Slides from my 3rd time giving this talk at ImagineK12

1. Engaging Educators
Building Your Community

2. About.me
@Jessie_Arora
TeacherSquare.org
edcrunch.org

3. “Utility drives adoption, community drives retention”
Caterina Fake, Founder- Flickr & Hunch
Education is a long game. Resist the urge to chase short-term buzz
(like getting written up in TechCrunch) and focus on building
relationships with your early evangelists.

4. K12 is Incredibly Fragmented

5. Show Me the Money (USA)
$50B
$600B

6. What’s Driving the Dysfunction
- Stakeholders and users are
typically not the
purchasers/customers
- Longer sales cycles (12-18
months)
- Cultural aversion to change
- Time is a huge constraint

7. Center for Learning with Technology
Hacker/Maker space to connect
educators and edtech

8. When you connect with people,
they want to help you

9. Teacherpreneur Networks
Digital Harbor
Highlander Institute’s: Foundation

10. Conferences & Events
Be selective.
Track your target audience

11. Getting Started
- Establish your story and set your
social media tone
- Refine your message with engaged
beta testers
- Design broader marketing plan

12. Low Budget Storytelling
- Comment on blogs
- Leverage message boards
- Leverage social networks
- Become a guest author
- Case studies #esinstruct
- Speak at events
- Start blogging yourself

14. Early Adopters <3 Twitter
List of Top Edu Tweeters on edcrunch.org

16. EdgeRank = affinity * weight* time decay
Its not about how much information you can push out to your audience, its about the
relationship you can build and the trust that you can create in order to grow your
business.

17. Battling through Beta
“Make sure your product
doesn’t suck”
- Dave McClure, 500 Startups
Did you really solve a problem?
Did you discover a bigger problem to solve?

18. Empowering Evangelists
Virtual Interns Director of Teacher Happiness

19. Beyond Beta

20. The story continues...
- Establish your story and set your
social media tone
- Refine your message with engaged
beta testers
- Design broader marketing plan

21. Appendix
- @CybraryMan1
resources (Get ready...
this is a crazy site)
- edu hashtags
- edu chats

22. PLCs: Professional Learning Networks
Also referred to as PLNs - Professional/Personal Learning Communities

23. Community Groups
Create a space to foster ongoing
communication between your early users