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LinkedIn's AI Penalty, Why Email Still Wins, and the EdTech Fall Conference Rush
Episode 37 • 15th October 2026 • Marketing and Education • Elana Leoni | Leoni Consulting Group
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LinkedIn's algorithm is now penalizing posts that read as fully AI-written, cutting their reach. For EdTech marketers already stretched thin, this isn't a minor algorithm tweak. It's a signal that authenticity is becoming the real ranking factor, and content strategy needs to catch up.

At the same time, October is in full swing with conferences and the usual run of thematic days, all stacking on top of each other. The right amount to take on usually comes down to capacity, picking a couple that fit the brand rather than trying to hit them all.

This field notes episode covers what's moving fast right now, the shift in what earns reach on LinkedIn, why email still works despite the spam flood, and which fall conferences and dates are worth prioritizing.

What You’ll Learn

1️⃣ Why fully AI-written LinkedIn posts are losing reach, and what actually works instead

Posts fully written by AI are now getting 30 to 40% less reach on LinkedIn, per data from expert Richard van der Blom. AI educator Charlie Hills, who grew from 3,000 to 250,000 followers, treats AI as a research and consistency tool rather than a ghostwriter. The test before publishing is simple, would this sound like something only its author could have written.

2️⃣ Why a smaller, active email list beats one that's bigger but flooded with spam

More than half of all email is now spam, and over half of that is AI-generated. Despite the flood, email is still one of the only channels a brand truly owns, and only 3 to 5% of any list is ready to buy at a given time. A smaller, active list consistently outperforms a bigger, inactive one.

3️⃣ Which fall conferences are worth prioritizing

October is one of the busiest conference months of the year. FETC's prices increase at the end of the month, NCTM's national math conference lands around the same time, and Digital Citizenship Week runs October 20 - 24, carrying extra weight given current AI uncertainty in schools. CETA and the EdWeek Market Brief Summit follow in early-to-mid November, before attention fades the week before Thanksgiving.

Why It Matters

EdTech marketing teams are often small, stretched across content, outreach, and events, with little room for guesswork. Knowing that AI-written posts cost reach changes how a team should spend its time on LinkedIn, pointing effort toward authentic voice rather than volume. The same logic holds for conferences and email, where budgets are tight and chasing every deadline or inflating a list is a worse bet than building fewer, trusted relationships deliberately. For teams working to earn trust with skeptical school and district leaders, all three threads point to the same idea, consistency and a human touch matter more than speed or automation in each case.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

Transcripts

Elana Leoni (:

Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. I'm your host, Elana Leoni, and I have had the honor of working alongside education and ed tech brands for almost two decades. As a marketer, I've built lasting connections with educators, innovators, and leaders who are all shaping the future of learning. And I don't say that lightly. On this podcast, I bring those voices forward so you can learn from their experiences, shift your perspective, and put those things into action.

Hello, friends. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing in Education. As we've done a couple of times now, this is a special episode. We're calling it the Education Marketers Field Notes or something similar to that. And if you have a better name, let me know. But basically, it's just me, and I want to give you all the tips, the tricks, the strategies, the trends, things to put on your radar.

And I want to do it really quickly. So my goal is to get these smart tidbits, couple of sections, what conferences, what awards, some things I'm learning that I'm really excited about. So let's get into it. All right. So you may notice a little bit of tinge in my voice. I am sick. It's okay. That means I might repeat myself because I'm a little dizzy. And repeating is great because our attention is everywhere nowadays. So I also tell myself,

I've done a podcast when I had COVID. I literally had them like deep in COVID doing a podcast. And I don't recommend it. But if you are interested in what that sounds like, I will put that episode in the show notes. It's actually a great episode. It's about teacher appreciation. And it's with some dear friends that have 20 plus years in education and they're talking about what really matters. And again, teacher appreciation isn't just for the month of May. Please find ways to always appreciate educators.

So I'm gonna put those in the show notes just for kicks, but just know that I'm a little sick dizzy head and you might hear me say things multiple times. So let's get into it. So I just attended a webinar by Richard Vanderbloem. He is, I call him the LinkedIn guru. I don't even like the word guru. Maybe he's like the LinkedIn algorithm dude, but he's the guy I learn from all of the time about what's truly working in LinkedIn.

He had someone on his master class that I attended, Charlie Hills. And Charlie Hills is really interesting. I'll put his link to his profile in the show notes, but he is this top-ranked AI educator in the UK. And he started out a couple of years ago with 3,000 followers. He now has over 250,000 followers. And he was going through his presentation and was like, yeah.

This one post got a million views. And I just like literally gave him that emoji with a shocked face in the presentation. And he had a lot of those. And I know it's not about all the views, and it's really about talking to your audience, but this guy really got focused. In particular, he used AI to help him streamline his operations to get that constant cadence and growing presence on LinkedIn.

And that made me pause and I want to share a couple of things from this masterclass from you for you. See? Stick head, stick head. All right. So why are we even talking about LinkedIn? You know I have a bias with LinkedIn, but right now relationships are everything, every freaking thing. I t we're gonna talk a little bit about email, but people don't look at your email if they don't know you, if they don't trust you.

And it's really important that we start foundationally building relationships. One, we're in education. We care. We should be partners that show up and build credible and authentic and meaningful relationships. Not because we have to, because we want to. But I can't think of a more scalable way to do this and build relationships and to rather than doing it on LinkedIn. Yes, you can go to conferences. Yes, you can go to networking and things like that, but that's boots on the ground.

That's not necessarily scalable. And LinkedIn is the place. You can connect with others, learn from others, teach others. I suggest you do all of those three. And LinkedIn is my home. It's very similar to the old school Twitter days. And if you know, you know, that was the vibe. That was where we learned. That's where we had the Twitter chats and we became best friends from people that we never got to meet in person. And I learned so much. LinkedIn is that now, if you will allow it to be for you.

All right, so let's get into those tidbits, right? So some of these are going to be a little bit AI oriented within LinkedIn. Some of these are just going to be, whoa, that's really cool. And I'm I should do that right now on LinkedIn. Okay, so Richard's data. I'll put a link to the show notes of what his data is, but it's based on his algorithm report. But he's constantly gathering data in combination with a company called Authorup. But Richard's data shows that fully written AI posts get 30%.

To 40% less reach. And that's not a surprise. You know, they're just, they don't sound like you, you know, now LinkedIn could detect what is fully AI. So I want you to always think about it's not about use AI or not use AI, just like the screen time debate. By the way, there's always this beautiful magic in the middle. But I want you to think about if I look at this, and this is great for branding, by the way, too, but could only have I written this?

Does this sound like me? Does this allow my experience and show that this is Edlana's experience? Could only have I written this? And if the answer is no, and it's some generic like, here's how you win in education, rephrase it immediately. AI can be a great drafter, can be a great outliner. I want a human hard touch on everything that goes out on LinkedIn. And to get AI thinking and sounding like you more.

I don't know how many of you knew about or know about MD, like is in Mary, a D as a dog, kind of like a doctor, MD. It means markdown. It's a type of file that AI reads. It's a simple text file. And basically you can have AI create them. And the ones I like, they're they're foundational files that tell AI, hey, this is me. This is what I use. This is my ideal customer. This is my voice.

These are the tools I use, those types of things. I think just to be simple, he had like Charlie when he talked about his MD files that you put into a Claude project or a chat GPT. I don't know what their project is, but something, some area where you can put in and say, hey Claude, hey chat GPT, hey perplexity. Here is me. They're called MD files. Basically, we can't create MD files as far as I know. I can't go ahead and just say, turn this, revert this to an MD file. I just say,

Hey, I'm going to tell you everything about me. I'm going to upload all my things, everything I've written written, all my voices. I want you to create two files, two MD files. One is everything I've written, my story. And then I want you to create one that's just about my voice and maybe one about my ideal customer. So these are MD files. And you can export MD files and save them because who knows? You always want to have backups, right? But

That was something new. And I actually had to put that in the chat. I'm like, how do you even create this? Silly question. So have that foundation. So what when AI is creating things for you, it's actually, you know, maybe 70% there. And then again, you have that hard human edit to say, hey, does this f is this something that only I could have written? So that's really, really important. And the reason why I'm just taking forever to explain one simple topic is because it is so important. So MD files are your friends.

Set up your AI to be better partners, better writing partners, better collaborators, better poking hole partners, and say, hey, is this something that Elana could have only written? And not and change the focus from here's how you do XYZ, how-to content will always be really great. By the way, on LinkedIn, the algorithm is now deprioritizing anything that has to do with here's how you win on LinkedIn.

They want to be that person to tell you how to win on LinkedIn. So you'll see us on our LinkedIn talking about here's how you can use AI because AI is increasing and the algorithm is surfacing up anything around AI more and more. I don't want you talking about AI if it has nothing to do with your business. And you also have to be really conscious in education to understand what the tide is, what the sentiment is within AI. So if you're talking about AI, I want you to talk about healthy screen time and how you have.

privacy policies and how you have all of the security around it and what role does AI play? And, you know, so, and that's a really great time to do that, by the way, when we approach digital citizenship week too. We'll get into more than that later. Another tip I got from this masterclass was all about repurposing. And that in itself is not something exciting. Everyone knows that you repurpose content, but algorithmically it's actually getting harder to win with repurpose

repurpose content. And what do I mean by repurpose? Cause there's a lot of different ways that you could define it. One is on LinkedIn, I've got a post and say it overperforms significantly. That is a signal that my audience likes it and the algorithm likes it. And guess what? It might align with what I'm passionate about and my expertise. So it's that beautiful magic in the middle. But I'm like, well, how can I make the most of this?

Right. So Charlie looks at it and says, How can I change the image slightly? How can I change the copy and maybe resurface it up in a month or so? As long as it's timely and relevant as well. If it expires, don't do this. But that's a real easy win because it's something that your audience has signaled, the algorithm has signaled, and you can just look at it and tweak it. Maybe you change, maybe it's a standalone image and you turn it into a carousel. Maybe you're still.

Talking about that topic specifically, but you do a talking head video. In addition to that, like, you know, he's talking about when he's looking at the new models of AI on LinkedIn. Obviously, we would be talking about something within education, or I would be talking about education and marketing. But within that, I can say, wow, this screen time debate was something that really people were interested in. And it was one of my top performers. I'm gonna piggyback off of that topic.

You always want to be as data informed as possible, but align it with your brand too. So don't be chasing trends. It has nothing to do with what you're doing. But you should not be posting in the beginning if it has nothing to do with your brand. So the two things, repurposing with data informed in mind. And then two, piggybacking. So when a certain topic is really exploding, try to find other ways.

To go deeper, to segment, to show the humanity behind your brand. Maybe you want to surface up your CTO and talk about it in depth. Who knows? But those are very simple. But even me, I was like, wow, sometimes I don't take the time to do that. And really, you always want to look at those signals of what truly works. And Richard, he had this saying in there and said, automate the homework, not the relationship. So again, we're talking about AI.

The homework could be use AI for research, use it for outlines. And we're we are talking about LinkedIn, by the way. What are we researching on LinkedIn? We're researching the foundation for our post. We might be researching prospects we want to reach out to. So use AI for research. You can outline codes. You can do outline a big in-depth LinkedIn newsletter. You can also use AI a little bit for the hooks of your post. Don't be overly promotional, like.

You know, I hate it when people the hook is really that first line within LinkedIn. I don't want you to like it sounds so like car salesmanly, or like so polished that I'm like, AI wrote that. Or, it doesn't sound like it came from an authentic human. And again, use that test. Can only Elana write that? Can only I write that? So you can use it to inform your hooks, quote unquote. I never ever want you to see.

Using AI for automated comments. So that's where it's don't use when Richard says not the relationship, that's what he means. Don't ever use AI to automate responding to comments. That is your gift to create that relationship with someone. If someone gives you a gift of responding or DMing you, you better take the time to show up as a human and start, you know, creating a relationship around it. We're all in this together. And I can't imagine if you're like, hey, great.

Post and it's like thumbs up, emoji, like that actually hurts you. So please never do that. When I'm saying scalable, I mean with intention as much as possible on LinkedIn. And, you know, I've talked about this on LinkedIn more and more and more, but the algorithm right now rewards consistency. So we want to show up. And when we show up, it's at least two times a week. By the way, so two to three times a week, I want you showing up on LinkedIn.

If that sounds super intimidating, I want you to start with one post. It could be, I could be talking about the company page. I could be talking about you personally. I work with clients and say you just show up once a week. And if until you can prove to me that you have a system to show up consistently once a week, I don't want you showing up twice a week because what happens is people come in hot to trot five times a week, and then I never see them months later.

So show up consistently. We know what that is all about. I talked about that in the last podcast, but show up consistently on your core topics. I don't want LinkedIn confused about what I talk about. I talked to I talk about marketing and what it's like to be a marketer in education. It could be a little bit of higher education, could be K-12 education, but I am in that lane. Within that, I might talk a little bit about AI. I might talk about buying cycles, but all of this has to do with marketing and education. That's what I talk about.

Sometimes I'll throw in a personal post, like you'll see me saying, hey, I'm sick on LinkedIn. But that's okay, you know, show your humanity, connect with people, deepen those relationships. So I want you all to walk away with this and say, how can I use AI thoughtfully within LinkedIn to scale more? And then really don't underestimate the power for LinkedIn to create in a scalable way, meaningful relationships and education.

So I'm gonna talk about something now that is not sexy. And in fact, it is like anti-sexy. People hate it. They're they're saying, my gosh, email is just not working anymore. And when we say email, we have to define: are we talking about cold emails where we used AI to scrape emails of our target audience? Or are we talking about our email list? Both of those are technically emails, but they're very different. In general, we have seen AI.

Blood, flood, flood emails. And across education, people are saying, my gosh, district leaders are saying, I'm getting hundreds of emails a day. Please stop. So you can tell that, you know, getting attention through that mass amount of email is harder and harder than ever. Some of the data I gathered, I was doing a how to sell socially in or how to sell via email. And I was doing a workshop around it. So I just got the latest data around it is.

I found out that 52% of all email is now spam. And then of that spam, how much do you think is AI generated? 51%. So, and that's only increasing more and more and more, right? So you want to make sure that we're standing out. We're using our humanity and we're, we're building those relationships as a foundation to be able to stand out.

You can bet if I email a school and district leader that I've known for a bit, that I've taken out, that I've I've taken a moment to recognize them, had a decent conversation with them, whatever it may be, they're going to recognize my name. And that actually might go into the primary inbox and I would want to respond to it. So that is really, really important. Email is losing ground, yes, because it's being flooded by AI, it's being flooded by spam. And

That's not gonna work. So you have to think about how can I, even if I haven't known somebody, how can I get warm intros? Potentially, if I don't have that ability to get a warm intro, I want to do some research about the person as much as possible. I wanna use those sources out there. You can use AI as well. I wanna look at school board notes. I wanna look at RFPs that are out, grants that are out.

Maybe the school or district has been in the news. I want to look at strategic plans, operation plans. I want to look at all that good stuff and just say, hey, I think I can help you. Or maybe I can't help you, but here's a really great resource that I think will help your current problem. Whatever it may be, I want it to be personalized and thoughtful and authentic. And sometimes I have to say, even when you do that, the first couple of times they won't respond because they don't know you and they don't trust you yet.

And that's the game. It's a flooded game in email. But why email is actually important and it still is. Email is really the only avenue, the only channel where you truly own, you truly own. And owning is not it's like it's very G.I. Joe. It's only half the battle, kid. Is afterwards, you have to figure out now that I have their email, how do I keep them active and healthy? Active and healthy is I'm feeding them things consistently that they're engaging with.

So really, email is again, I've got their email. I'm growing my list. I want to keep them on my list. I want to have an active list. A smaller active list is 20 million times more powerful and important than a big overly inflated list that you know has a 0.2% conversion rate and all it does is, you know, increase your expenses for hosting. So email is important within caveat. We've got to figure out a way.

That your brand and your sales team and your marketing team can win within this crazy flooded world. I am about to release an entire article about email marketing strategy for school leaders. How do we break through the noise? So look for that. And if you are not on our email list, sign up at Leoni Consulting Group.com. We send everything, all of our resources are free. But I want to give you a couple of quick, quick tidbits to whet your appetite.

This stat is not a new stat. I mean, it's it's recent enough that it's actually accurate, but when you when you think about it, it will fundamentally change how you approach email. Only three to five percent of your email list is ready to buy right now. That's freaking crazy, right? So we all assume, hey, I've got a product, let's do a campaign, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If only three to five percent are actually ready to buy right now.

And you're going out with hard calls to action to buy, there's a disconnect of what your audience wants there. And they will slowly become inactive and fall off or bring your deliverability down. So, what do you do for those people that are not ready to buy now, but they've shown some kind of interest in your brand and your resources? We give them, we have a content strategy that not only helps with discoverability with AEO, GEO, SEO, all the acronyms, but it

Also helps them be happy and builds that trust and credibility. So when they are ready to buy, they think of you. Or they may never be ready to buy. But guess what? They might influence a process or they might refer other people. Our industry is small and it's really based on trust in our professional learning networks, otherwise known as PLM. Throw in another accura acronym. All right. So that one is a really good stat and

Just like LinkedIn, I'm gonna leave with this last tip about email. And then we will put once this goes live, by the way, if you're on our email list, we'll send it to you, but we'll put it also in the show notes. But consistency. I don't want you peeking and saying, okay, I'm gonna email once every three months and it's gonna be great. You need to consistently show up with email. And again, I do scaffold it with my clients and I say, okay, let's get once a month newsletters out.

And those newsletters have to be value oriented. I don't want it to be a prom a promo RSS feed. And then maybe we can get in one type of email, a webinar, something we wrote, maybe it's a once a quarter demand gen type of email, whatever it is. I want some consistency in email. So then when we're thinking about it, we're not just like big peaks and valleys of, you know, emailing and all of a sudden not emailing. I want it just to be this consistent wave, right?

So that's a little bit of a kind of whet your appetite of what we've got going for email. We do a lot deeper dive and we'll put that in the show notes and then we'll email it to you if you are on our list. Okay, let's shift into what's happening in the rest of October and November and you know, well, maybe a foreshadow little bit of December. But this is the crazy time of year that people say it moves so fast they forget that like they it just whoa, what happened, right?

So October. We're deep in out to October right now. And for those of you that are pumpkin spice fan, you cannot avoid it. It is everywhere in the marketing land, in the consumer land. I was actually just thinking about fun ways to use pumpkin spice into the education realm. Have fun with it. I'm also debating on Halloween costumes. We'll probably see those memes go around with the teachers of the Halloween costumes of like,

You know, this is an English teacher, she hasn't had sleep, blah, blah, blah, blah. Those are kind of funny. I have seen some funny brands get into those memes and trends too. Just as a reminder, October is principal appreciation month. If you don't have that on your reader, please do. Even just can you imagine if you just reached out to the principals that you partnered with and say, Hey, just thank you for everything you do. A heartfelt note. Gosh, maybe even think about snail mail, fend them something.

Do stuff that really just says, hey, I see you. Those things really make a difference. And I would say that some of the most underappreciated people in our education ecosystem are principals. It is also National Bullying Prevention Month. It is National Book Month. So if your organization has books or authors, this is the time. Towards the end of the month is Digital Citizenship Week. I have talked about this in the past, but I think never has this week been more important than now in this world of uncertainty and AI.

How do we engage responsibly with technology? So, so important, especially when you have AI incorporated into your product. I want you to be a leader. I want you to be someone where people can think and say, well, I trust them. They're teaching us really good ways to engage with AI responsibly, a way that accelerates learning in a way that wasn't ever possible. Like SAMR model, think of it. So this is a great, great week for you to have.

Thoughtful strategy around digital citizenship week. That is the 20th through the 24th. We've got a day on writing on the 20th. Cat day shout out. I'm a cat mom, the 29th, Halloween, of course. Let's get into November. November is a weird month. It's a great month because we have that holiday break towards the end of the month.

And what I like to say to brands in November is whether you're talking to educators or school and district leaders or institutions, is this is our time to just show our gratitude. We've had a, you know, a couple of months in back to school. We've had almost a full year of action of how our company has grown and what we've been able to do. So I want to be able to say what can we do from a gratitude lens internally, but

Also externally too. November is this weird, like I I hinted at it before. I think technically we have three weeks in November, but attention gets super, super low that that last week rolling up to Thanksgiving break. So I like to say you have two-ish weeks in November to really get stuff done. And then guess what? You have like two-ish weeks in December. So it is go time. And speaking of months.

In November, we've got National Family Literacy Month. We've got some more book stuff. So National Authors Day. Again, if you want to highlight authors that might be power users, influencers, if you have a book, Family Literacy Day is also the first. We start going into my sister calls it Mordor. That's like the world of Mordor because we start getting dark.

And sad, right? So daylight savings times ends on the first. We have Dias de los Muertos. We have, election day. So even though election day isn't a hundred percent directly related to our world in education, everything reverberates to what's going on in our nation. And I can guarantee you, everyone's gonna be talking about election and election results on the third. So please don't go out with a big announcement, a big product release.

Knowing that that reverberation, depending on what happens, might last a week, might last two, might last three. I don't know. I'm just here for the popcorn, you know. We have things like National Steam Day on the 8th, first generation day. I love this day. I am a first generation high school. No, actually, my dad graduated high school, undergrad and grad. So I'm a first gen, proud of it. That's November 8th. We have National Young Readers Week. We've got Children's Books Week. We will put

All of this in the show notes. And again, we're about to release our planner. It is our annual ed tech planner. It has all of this in detail, which is super helpful. PDF you can download. If you're on our list, you will get it. So there's so many days you can think about. Again, you want to look at what's timely for my audience. What do they care about? What do we as a brand care about? And what makes sense within our capacity? You know, maybe I only have.

you know capacity and expertise to do it in the way we want to do it for two things a month. But I just want you to think a little bit more proactively and strategically. After Thanksgiving, we've got Black Friday, we've got Giving Tuesday, we've got Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday. If you have an e-commerce component, this is your go time. If you are a nonprofit, this marks a go time in terms of fundraising.

Let's get into conferences. October is probably one of the most populated, highest, whatever. It's it's all the conferences happening in October. We also have a really high month in June. We have a really high month in March. October, we're mid-October. Right now, we're getting off the heels of EdTech Week. I am super excited to see what.

comes out of that. I've got all my friends on text and DM and saying, hey, what'd you learn? And I want to read all about it. So right now that reverberation should be happening. We have Math Q, which is always a big conference on the East Coast. We have a math conference on the national side, NCTM at the end of October. Just shout out to F E T C. I go every year. It is the Florida Ed Tech, sorry, not Florida, future, future.

Jen Womble will be mad at me. Future of education technology. Lord, I'm sick. So I get a pass here. But the prices increase for FETC at the end of October. I would highly suggest you go to this show. I'm going to be there. So if you're going to be there, let me know. I'd love to meet you. We have CETA coming up in early November. We have Ed Tech or Ed Week Market Brief Summit in mid-November, and Madison, Nashville.

And speaking of Nashville, did you all hear about Bet? I don't think people know about this. So I'm kind of getting excited, even though I'm a little sick here. Is that Bet usually happens in the UK? It is the biggest ed tech show of the world. Happens in London every year in January, I believe. Bet is now trying to do Bet USA. And they are debuting in Nashville. And I've got to figure out the date. I believe it's like,

I believe it's like March, but I'll put it in the show notes. But I'm very excited about it. It's gonna be in Nashville next year. And I just want to give a shout out to my friend Christine Weiser. She is the new director of Bet USA. She was at Tech and Learning for a long time. So put that on your radar. We have one of the biggest shows in the world focusing in on USA and Nashville. Super exciting. At the end of November-ish, not Thanksgiving, but before that.

We've got NCTE in Philadelphia, which is all about English. We've got an IceGate, which is in New York, and always a really fun ed tech show. So lots of conferences to put on your radar. And again, conferences are expensive. Conferences also create relationships if you do it well. And one of the conference tips I will give you that wasn't mine, I'm going to steal it from my friend Karen Borchert. She, and we'll put it in the link in the show notes too.

But conferences are their number one way they get leads. And the why they do it, sometimes people say, I'm just not good at conferences, Yulana. I don't want to go to them. I stand at a booth and people just grab my swag and they're not good leads. What you want to do is start attracting the right folks with the right types of incentives. You have a promotion plan, we've got email, social, all the things. But what I want to focus on is when you do have the right people come to your booth and they say, okay, great. They've got some signals they might be ready to buy. They are the right person.

Don't just let them walk away. You know, you have their email, great. But then guess what? After the conference, you have to fight the flood of emails of people coming in. And then they have to remember they even met you because they met hundreds of people. So during that moment, say, hey, I'd love to walk you through it in more depth. Let's find a time next week. Get out your calendars right then and there. Book the demo then. my God. Sounds like common sense. So many people don't do it. Then you walk away with that conference with a

Full slate of demos next week. That's huge. That's a dream come true, right? So I want you to think about how you approach conferences, especially in this go time. All right, let's jump in to LinkedIn. So, as you know, I am always learning on LinkedIn. I love to highlight voices that I learn from every single day on LinkedIn. The first one goes to Aaron Moats.

Everyone knows Aaron. I don't need to like introduce her, but she's the CEO of Innovate EDU. I learned a lot from her. A lot of the time she's curating articles on LinkedIn, give her a follow. She posted something that said, it's not a new answer. It's trust and transparency. In education, innovation moves at the speed of trust. By the way, we also teach this about community building.

You always move at the speed of trust within community building. So really great parallel. Anyways, she says parents, students, and educators need to ask these critical questions about responsible tech use. And districts need those answers too. So Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, and I believe Edward Hilton, who is the CT, yeah, he's the CTO. He wrote something in district administration. And

That article is worth it. I'll put it in the show notes. It is titled, A parent wanted to see wanted screens out of his child's school. Here's what I told him. And it's a cool story. And it's actually quite short. But basically, a a father in his school district said, Hey, I don't want any tech in my classroom, in my my child's classroom. Can you please create a track that has no tech in the classroom? And rather than being defensive.

Or just giving him a blanket, here's our tech policy. He said, Why don't you come and see how we're using tech? And I want you to make up your mind. And he was able to see how technology was being used so thoughtfully. And I know that that's not a scalable thing. And Edward here also recommended, like says, hey, this isn't scalable. But it talks about how we need to be partners when people are demanding things that maybe are just based on a lack of information. And

It's just coming from a place that they care and they want their child to learn. How do we come together as partners rather than come in defensive or blanket answers? And this was a really beautiful story about how this when this parent came in, he was surprised by what he found on this school tour that, you know, nobody was passively watching anything. They were writing, building, they were working, they were doing all those things, right? So

He had some great stats too. And these are the stats you can use to educate parents, you know? But he said our students average 70 to 80 minutes a day on school devices. Out of roughly a seven-hour school day, that's under 20%. And in elementary school, students spend an average of just 36 minutes per day, right? And then he kind of combated and said, okay, well, what are the most visited things? They were like Google Docs, Google Search, Google Classroom. And then people were like, well, what about YouTube? And he's like,

Okay, got a stat for that too. We average about five minutes a day at the high school. So and it blocks district wide, you know, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat. So once a parent has that data, they might be less, hey, we need no screens, or like, hey, let's have a conversation that's productive and has the best interest of the learning at hand. So I loved that. Thank you, Erin Moat, for sharing that with your perspective. Go ahead and give her a follow on LinkedIn.

Last person I want to give a shout out to on LinkedIn, and apologies if I'm not pronouncing your name right, is Saida Ikra, I Q R A, S Y E D A is her first name. And she said, Hey, I watched two ed tech founders pitch the same investor same week. And that hook, by the way, that's her first line. I'm like, I'm I want to learn more. Again, that first sentence is key to pull people in because that's usually that preview. She said, founder A, we're disrupting the $8 billion tutoring market.

They had a 40-slide deck, zero paying schools. Everybody says that by saying, We're disrupting this, we're the Uber of this, blah, blah, blah. Zero paying schools. Founder B, we have six schools paying $400 a month each. It has an eight-slide deck. It has a screenshot of a teacher's thank you email. Founder B got the term sheet. So it really she underscored that, like,

You know, she is sat through a lot of pitches. And when you actually s hear educator voice, you hear the testimonials, you see it in action, you know, it's not this disparate like, hey, we're gonna disrupt this, but how does it actually work? And do you have validation of your product? Shout out to Kate Busby, by the way. When I think about product validation, I think about her. She's an amazing ed tech marketer. I will put her.

Podcast episode all about validation in our show notes. But proof beats projection every single time. And that was Saida's point. And nobody tends to bring up proof as much. I don't know, like we should. It shouldn't be about like the tam sam sum and like we're gonna conquer this market and we're the Uber of this or whatever. Like, let's get down to does this work? And does this work in a way that actually moves learning forward?

All right, kids. I am about to be done, flu head. I appreciate you sticking with me. And for those of you that like these episodes, these solo episodes, please let me know. I want to make these as, I don't know, awesome as possible. So let me know and go ahead and give us a review on our podcast. That helps us reach more and more people. Apple, podcasts, whatever you use, please just throw in those little reviews. Just say, hey, I learned something.

And that means more than you can think of. Plus, we do this to help our industry. It helps us reach more people. So thank you for listening. I appreciate you. We will be back next time for all things marketing and education. Take care, everyone.

Thanks again for listening to All Things Marketing and Education. If you like what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can find more episodes at Leoni Consulting Group.com backslash podcast. You can also continue the conversation with us on Twitter at Leoni Group or on LinkedIn. And don't forget, if you enjoyed today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and Libra review. We're so appreciative of every single subscriber and review we get.

And it helps us reach even more people that need help. So we'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.

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