How To’s

Why Is Feedback Important?

We know you.  You want to have a program that people love; one that changes lives. You have the potential to do great things in your community —but aren’t sure that you’re going in the right direction. Perhaps your program is already great, and you want to keep that way. How can you find out how you’re affecting your students? How can you set achievable new goals?

In short, you want to know, “How do I help improve my program?” 

The answer is simple, “Ask for feedback.” 

However, we also understand that while “ask for feedback” is a simple statement, it can feel overwhelming and the questions can pile up quickly: How do I get the feedback that I need? What do I ask? When do I ask? How do I ask? What do I do with what I’ve learned? 

We’re here to help.

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It seems like every place you go online to post is shining with bright and interesting pictures.  

It makes sense —people are visual, and eye-catching graphics are essential when grabbing someone’s attention. Well-created pictures motivate and inspire us to make decisions, boost the words that accompany them, and call us to action. Whether you’re creating content for traditional marketing, digital marketing, or blog posts —strong images will improve your marketing efforts.

Your program deserves awesome marketing. But you probably have to carefully tend your resources —both your budget and your time. Having high-quality materials can seem out of reach, even though you know that your program enrollment would benefit from them. And sometimes you want to make something to perfectly suit your program but don’t want to have to learn how to be a graphic designer to do it! 

Fortunately, there are many resources for finding and designing captivating images you can use to market your classes. You don’t need to have special skills or a big budget to create striking, sharable image content with these two programs: Canva and Adobe Spark. 

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Video is a powerful marketing tool. It’s being used more and more on every digital platform available, and it’s become people’s favorite kind of content on social media.

But, you may think, “How can I produce videos? I have no time, equipment, or skills in this area! How am I supposed to manage that??”

Fortunately, there are programs to help you make videos quickly and easily —even if you’ve never done anything like it before— and they can look pretty darned impressive to boot! 

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“Where can I find images to use for my program?”

This is a question that we often hear.  And usually, there’s a second, unspoken part of that question, “…for free?”

Finding free photos to use when marketing your program can be a challenge.

You’re looking for images to use in your program marketing that are:

1. free to use and
2. that you’re allowed to use and
3. that you can use commercially.

Fortunately, Google has a free tool to help make it easier for you to find images that work and it only takes five steps.

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Fall in Love with…Woodworking?

The room is crowded with people. There’s laughter in the air, and everyone is mingling. You’re at a table with a group of new friends, with one empty chair reserved for a special guest. A clear chime strikes in the air and an older gentleman joins your group, his hands rough and careworn. He offers a firm handshake to everyone and sits down. He places a stack of worn photos down, each one showing a beautiful piece of furniture.

“Well,” he says in a voice touched with gravel, “You ever wanted to build your own kitchen table?” The minutes tear by as he speaks like a poet about woodworking and asks and answers questions. You realize that yes, yes you indeed do want to build your own table, but you never knew where to begin.

The chime rings out again, and he moves on to a neighboring table. A young woman with rainbows in her hair takes his place. “Hi!” she chirps brightly, “did you know that I can totally teach you how to make the perfect French macaron?”

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We know that everyone lives on social media these days. But did you know it’s also a great place to grow your enrollment?

Social media is a popular place to promote classes. It’s free, easily accessible, and people spend tons of time using it. It’s a great place for people to talk, share, and get excited about what your program is offering. 

We’ve designed CourseStorm to automatically format the classes you share to popular social media channels, making it easy to promote a class on social media. All you need to do is add a little intro text, the class link, and post it on your social network of choice, making it incredibly simple to share your classes and catalog with your audience.

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If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it: It’s a motto many of us live our lives by. Unfortunately, sometimes we get so used to doing things the same way we’ve always done them that we don’t notice the cracks and tears in the system. Think of that old swelling front door that you have to kick to close or the upstairs toilet that you have to remember to wiggle the lever on to keep the water from running. While this solution works for a while, over time the problem gets worse. At first, you tell yourself that you’ll hire a repairman or look up how to fix it yourself, but you get busy, and then you grow so accustomed to the inconvenience that it can be easy to overlook the fact that it’s costing you time and money.

The same may be said your current strategy for managing enrollment. It’s working okay–it’s been working for years–but is it still the most efficient, cost-effective solution for your needs? It’s easy to add registrants to a Google spreadsheet at first, but as your program grows, that spreadsheet grows as well. You start to lose track of who has paid and who hasn’t, and what started out as a simple solution has become complicated.Read more

For most programs, a new class catalog launch is always right around the corner. We want your catalog launch to be easy and successful every time. To make that possible, follow these four easy steps.

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There are plenty of marketing options available for educational organizations:printed brochures, take-home flyers, newspaper inserts  and more. The challenge is that these options and time consuming and for a budget-strapped organization, are usually out of reach. Rather than spending a large amount of time and resources on a big ad campaign, education providers  should consider email marketing. According to Campaign Monitor, email marketing returns $44 for every $1 spent – that’s an amazing return for your time and money!

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Want an easy way to display a calendar of your upcoming classes on your website?

For anyone who attends regular classes or anyone who wants to keep track of upcoming classes, viewing your courses in a calendar format is a convenient way to see upcoming classes at a glance.

Here’s an easy step-by-step tutorial for adding a constantly updating Google calendar to your site, and the good news – it takes very little technical expertise!

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