What happens when attention dips before the holiday break, buying cycles heat up for 2025–26 budgets, and your channels keep changing the rules at the same time? You get November, a short, high-leverage month that rewards focus and relationship building.

In this episode, Elana gets tactical. She maps the November mindset for educators, lays out timely moments you can use without feeling gimmicky, and gives specific, platform-by-platform plays you can run this week. She closes with two sharp prompts from LinkedIn that will force you to rethink how you invest in your network and your schedule.

What You’ll Learn

• How to show up with real gratitude that uplifts educators, customers, advocates, and your team
• Why November demands high-utility content and PD that lightens the classroom load
• Timely November moments to use well, World Kindness Day, NaNoWriMo, Thanksgiving, and post-holiday retail windows
• Exactly what to prioritize on Instagram, heavy Reels, created and scheduled in app
• What is actually working on LinkedIn, carousel storytelling, micro frameworks, short visual lessons, plus a reach boost tied to new commenters
• A simple Facebook format that still drives group and page engagement
• How to keep your brand visible while leaders research vendors and set budgets for 2025–26
• Two mindset checks to strengthen your network and your calendar discipline

Access the full episode show notes.

Well, hello everyone. Thank you for joining. Today we've got a special episode. We heard from you last time that you liked what I did, these quick hits of just really action packed insights and tips. So let's do it. I am Elana Leone. I'm jumping in as your host and your guest as one. Today we're gonna be talking about November. So what the heck is happening in November as it relates to education, technology, as marketers, all of the things.

Then I'm gonna give you some really quick hits for what's happening in your platforms. I've got something on Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Facebook. And don't miss the end, I'm gonna be talking about LinkedIn. So I'm always on LinkedIn learning and soaking up knowledge from others. I wanna bring out two special people that changed my thinking this week. So let's get into it, November.

pausing here. I gotta go find the post.

So November is really like three-ish weeks, maybe two and a half if you've got some students that are just not having it and getting antsy into the break, right? And I know that you as marketers aren't teachers, but you're talking to these folks, right? They're either the users of your platform, those really loyal customers, the future users of your platform, and then your buyers are actually making sure that your users are,

Shoot, I can't even, I gotta redo this.

Okay, so the month of November. This month is all about meeting educators with gratitude. This is the wonderful month of Thanksgiving, which happens to be my personal favorite holiday, right? So gratitude, this is a great time to uplift educator voices, see what their biggest challenges are and try to help them as much as possible. Especially as we get later and later into the month, their attention is gonna be harder.

This is a great way to make timely uplifting posts that align with your brand. Thanksgiving, obviously at the end of the month where we have the break in the schools. So gratitude. How are you sharing the gratitude for your community of educators, for the people that have put their trust into buying your product or service, for the impact made, for your team? There's so much gratitude to be had, right? Nano.

So National Novel Writing Month, known and lovingly as NanoRymo, is a national novel writing month that students actually write an entire novel in a month. It is awesome. If you don't know about it, Google it. It's a great way to celebrate student voice. You can talk about it if you are in English, literacy, also integrated studies, science, all of the things.

So that's a great one to put on your radar. If you wanna just have some fun, get into the edutainment, engage your community as humans as well. There's National Sandwich Day, which is 11-3. There's Fibonacci Day, which is toward the end of the month, right? So November, gratitude, uplifting educator voices as much as possible. want, if you...

If you'd like a free copy of our most popular download, the EdTech Planner, go ahead on our LinkedIn or email us at hello at leoneconsultinggroup.com. Just throw the word out planner, we'll give it to you free. It is no longer on our website. We are getting ready to launch our 2026 EdTech Marketer Planner and we couldn't be more excited.

So that is November. Jordan, the only thing I worry about is National Sandwich Day is already gone by the time I mentioned it. And I thought about it afterwards.

Yeah, but Sandwich Day is the third.

let me do one more take on it. Because there's more, now I look closer, there's things like,

Black Friday, like the kindness pickle day, substitute teacher day, there's some other things in there I could have put in there, it's just the post didn't have it.

Okay, let me do another take and see which one's better.

Okay, November in education. This month is really all about meeting educators, the people using your product or service with gratitude, the people in your ecosystem with gratitude. I want you to think about everyone who helps you, right? So, you know, this is your amazing team. These are people that buy your product and have put the trust in your product or service. These are people that consistently use your product. These are people that advocate for your product.

So think about the gratitude and how you can truly uplift them in innovative and unique ways where they feel seen, right? So it's not just about the content. I want you to think about really making this a moment where we can pause and reflect and grow together with deepening relationships, right? So as November.

As November progresses, Thanksgiving holiday comes into play here. So we've got energy dips low from the student side. Teachers really have to do more in less time. So think about how you can frame that with timely webinars, timely resources to help people that are really in the thick of it in this month. Some things that you can think of for timely events.

We have NaNoWriMo, so National Novel Writing Month. It is all month long. This is where students jump in and write an entire novel in one month. If you don't know about it, Google it. It is awesome and very, very inspiring. Some things that you can throw in the mix to get that edutainment, to connect with educators as humans. We've got Fibonacci Day at the end of the month. We've got National Substitute Teacher Day. We've got a day just for pickles.

On the 14th, we've got National Entrepreneurship Day. On the 18th, we've got International Students Day. On the 17th, International Tolerance Day. On the 16th, right? And then after Thanksgiving, we've got that Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and then Cyber Monday, too. So I know that a lot of you are selling B2B in the schools in the districts, and you say, well, it doesn't really apply to me. But what that does is it signals people.

And it is more in the B2C market, I will tell you, but it is a great way to put your products out there if you want to do discounts, if you want to highlight things in a time-sensitive way, right? We know that people are aligning to the buying cycle as much as possible, but your brand might have some things. You might do workshops, you might have downloads, right? You might have things that people can buy on your website as a whole.

think about aligning to the time when people buy and expect discounts too. So that's just a little bit of going on in the month of November. We are moving into a very short month in December next month. So that's going to be two-ish, maybe three-ish weeks before kids go on break. And it's also the end of the calendar year for marketers that are tracking goals.

Right now people are winning awards like crazy. People are hitting the ground on conferences. Keep it up. Make sure that you're in feeds and you're top of mind while people are looking for products to help them solve their biggest challenges.

Okay, stopping. Was that okay?

It's exhausting, I don't know why.

I'm reading this calendar and you might hear me go like this and this because I was reading in that freaking calendar that I could barely see. Okay.

Okay, I don't have next time I want to get birthdays involved. But okay, I'm going to go into the length algorithms now.

So as promised, this is something new, but I'm telling a lot of my clients these things and I do not not want to tell you. These are really quick tips on social media channels that are improving engagement right now, improving reach. Things are changing all of the time in social media, so let's get into it. So let's start with IG. I just want to give you a blanket statement that everything is dead on IG except Reels.

If you are not doing reels, at least 60 % of your programming, you're just posting for posting sake, and those are not getting the reach and engagement that really it will show diminishing returns of you even creating that post. So if you have content, say, how can I turn this into a reel? It could be as simple as adding music. It could be as simple as using a Canva template. So.

Interactive storytelling, yes, this takes longer. Everything is taking longer on social media. Again, the goal is quality and deepening relationships. Specifically with IG, you're talking to educators. So everything is dead on IG except Reels. I want you to hear that. Every other social media expert will tell you the same thing as well as Adam Mocery who's been dropping hints about that like crazy. On top of that, Adam is talking about,

I don't want you just creating reels. I want you creating reels on the platform itself. I want you on your phone creating reels. And yes, there's been a lot of research back and forth that debunking this, but now it is truly real. And on top of that, when you go in and use the platform features on your phone, there are 10 million more features than any API integration can do with whatever platform tool that you're using, whether it be Sprout Social, Metricool.

Hootsuite social, those things, Zoho, none of them have an integration where you can do trial reels, for example, where you can jump in and add those stickers and polls and all, that trending audio, you can do that all on platform. So if you're saying, I wanna work ahead, Alana, yes, I want you to work ahead, you can schedule those reels in platform as well, okay? So.

On platform, think real specific as much as possible, otherwise you might be just wasting your time. LinkedIn, the algorithm is crazy town. It is so different now. Everybody is moaning about their drastic decline in reach. I actually haven't seen it, and I'm not just saying this to kind of toot my own horn. It's more about like,

How do you use LinkedIn, whether you're an individual contributor and you are the thought leader of your organization? I don't want you ever to stop thinking that. I want you not to be an infomercial of your organization, but you to show up your authentic self, yourself that is passionate about your brand, right?

On LinkedIn, if you show up with your heart, if you show up with your passion and you share your knowledge, you will continue to get reach. I know that sounds like hippie and a little bit of woo woo. And yes, there's best practices in terms of copy, but I don't want you doing this schedule ahead and forget type of thing on LinkedIn, whether you're a brand or you're an individual that does not work. And you will see again, not worth your time posting diminishing returns.

some couple of things on the new LinkedIn algorithm. We will do a deeper dive on this on LinkedIn itself and be talking about this, because there's a lot to unpack in the new algorithm. But I want you to know that any post that you have that receives a comment from somebody who hasn't engaged with you in the past 30 days, receives an average reach boost of over 40%. So I know I'm talking really fast. But what that means is that if you've got a post, whether it be from your brand or you personally,

and someone who hasn't engaged with you in 30 days comes in and makes a comment, LinkedIn sees that and says, gosh, they're expanding their circle. That's what LinkedIn wants you to do. They want you to grow your level of influence. They want you to expand from your inner circle that you consistently talk to. And they're willing to do that by increasing your reach by specifically 42 % is the study. The next thing on LinkedIn I wanna talk about is that

Video may or may not work for your brand on LinkedIn. Video has been trying to make a resurgence on LinkedIn. I don't think it's succeeded. But there are other things that you can do on LinkedIn that are working quite well. Carousel storytelling. Carousels are those document posts. I want you to upload a PDF. I want you to tell a story. I want that first slide to be, wow, I cannot not.

click through and see this, see this transformation of this person. Works really well with success stories, by the way, or case studies. But don't do it in a boring way. Do it in a human-centered way. Also think about short visual lessons where something I can stop the scroll and go, oh, five point framework to do X. Something quick and easy. One thing I don't want you to go down the rabbit hole on with LinkedIn, if you're a B2B trying to sell to schools and districts, don't talk to the teacher.

Don't give them a framework on how to engage your class, but talk to the buyer and say, this is the unique framework that we do use. So you can twist it a little bit, but micro frameworks, carousel storytelling, short visual lessons. So those formats that trigger fast interaction and higher dwell time. So dwell time is like, I stopped the scroll and I'm just looking at that. I'm digesting that information.

So those are two things I want you to be aware of with LinkedIn. LinkedIn overall reaches down. I want you to stay your authentic self. I want human forward. I want you to think about ways to engage people that haven't engaged with your page in a while. You can proactively tag people. It's not cheating. And then think about how you can stop the scroll when things are super value-driven, micro-frameworks, carousel storytelling, and short visual lessons.

And lastly, I know Facebook is not cool anymore, right? We don't talk about Facebook in the innovative way we used to and it's become so pay to play. But this is where educators are and not just teachers, there are administrators out in the groups area. Administrators aren't going to follow a ton of brands here and there, but they are there as well. I want you to think about what is platform specific that Facebook likes? And it is kind of old school, but Facebook likes a good text post. And if you don't know what a text post is,

You just open up Create, start writing, and then you'll see some background images. So background colors, pink, confetti, click on it, it will turn itself into an image. We call those image text posts, and there might be a better technical term. They are limited by character count, right? So you'll play around, so as soon as you get past that character count, it'll turn just into a regular text post. You don't want that. But text posts are really great.

and it's a simple, easy way that can be check-ins to your audience. Hey, an emoji, tell us how your week's going. Announcements, hey, we just won an award. Super timely right now, by the way. And then even questions. They could be fill in the blank. They could be funny sayings. So they work to engage. They stop the scroll because they're big and they're bold. So do not forget that on Facebook and tell me if they've increased your engagement as well.

next section.

All right, friends, we have reached the end of our episode where I'm going to share a couple of things from people that have changed my thinking recently on LinkedIn. You know me, I'm on LinkedIn. Find me over at Alana Leoni. I'm the only one, which is really nice. And I'd love to learn from you as well. But I'm going to give a couple of shout outs here. One is to my friend Alice, Alice Meyerhoff, M-Y-E-R-H-O-F, Meyerhoff. So she

told this great story on LinkedIn where she lost her hat in Germany and she lost it in the airport and she knew that she left it there but she had to go on a plane or something like that. So she did this whole story about how she had to rely on a network to go pick up the hat at the airport, put it in customs, the whole rigamarole to get the hat back to her in the US, right? And she,

align this story to

the ecosystem in which we live. Like we are never in this world alone. And if you focus on being this sole person alone, you're doing it wrong. Humans thrive on connection. They love helping each other. They're based on relationships and aligning that to our workplace as well. So when we're thinking about running sales teams, running marketing teams, even running an organization in education.

We are not doing it alone. I don't care if you're a team of one in marketing or a team of three, you should be thinking of yourself as the ecosystem as much as possible. And she had this line at the end of her story that made me stop. And she said, I want you to look at your network. Who could you call right now who would actually inconvenience themselves to help you? Right?

Think about that, who could you call right now who would actually inconvenience themselves to help you? And everything we do, you should be building relationships and not building relationships for the sake of, okay, well, down the road, I'm gonna call it a favor and whatnot. We are all in this together and we should have a network that we can rely on to help each other to share. If you don't have communities, this is your wake up call. You should have informal communities, you should have formal communities, you should have referral networks.

So she said, if this list is short, that's your business development problem, not your pipeline, not your pitch, not your pricing. Those are all important. But if people don't care enough to help you at times when you need it most, you're doing it wrong. So start building those relationships. So thank you, Alice, for that reminder. The next one.

comes from my from Amber. Amber posts regularly. She is a consultant, Amber Davis. Amber E is an Easter Davis on LinkedIn, but she just had a fun story that made me think of myself personally. And I'm finding myself getting caught up in the hustle and bustle even more so. Where one minute, if I have one minute extra time, I feel like it's a luxury. And in my head, I say, my God, what am I going to do in this one minute? I have so much time.

That, my friend, is a red flag, right? So she told a story of she had a meeting to go to during her lunch break, her meeting went over at work, and she was rushing and rushing, found out that while she was rushing, she didn't even have the right paperwork to go to the appointment and all of the things, and she just pulled over on the side of the road and she thought to herself, why didn't I just reschedule this to begin with? Why do I put unrealistic demands on myself?

So I am rushing and almost setting myself up to fail. And that's what I've been feeling about myself lately is I have these crazy schedules. I put all of these goals and checklists and things that I probably won't be able to accomplish in the week. And then I feel bad and guilty I didn't get to all of it. So if this feels familiar, I just want you to pause and say, how can I make?

my goals, my workload more realistic so I can do deep, high quality work, not get frantic, and then end the day saying, wow, I accomplished everything I needed to do and more. So that was my pause of like, what can I do to reschedule? What can I do to push off things as much as possible? So thank you Amber for that. You can follow her on LinkedIn, Amber E. Davis. So my friends, I hope you found this practical, strategic,

bite-sized as much as possible, I will get better at making these shorter. So enjoy, please continue to give me feedback. Sounds like everybody is enjoying them. And I will see you next time on all things marketing and education.