tech savvy teachers, or more mature and technology resistant teachers? Do they embrace the existing Information Systems with great enthusiasm, or do they reluctantly check their email because they are required to do so.

If you want a sure fired rebellion on your hands, try to implement a highly automated LMS system into an environment where technology is chaotic, unreliable, and underutilized.

Think clearly about the investment of time and resources you are about to make

In the world of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, a close relative to LRM, there is a 70% failure rate for project implementations. The reasons are varied but boil down to steep learning challenges, lack of training, and failing to plan. And there is a universal tendency to underestimate the volume of keystrokes required to input all of the data points needed to make the system operational.

Here is a short list of data sets you will need to create:

·         Student Records

·         Faculty Records

·         Course Materials (the largest set)

·         Calendars and schedules

·         Grading Criteria

Additionally, you will need to create a secure connection to your states Student Information System to synchronize grades, attendance, and state mandated reporting. If your LMS is incapable of doing this, it will require a significant duplication of effort.

Course materials are by far the largest data set that needs to be created and it is an ongoing creation cycle, so think not only about what you already have (and in what format it exists), but also consider what authoring tools are available for content creation.  I would recommend biasing your LMS selection to one that utilizes common authoring tools used already by your staff, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

Furthermore, most multimedia content is delivered by an internet browser and you will need to accommodate all types of users. For example, Apple devices (like iPads ) have great difficulty with media created using Adobe Flash and you may need to provide accommodations.

Choose the LMS that integrates best with your existing infrastructure

The most common network security model in a Charter School, especially those with older students is an Active Directory environment. Active Directory provides access control, user management, and group policy modeling. An LMS based upon Microsoft technologies (such as SharePoint) will use the active directory information to automatically propagate your student and faculty listings. This elimination of re-entering hundreds of records is significant and recurring.

There are other significant Microsoft solutions that will interact with your LMS. Three common programs are your Outlook based email, Lync 2010 messaging systems, and SharePoint.

A robust email system used both by the staff and students is extremely important and will serve as the transport medium for much of the learning outcomes. Please review previous posts about Microsoft Exchange email, it is very relevant to your LMS.

Because we communicate differently with  each other based upon our presence (or availability), if you are using Lync 2010 for internal messaging, you will also find it very helpful to have a LMS that incorporates the advanced messaging features found in Lync 2010, including Live Meeting services which can be used to actually record lectures for replay.

And SharePoint is the technology or framework which several of the most popular LMS systems use.

If your school operates with an Open Source architecture, an Apple environment, or other  non-Microsoft  technologies, there are fewer automated ways of connecting student and faculty records into your LMS. And this may influence your decision one way or another.

Consider using a pilot program to work out bugs and implementation issues

All of the LMS vendors I spoke with recommend identifying a core group of “early technology adopters” to serve as a catalyst for and trainers of other staff members. While this is a good idea, I recommend one addition step.

Don’t try to roll this solution out school wide, unless you have high confidence in your implementation team and a good track record in large technology projects. Instead create a pilot program led by your “early adopters” and go through an entire grading cycle with a small highly motivated and well trained group.

This pilot program will assist in identifying software design shortcomings, configuration challenges, and other deficiencies that will otherwise be multiplied many times over. Worst case scenario, the program gets scrapped with only minor expense and inconvenience.

By leveraging your pilot program experience you will improve the odds of success in a school wide rollout.

Evaluate the total costs associated when comparing LMS vendors

There are generally two models used to buy LMS Software. The more common method is based upon a yearly per user cost or subscription. The other model is a perpetual software license, with a required annual maintenance contract.

Evaluating those two options is not particularly difficult, but evaluating the total implementation costs can be. Put a pencil to the following costs to come up with a total figure:

·         Data conversion, entry, or import into the LMS

·         Course material creation, conversion, and licensing

·         Hardware and software required to support the LMS and content management

·         Initial setup, configuration, and training

My experience with decisions based entirely upon financial reasons is that they are not thoroughly vetted. After considering all the suggestions listed above, finances will likely become less crucial to the decision.

Summary

A Learning Management System might be a huge improvement for your school. And I hope nothing in this article would discourage you from considering it. But unlike some of the banks on Wall Street, your school is probably not too big to fail.

Evaluate objectively, think clearly about goals and outcomes, be realistic about the investment of time and resources it will require, and then choose the system most closely aligned with your existing infrastructure. Be conservative about the rollout by doing a solid pilot program and be sure to evaluate the total cost, if the choice between systems is down to financial considerations.

If you would like some help sorting out the issues, please contact us.

OK, It’s time to get legal (names omitted to protect the guilty)

We recently met with a school director and their technology provider to discuss a solution that had Microsoft Licensing implications. When we asked about the schools software licensing, there was an uncomfortable shifting in the chair, a bit of hem and haw, followed by a very generic explanation regarding a previous IT provider a few years back and a school agreement. You get the picture….

What we heard was probably quite a bit different than what the administrator understood. And we left it at that. We are not the Microsoft Licensing police and frankly Microsoft Licensing is so ridiculously complicated that it takes a team of New York Lawyers to explain it, and a few CPA’s to calculate the costs. Alright, that is an exaggeration, but not much of one.

Having said that, I submit the time has come, in the world of Education that overlooking your Microsoft Licensing is really quite inexcusable. And frankly, unless you value your time at less than minimum wage, it really makes sense to just sign the agreement, pay the minimal licensing costs, and get on with life.

If you use the correct type of licensing, the process will literally save you time and money; not to mention that warm and fuzzy feeling you will have knowing you are playing by the rules.

Having seen firsthand the hoops that some go through to avoid legal licensing, it really makes no sense. You can now buy an umbrella Microsoft agreement that not only covers all computers in the school with Operating Systems, and core CALS, but it also provides a copy of Microsoft Office Professional Plus. Furthermore there are home use rights to boot.

And here is a little known secret. When you initiate a school agreement, there are a number of additional software licenses that magically appear in your Volume Licensing Center. Take for example the MultiPoint Server license and CAL’s for connecting to it. That’s right, they are included. Just try buying that software over the counter by itself.

Some school agreements also come with subscriptions to Microsoft educational titles, membership in the MSDN Academic Alliance, and Live@EDU services. Plus there are other Microsoft solutions such as the InTune Management software, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and others that are a fraction of the cost when associated with your Annual School Agreement.

And you can literally receive an entire truckload of donated computers, which as soon as they enter your building are also covered. And did I mention any Virtual Machines that you create using Microsoft Hyper-V technology – they are covered as well.

Like most of you, I have a real problem with paying $450.00 for a copy of Microsoft Office Professional Plus in the shrink wrapped box. And that is a challenge in the for-profit world. But educational titles are so incredibly cheap, it takes way more resources to find ways around licensing than it does to do it properly.

Enough already, while the odds of a Software Audit are very, very small; all it takes is the phone call of one disgruntled staff member,  former vendor, or competitor to the software alliance and things could get real ugly.

If you have a software licensing question or need guidance on selecting the right school agreement, please call us. As a freestanding charter school, you have options that are both sensible and affordable. And you might be surprised at all the freebies you get for being legal.

Do the right thing!

Oh, one last thing. You might consider making your school agreement align with the eRate fiscal year. Eligible expenses are more easily allocated and reimbursed when they line up with July 1 – Jun 30 timeframes of the eRate program.

Putting a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to work in your school

A core assumption in the Charter School movement is competition. Most competitive measures are geared toward educational outcomes. But before you can compete in the area of outcomes you must compete in the arena of sound business management. Running the business side of a Charter School is enormously challenging. In addition to the key metric of recruiting students, you must manage all kinds of relationships with parents, teachers, administrative staff, board members, volunteers, the community, vendors, and regulatory agencies.
Managing a school is a relationship management intensive undertaking! And how well you manage these crucial relationships will have a far reaching impact on your organization. But how many of you are using any kind of a Customer Relationship Management program? More specifically, how many of you are using a CRM system that is deeply integrated into your existing information systems?
Increasing numbers and types of businesses are adopting Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.  CRM systems cover a lot of territory: sales, marketing, case management, and documentation; so making general observation here is not really going to help. But try to imagine how different your school would look if you had a system in place that could help quantify measures of performance, more clearly define and manage processes, automate administrative tasks, centralize information, and increase the capacity of your staff to work in a more unified manner.
A CRM system is not a simple solution to implement, but managing the business of a Charter School is not a simple undertaking. And while complex systems require thoughtful planning, testing, and deployment; the complexity exists whether or not you have such programs. Traditional school districts have a huge advantage. Although they deal with the same array of relationships they also have significant resource advantages and economics of scale, often employing an entire team to accomplish what a solitary administrator is expected to do.
The best way to overcome this inherent disadvantage is a Customer Relationship Management System designed specifically for Charter Schools.
From a funding perspective, students and their families are your paying customers. But in reality you have a long list of “customers”, or groups without which you could not function.  And as simple as it may sound, keeping them happy is most likely to occur when using a Customer Relationship Management system designed just for that purpose.
Nobody likes a hard sell, and perhaps that is what comes to mind when you hear about CRM software. In fact effective CRM programs do more than just build brand awareness, deliver consistent marketing messages, and track interaction with potential customers until you “sell” them. CRM systems help you manage all of the aspects of the important relationships that define your organization and make it as easy as possible to do business with you.
Customer Relationship Management software has been successfully implemented in all kinds of businesses, and for the same reasons it makes sense for your school. Consider things you could do with a CRM system designed for a Charter School:
Contact Management

• Centralize the essential contact information for students and their families and tie it to their Student Information Records
• Consolidate all other contact lists for the school into a single source and enjoy a much more accurate source of information
• Identify relationships among the various contacts to better understand communication requirements and preferences
• Communicate effortlessly with any combination of individuals within groups and track those communications for accountability
• Streamline the records update process by distributing the task to the end points of interaction
• Provide financial and case management records for context (as allowed by security roles) within your contact information

Marketing

• Create, execute, and measure campaigns for recruiting, fundraising, and volunteering
• Communicate with potential students at the frequency and intensity of their interest level
• Track all interactions with potential students, donors, and volunteers and measure defined goals of those relationships
• Build better relationships through consistent messaging, improved responsiveness, and uniform processes
• Manage Social Media campaigns

Case Management

• Establish workflow and manage documentation for new student from application to entrance
• Manage facilities and contractors with workflows and centralized documentation 
• Manage support issues (help desk) for all kinds of issues - technical, personnel, facilities, finance
• Track grants and funding opportunities with better reminders of deadlines and tasks management
• Comply with Board Meeting minutes publications using permission based workflow and oversight
• Manage questions, complaints, or discipline with current students (outside of SIS)
• Streamline communication with key team members by centralizing information stores
• Develop a centralized policy and procedure knowledgebase
• Manage field trips, group events, and meetings

Fee Management

• Manage student fees and simplify the reconciliation process for finance
• Centralize accounting for all sales or service fee collection for all groups in or out of the  student store
• Improve the process for collecting library fees, yearbooks , DVD sales, and sporting equipment
• Integrate the accounting and development functions for fundraising and donation management
• Document and improve collection for property damage fines
• Improve inventory management for all product based items

As you can see, this is a pretty comprehensive list of features touching many departments and individuals both in and out of the school. As such the architecture of this system is vital. In order for this system to succeed it must have a common and familiar interface, utilize existing rather than new policies and procedures, and it must be a cloud based solution with unrestricted availability from anywhere on any device.
Our recommended solution is Microsoft Dynamics CRM online configured specifically for use in the Charter School Community and managed with familiar tools you use every day – Microsoft Outlook, Word, and the other Microsoft Office programs. But whatever solution you choose it must be capable of delivering administrative efficiencies to support the non-academic aspects of your school.
One last point - while we did not directly address the educational side of your organization, it too will be greatly enhanced by a CRM system.

Why you should consider membership in Microsoft's IT Academy

Microsoft IT Academy provides Information Technology training resources for students, teachers, and administrators. Deliverables are Microsoft certifications for students and staff, real and measurable outcomes improving technology instruction and increasing operational efficiency. Here are four reasons you should consider membership in the Microsoft IT Academy:

1. Your students will obtain real 21^st century skills propelling them into careers as information workers, straight from high school, or providing college credit for their post-secondary journey.
2. Your teaching staff will improve their ability to both use and instruct technology in the classroom.
3. Your administration will become more efficient, functionally and financially.
4. Your enrollment will increase as students seek out a more relevant and challenging curriculum.

Grandiose promises, perhaps. But consider the scenario found too often in charter schools today - reduced funding, lackluster enrollment numbers, task saturated teaching staff, and an endless stream of regulation and compliance matters, communication challenges, and budget realities facing administrators.

But can a simple add-on to your annual Microsoft school agreement really change all of that? We believe it can. And here are the transformations we envision:

Students

In addition to traditional academics, students need better information technology skills. This is universally true no matter what career or education pathway they pursue. IT Academy offers a world-class curriculum providing hands-on skill and experience needed to succeed in any career. End of course exams provide actual Microsoft certifications which are recognized world-wide as standard measures of technical competence. Many of these certifications count for college credit after graduation.

Teachers

The curriculum is "ready-to-teach", allowing teachers to focus on delivery, not research and course content creation. This curriculum is managed on-line, by Microsoft, and easily integrated into both new and existing classes. All teaching staff have access to professional development normally costing hundreds of dollars per course, and earn their own Microsoft certifications.

Administrators

Visionary technology plans often get lost in the day-to-day challenges of operating a school. Improving that vision will help, but improving the skill of staff members, relative to the specific technologies introduced, is much more effective. Empowered staff members will drive efficiencies into the entire organization by better communication, collaboration, and access to information.

Community

Schools that produce outstanding results are the pride of their community and that will be reflected in their enrollment. And that is the critical measure of viability for your school.


Is your school a good candidate for the Microsoft IT Academy? Are you eligible? Contact us to find out more, or look for a link on our blog. Ready to join? Let's review your Microsoft licensing agreements and see where you stand. Some of our schools have restructured their annual licensing agreement to include an IT Academy subscription and actually reduced their overall licensing costs.

Important changes to Microsoft academic software licensing

There are two general methods of licensing the core Microsoft technologies running your school; perpetual (single purchase) licensing and subscription (recurring payments) licensing.

But let’s be honest, a perpetual or lifetime software license is an oxymoron!  Disagree? Answer a simple question. How long was your last Microsoft Office suite current? There was Office 2000, 2003, 2007, and now 2010.

The same is true for Windows 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, and now Windows 7. Of course there is software assurance to protect you, but at what cost? Subscription based software will almost always save you money - not to mention the licensing headaches.
For those of you still buying “perpetual” software licenses for your Microsoft technologies, listen up. It has not made sense for years, and the disparity just grew larger.

Starting this year, Microsoft introduced a new subscription based licensing model called Enrollment for Education Services (EES). Similar to the School Enrollment program, EES provides blanket license compliance for all of your organizations PC’s (desktop and laptops).

EES is different because instead of counting devices (desktops and laptops) you now count employees instead. While the annual cost per license is roughly equivalent, there are no schools that we know of which have more staff members than computers!

Let’s compare a typical license program which would include the latest Microsoft Operating System (Windows 7), Microsoft Office Professional Plus, core Client Access Licenses (CAL’s), and home use rights:

 200 Computers @ $53.00 per year = $10,600.00
     VS.
 50 Staff members @ $60.00 per year = $3,000.00

Notice how much money your school will save by using the new enrollment model, which is accomplished by merely using a different enrollment form. And don’t forget to add any server licenses you might need into the equation, while the savings are not as dramatic they are significant when you factor out ever needing to purchase a server software upgrade.

Enrollment for Education Solutions (EES) is an easy, cost-effective program that provides qualified academic customers a simplified way to acquire Microsoft software and services under a single, subscription agreement. It offers coverage for desktop platform products with one annual count of employees, the ability to easily add additional products in any quantity, self-service tools for simplified asset management, and immediate access to benefits such as product upgrades through Microsoft Software Assurance so you can boost the productivity of your faculty and staff and optimize the return on your technology investments.

Let’s summarize the benefits:

• Easy Compliance:  Count and report  full time employees (FTE) annually
• Customized Solutions: Add software during the subscription term
• Simplified Asset Management: Download and update software online
• Low Administration: Eliminate the need to track software licenses
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership: Reduce the cost of software

Finally, for those not using a Window’s desktop environment, there are also benefits to an EES agreement. Office 2011 for Mac is a great solution.

Contact your Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller today for more information.