Speaker 1:
Shama Hyder covers technology for Forbes, and she says education finally is getting some creative [inaudible 00:00:07]
Shama Hyder:
Absolutely is. There’s never been a better time than to be in education, whether you’re a teacher, whether you’re a student, or you’re a parent, and you have so many options these days.
Speaker 1:
But the teachers worry that, “Hey, this computer is going to replace me.”
Shama Hyder:
The technology today is not meant to replace teachers. In fact, it’s making their job so much easier. It’s making it better. So do you remember when you were in school and it used to be that you would go listen to the classes and then you would go do homework? So many of these models are flipping that around so that you go home and listen to the boring lectures, and when you come to the classroom, you’re actually doing homework with a teacher where you can get one on one attention.
Shama Hyder:
This generation is the most educated generation in the history of the U.S., of the world. Isn’t that amazing? The most educated generation ever. And an educated generation means that they are naturally more skeptical, they ask more questions, and they want to be better informed. They’re also richer than Gen-X. Did you know that? The Gen-Xers in the room are like, “Sure, why not? Take that too, Millennials. You got everything else. Just go ahead and take the money too.” But of the 15% … So if you look at America and you see how many people have wealth more than $2 million, right, accumulated wealth, 15% of that population is Millennials. So this idea that Millennials don’t have money is absolutely not true. Now they’re more careful in how they spend it, they ask more questions, they do their due diligence, but this is a well off generation. They’re also socially savvy, they’re connected, they want to know what’s happening in the world, they look beyond just kind of what you’re trying to show them.
Shama Hyder:
I’ll share a funny story with you. I think as consumers have gotten demanding more and more, we as producers and marketers have to rise to meet that same demand that we as consumers have created. But I’ll give you an example [inaudible 00:02:02] book called The Zen of Social Media Marketing.
Shama Hyder:
It’s now coming out in its fourth edition but when the second or third edition was coming out I … This was right when the iPad came out. Right when the iPad came out and this gentleman emailed me and he said, “Hey, Shama, love your stuff. So disappointed that I can’t read your book on my iPad.” And I talked to my team and I was like, “Guys, didn’t it come out yesterday? Like weren’t you … Some of you like Mac people standing in line?” And they were like, “Yeah.” So I responded to him and I said, “Sir, do you mean the iPad, the device that came out yesterday?” What do you think he responded with? “Yes.” He responded with, “Yes”.
Shama Hyder:
That’s just how quickly things change and how we’re used to getting … How quickly we expect that we get a new device and everything should just work seamlessly on it. These are the choices that we’ve grown accustomed to. Right now for example, some of you are hearing this live, how many think, Hey, I’d love to get that deck later. You know, I’d love to see the slides later. How many would love to see this as a podcast that you can listen to while you work out? More hands. How many would like a video of this to watch later? Fantastic. How many of you would like me to print this, transcribe it, print it, and put it on your desk? You know, I will say it’s an organic process. So I would say that half of the stuff we try doesn’t work, but we’re very quick to pin it.
Shama Hyder:
So I think the trick is knowing how long to try something before pivoting. So some things, they take a while. Like certain influencers are like, man, if you could just get this one person for our client, like that would be golden. And it might take four months for us to continuously keep doing that. I think the broader question … To answer your broader question, a lot of it is providing value consistently and we do that through content. So we like to think that we out educate anyone else trying to build a community. We have more blog posts, better blog posts, we’re like … We’re always raising the bar for ourselves, right? And I personally see myself as sort of chief value officer. Like my job is to create good value for my employees, for the greater audience, for our clients. And then that gets disseminated across all our social platforms.
Shama Hyder:
But we always start with good content. Like how are we constantly providing value? And how do we do it in different ways? So not just, hey, we’ve got written content, but infographics, videos, podcasting. How do we take this information and give it to people in the way that they want to absorb it. This is the number one I think mistake people make in marketing in general is a lack of consistency. Whatever you do, you have to do it consistently. It’s rare that you’ll say, “Oh, I set up a Pinterest board and got a couple of pictures and yeah, that’s it.” You know? And it doesn’t work that way. It’s really about doing something consistently that helps build your brand and visibility.
Shama Hyder:
You know cross-pollination is this idea that you can’t see things in silos and that you have to be able to pick different ideas from various areas internally and externally, right? And what I mean by that is you have to be able to look at the broader picture. For example, your employees can be your best source for sharing information, for getting social media posts shared, for distribution. But so many people don’t think about it that way. They’re like, “Oh, they’re our employees. That’s not …” But your employees can be your best marketing force.
