Awareness days can be a great way to connect with people with similar interests and reach out to a relevant audience. We’ve compiled an always up-to-date calendar of some of the most relevant awareness days for those involved in teaching and education. These are key days that those in education are likely to engage and are a good way to reach and engage your target audience.

We’ll keep this calendar updated throughout the year. Simply save this link to your bookmarks and you can take a look at it whenever you like. Click here to view it. Please let us know if you’d like to suggest an event for inclusion.

How to make the most of awareness days: Our top tips on how to join or start a conversation.

Focus on the awareness days that link best with what you do

Pick a few awareness days that link best with what you do and think carefully about how you are going to start or join the online conversation on that day. Make sure that there’s a clear link between what you do and the particular awareness day.

Don’t just try to sell your product or service. Think about how you can join the conversation and what you can add to it.

Avoid direct selling instead think about how you can add to the debate and, through this, promote your brand. Some ideas are:

• Create a piece of useful content, such as a guide or article, that helps people to understand the importance of the awareness day
• Offer your solution to an issue that the awareness day promotes and ask for people’s opinions
• Share case studies that are relevant to the awareness day it’s fine for these to talk about your product or service, as long as they add to the conversation
• Ask people to share their recommendations. For example on World Book Day, you could encourage your followers to share a photo of their favourite book

Whatever your link, make sure that you are inspiring people to respond and engage with you.

Plan ahead

Making the most of an awareness day needs planning. Think about the marketing materials you’ll need, so you don’t miss out. Plan how you will use all your channels in the run-up to the day and during the day. You can schedule tweets, Facebook posts and emails in advance to give more time on the day to encouraging engagement and responding to comments.

Use them to secure media coverage

Awareness days can provide a great hook for a news story. They help to answer a journalist’s common question; ‘why is this relevant now?’. An awareness day also connects your news to a larger national dialogue. Many journalists will be looking for stories on these topics to coincide with the day, but make sure you speak to them ahead of the day to have the best chance of securing coverage

Use hashtags

Make a note of the hashtags for each awareness day and include them on any social media posts. This means that you’ll appear in the feed of anyone who is following that hashtag

Be present, be reactive

Once you’ve sparked a conversation, the key is to keep it going. Try to set aside time throughout the day to respond to or share any comments.