🤖 How to Build an EdTech Content Creation Machine
How to Turn 1 Webinar into 12 Weeks of Content
Jay Ashcroft
September 13, 2023
How to never run out of content to post. With a bit of planning, and a good system, it’s surprisingly straightforward to create mountains of content to share.
It’s no longer enough to have a fantastic product. EdTech has become so competitive that you need to have a fantastic product AND a fantastic marketing strategy.
If you want to dive deeper, here are some good reads:
Let’s explore how you can craft amazing content without big budgets or teams.
🎯 The Foundation: Help, Don’t Sell
Create valuable, educational content and good things will happen. This can feel counter intuitive and you may feel the need to embark on a sales pitch but it’s not the right time.
My Own Experience:
Back in 2015 I was bootstrapping my first company and was thinking up new ways to reach educators. It was the heady days of the iPad rush where schools couldn’t buy them fast enough, often to huge waste. Our focus was “Pedagogy before technology.” so we started a podcast called “These are Not the Apps you’re Looking For.”
Our larger, and more well funded competitors, focused on tradeshows and email campaigns, so we looked for the gap where they weren’t. I knew that a lot of teachers drove 60+ minutes to and from school, and in that time, we could have a captive audience through a podcast.
We didn’t break any records for listeners, but we did pick up a number of schools who directly reached out to us. All for a £0 marketing spend.
Each podcast episode was turned into dozens of pieces of content using the following system.
👨💻 The 1:4:16 System
1 webinar > 4 blogs > 16 social posts
Gary Vee was one of the first people to promote this and it works particularly well in education because a school term is about 12 weeks long.
3 webinars create 36 weeks of content. Add in your Christmas and Easter post, and you’ve got the whole academic year covered. That’s working smart!
Let’s break down how it works.
🎥 The Webinar: Partner with an Expert
Pick a relevant topic, find someone interesting or with expertise, and host a webinar together. This educates your audience about the relevant topic, positioning you as a mentor rather than supplier. As it’s live and interactive, it gives you the chance to start building community too.
Make sure to record the webinar (to send it out to those non-attendees) but more importantly so that you can turn it into blogs and downloadables.
💡 Use an AI transcription to have the audio converted. I use SpeechText.AI which does 180 minutes for $10 per month.
What if no-one signs up? As the webinar is just step 1 in what is going to become multiple touchpoint marketing journey, it no longer matters if you don’t get great attendance. It takes the pressure off because the system still runs regardless.
📝 The Blog Series: Diving into the Details
If you have partnered with the right expert / educator, you should cover interesting and relevant topics in the webinar. Take each topic and turn it into a 500 word blog.
This gives you the chance to go deeper and demonstrate your expertise in these key areas.
You can begin weaving your product features into your content this by contextualising them into the daily lives of educators / students.
💡 Consistency Build Trust. Trust Creates Opportunities. Each post is a chapter in the larger narrative of what your product brings to the table, and how you advance the wider educational landscape.
🤳 The Social Posts: Snack-able content each day
We’re all busy. Teachers are especially busy, so while you’ve got some great blogs to go, you need to serve up some tasty samples to peak their interest.
Take each blog, and create at least 4 social media posts. Done well, you should find that you create a lot more than 4.
💡 Obey the Rules: If you’re posting on multiple social platforms, ensure that you curate the post for each platform. LinkedIn for example has started to reduce the reach of posts that link off-site (ie. to your blog page) because they want to keep people on their platform. You’ve done the hard work creating great content so don’t fall at the final hurdle.
🔥 Quick Tips for Effective Content Marketing
Write for a Specific Audience: You’re not trying to reach 100% of educators. You’re looking for the 20% that want something new. The visionaries, early adopters, change makers. Before you embark on this process, know who you’re talking to. What are their pain points? What language do they use?
Quality Over Quantity: It’s better to have one outstanding piece of content than five mediocre ones. Focus the most work in planning the webinar because this will dictate the entire quality afterwards.
Promote Wisely: Creating content is half the battle. The other half? Getting it in front of the right eyes. Use your social media channels, email newsletters, and partnerships to amplify your reach but don’t simply copy and paste it everywhere.
Measure and Adapt: Use analytics to track what works and what doesn’t. Then, adapt. Content marketing is a marathon, not a sprint.
Wrapping Up
Content marketing for EdTech isn’t about shouting the loudest; it’s about speaking the most effectively. It’s about creating a library of resources that doesn’t just promote a product, but advances a mission — to improve education, to solve real problems, and to genuinely help the educators who shape our future.
In EdTech, our content doesn’t just market our products; it extends our purpose.
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Best, Jay
