John Costilla recently pointed me to Jeremiah Owyang’s blog from yesterday about Social Media and the Economic downturn.  Jeremiah’s work always inspires me, and today was no different.

Since we work with 3 groups in our WeAreTeachers community, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts regarding where the economic downturn and social media opportunities intersect for Teachers, Professional Associations, and Companies that do business in the education space.  I’ll follow Jeremiah’s lead and create my comments in the form of lists.

Teachers:
1.    Teachers’ Family Income.  Teachers in traditional education institutions are probably less likely to get ‘laid off’ than their counterparts in other industries.  While school district budgets will be challenged, they tend to lay off teachers as a last resort.  That said, teachers can forget about big salary increases for a while, and the overall family may be more dependent on that income than before, as spouses jobs may go away.
2.    Teachers Need to Augment income.  More teachers are likely to seek additional income to supplement their base salary.  Expect more private tutors, more teacher-created-content for sale, and teachers more available to participate in focus groups, dialogue, or other opportunities to enhance income. We support these opportunities for Teachers at WAT, and are working hard to be sure our tools help put money in teachers’ pockets as quickly as possible.
3.    Student family income.   Students may get their personal budgets cut.  Many families are cutting back on cable tv, music downloads, video game purchasing, etc.  In a tough economy, families focus on the basics, so students may  have more time for study, for learning, and for spending time online.

Associations:
1.    Member acquisition.  With challenged budgets, professional associations must be sure their value proposition is clear and improving for existing members.  Associations will need to reach out to non-traditional methods to get new members.  We think the WAT network, together with the I Am Teacher app in Facebook can help.
2.    Conference/Vendor revenue.  This one is BIG.  Most associations rely on their yearly conference for sustaining revenue.  Fewer teachers may travel to these, and, more important, fewer vendors will exhibit and pay the associated fees.  We think there will be a huge increase in online Un-Conferences,  NetCafes, and other vehicles to engage.  WAT has technology to support this approach.
Companies in Education:

1.    Cost of Support.  A huge cost of sales for most companies is the expense of training end-user teachers in their products.  There will be a big move toward online alternatives.  At WAT we will have an on-line delivery tool and scheduling system available for our Business Affiliates later this fall.  This will represent a huge cost savings for these companies.
2.    Renewals.  Everyone in this business understands it’s not just about the initial sale.  Real success occurs when end-users embrace solutions, and renewal business is secured.  Companies are seeking ways to make those connections, but are not always able to get teachers to come to their company-specific communities.  WAT provides a secure, inexpensive way to provide PROFESSIONAL engagement between teachers and the companies they do business with.
3.    Local connection.  While business is global, much of business is also local. Many of our business affiliates are putting up regional profiles in WAT in order to craft a local engagement with their customers.
4.    Options to Vendor/Booth Displays.  Participation in tradeshows has a big history in this industry.  But  ROI is hard to measure.  Many companies are looking at Un-Conferences online, NetCafes, and other online tools to connect to users.  This is going to be a high-growth arena.

The bottom line is this:  Like other things in life, an economic downturn can be a very scary thing.  OR (AND??) it can be an opportunity for us to re-think how we engage, live, interact, and do business.  And this inevitably brings out creative juices, new solutions, new opportunity.  We hope WeAreTeachers can be part of the fuel to that positive response, and look forward to YOUR good ideas to guide our work!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.