Your yearbook index can be a useful resource for students and staff alike. This is especially true when years later, alumni pick up their yearbook and look for where they were featured! Talk about nostalgia!
A yearbook index can be much more than a list of where students or staff appear. In fact, it doesn’t have to be boring at all! The last few pages of your yearbook may seem like an afterthought, but it’s a great way to show off your creativity.
If you’ve reached this final yearbook milestone, your creative juices may be ebbing. Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered! These design tips and ideas for your yearbook index will make it really pop!
Design Tips & Ideas for Your Yearbook Index
Your yearbook index can be the perfect place to include leftover content. It’s also a great place to include candid shots. You can even use your index to highlight staff members. Here are 3 design tips and ideas you can use for your yearbook index.
Tie it to your Yearbook Theme
You’ve likely worked hard to get your yearbook theme just right. And why not? It is, after all, the essence of your yearbook! There’s no reason that your yearbook index cannot also tie in to your yearbook theme.
Stay consistent with your yearbook font. Make sure you’re using the same font and spacing in your yearbook index. It helps to keep your yearbook theme consistent!
You may wonder how you can get what is really a block of text to tie into your theme. It’s easier than you may think! Here are a few ways to tie your index to your theme:
- Use graphics
- Include textures
- Try a variety of colors
Even something as simple as a treatment can help tie your index to your overall yearbook theme. Have fun with it!
Use Mods
Mods are your yearbook’s equivalent to a sidebar or excerpt. In your yearbook index, mods can help provide a visual reference to a block of text.
Using mods in your yearbook index is also a great way to use any leftover content that you may have! Do you have visuals or photographs that just didn’t quite fit anywhere else? Why not try incorporating them into your yearbook index. It’s a great way to make it more visually pleasing..
Highlight Your Yearbook Staff
Let’s face it. If you’re on the yearbook staff, you probably spend most of your time prepping the content for your yearbook. Often, the yearbook staff members are the least featured individuals in the yearbook!
Your yearbook index can change all that. It’s the perfect place to highlight your yearbook staff. Some creative ways you can incorporate your yearbook staff include:
- Adding in quotes from staff members – their highlights when creating the yearbook!
- Get staff members together to make the letters themselves. (Bonus, this can be a barrel of laughs trying to coordinate!)
- Highlight accomplishments your team achieved during the year.
Your yearbook index is an important source of reference, and with these design tips and ideas for your yearbook index, it can be a fun and visually striking reference!
Not a Customer Yet? Contact Us Today for a FREE Quote!
Thinking ahead to next year’s yearbook already? At YearbookLife, we pride ourselves on our competitive pricing, customer and technical support, fast delivery, and our free, easy-to-use software. If you’d like to request a quote today, please click here.
It’s getting to that time of the year! After the many hours spent creating and designing your yearbook, it’s time to ramp up the marketing! Effective marketing will help boost sales of your yearbook.
The end of the school year can be a busy time. Sporting events, exams, competitions all compete for our time and attention. With so much going on already, it can be hard to generate yearbook sales. How can you generate the buzz needed to sell out your yearbook?
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered! This ultimate yearbook marketing guide will help make your yearbook a sell-out success.
The Ultimate Yearbook Marketing Guide
Make your yearbook a sell-out success with these easy steps.
Define Your Values
It’s true of any effective sales technique: if you want customers to purchase your product, you have to offer them value. This doesn’t just mean price! Value can come in many forms, from an authentic brand identity to meeting your customers’ needs.
When it comes to your yearbook, you want to define values that are relevant to your audience. Clear, defined values can be the framework for powerful messaging in your yearbook. Some values that you may want to consider include:
- Celebrating student achievements
- Demonstrating the sense of community in your school
- Keeping memories of friends and events
Once you have decided on your values, make sure you stick to them. Use the core messaging from your values to help your yearbook marketing efforts. Remember to keep your messaging and tone of voice consistent throughout!
Use Social Media
Social media is a powerful yearbook marketing tool. Think of how much time you spend on social media on a daily basis. It’s a great way to reach and engage with your audience.
If your school has an active social media presence, promote your yearbook through these profiles. If your school doesn’t yet have any profiles, make sure to set them up. Read more about using social media to increase yearbook engagement here.
Email Marketing
Emails are a great way of reaching a wider audience, particularly parents. We know you’re already busy promoting your yearbook on social media, but don’t overlook the importance of email.
Send out an email to parents, and make sure they know to pre-order the yearbook. Keep your email short and sweet, and include a link to your yearbook ordering page.
For more ideas on selling yearbooks to parents, click here.
Put Up Posters Around The School
Old fashioned print materials are still a great way to get your message across. Help drive yearbook sales with posters or flyers around your school.
Some places you may want to put up posters in your school include:
- The gym
- The library
- The cafeteria
- Common areas / lounges
You can even go one step further: hand out print marketing materials at the next school event or parent / teacher evening or the drop-off / pick up lane.
Use Your School’s Marketing Assets
It’s very likely that your school has marketing assets that you can use to your advantage. Some school marketing tools you could use include:
- Student Publication – Does your school have a weekly bulletin or news update? If so, this is a great way to reach an audience of students and parents alike. A well-place yearbook ad in your student publication can really help drive yearbook sales.
- School Website – Similarly, your school’s website is another great tool to reach a wide audience. A yearbook ad placed on your school’s website can help you take advantage of the site’s traffic.
- PA System – Make an announcement about your yearbook sales via your school’s PA system. This ensures that the entire student body will hear your message.
Take Advantage of YearbookLife’s Marketing Assistance Program
As we mentioned above, email marketing is a great way to reach a wider audience to drive yearbook sales. But if you’ve never designed a marketing email before, there’s no need to be intimidated!
YearbookLife’s Marketing Assistance Program is a free email marketing service that is available for YearbookLife customers. All you have to do is send us your parent email list. It’s really that easy! Did we mention it’s free? Get started with our Marketing Assistance Program today. Simply click here to submit the MAP information form.
Not a Customer Yet? Contact Us Today for a FREE Quote!
Choosing a yearbook publisher is an important decision in your yearbook creation process. At YearbookLife, we pride ourselves on our competitive pricing, customer and technical support, fast delivery, and our free, easy-to-use software. If you’d like to request a quote today, please click here.
Social media has undoubtedly changed our lives. Thanks to social media, we are able to connect with friends and family around the world easily. For most of us, social media is a part of our daily routine. 95% of teenagers have a smartphone, according to Pew Research Center. Close to 50% admit to being online almost constantly.
If you’re creating, publishing, promoting and marketing your yearbook, using social media can really elevate your efforts. Understanding how to make social media work can also boost your yearbook sales.
Increasing School Yearbook Engagement with Social Media
Social media engagement is a measurement of how people interact with your post, including likes, comments and shares. Engagement helps spread the word!
It’s clear that social media isn’t going anywhere any time soon, therefore, your yearbook sales strategy should also factor in social media as part of your overall approach. And it’s not just all about the followers (don’t get us wrong, more followers are great!). Engagement is what really makes social media tick. Here are a few ways of increasing school yearbook engagement with social media.
Develop a Community
Your community on social media is an integral part of building engagement. The first step is to determine which social media platforms you are going to create profiles on. To maximize your yearbook exposure, we recommend profiles on:
- Facebook
- Instagram
- Twitter
- Snapchat
Once you’ve set up your social media accounts, encourage your yearbook team members to like and follow the pages. Make sure your team is engaging with the posts on your page. Likes, comments and shares all help to increase exposure.
Visuals
We are visual creatures. And visuals are a great way to boost engagement across your social media platforms. In fact, it’s estimated that Tweets with an image are retweeted 150% more than tweets without an image. Similarly, posts on Facebook with an image drive 2.3 times more engagement than posts without an image.
Stuck on ideas for visuals? Why not try sneak peaks of images from your yearbook. Behind-the-scenes shots can be a fun way of engaging your audience. Plus, it’s a great way to share more of what’s involved in creating your yearbook.
Set Your Goals
It’s important that you have goals to work towards with your social media accounts. Develop the strategy with your yearbook team. Consider how you are planning on leveraging your social media. Are you:
- Using social media as your primary marketing strategy?
- Aiming to increase yearbook sales?
- Looking to grow student participation?
These are just a few goals you may decide to work towards.
Promote Engagement
Increasing engagement on your social media profiles will be an important part of your online yearbook strategy. There are a few things you can do to promote engagement.
- Engage with other pages – These could be schools or student body organizations at your own school. Respond to posts on the page. Remember, genuine responses are best. Avoid making every post a sales pitch.
- Publish posts that encourage responses – Looking for information from the student body? Post a question! Social media posts are also a great way to crowdsource your school for yearbook coverage ideas.
- Run competitions – Competitions are a great way to build excitement on social media. Get creative!
You may also want to consider creating a unique hashtag for your yearbook.
Drive Sales
Social media is a great way of driving yearbook sales and to keep your audience informed of important information, such as photo shoot dates, pre-ordering deadlines, etc.
Need Help? Contact YearbookLife Today!
Looking for more help marketing your yearbook? YearbookLife’s Marketing Assistance Program is a free email marketing service designed to help you market (and sell!) your yearbook. Interested in learning more? Contact us today by clicking here.
Getting your yearbook ready to print is an exciting milestone. After the many hours spent deciding upon your yearbook theme, creating the content and designing the layout, it’s almost ready to print!
One your yearbook team has decided your yearbook is print-ready, one final step remains. And it’s an important one! Before you submit your yearbook to print, you need to do a thorough proofreading.
The day has arrived! Your new yearbook is here! You open up the glossy pages, and smile. The layout is perfect. The content is engaging! It’s truly a yearbook to be proud of. Until you notice… “Oh no! How did we miss that spelling error?”
Is there anything more frustrating than finding a grammar or spelling mistake after your yearbook has been printed?
Proofing your yearbook is an important step. It’s one that requires great attention to detail! To help guide you through this important process, here are our tips on how to proofread your school yearbook.
Establish a Yearbook Style Guide
Inconsistent spelling and capitalization are one of the easiest ways to get called out. Make sure that your entire yearbook editorial team is working from the same style guide.
Outline spelling conventions, as well as capitalization and punctuation guidelines. Your yearbook style guide can be established in advance. This also helps your writers create content that is already in line with your style guide.
Preview Your Yearbook Digitally
Previewing your yearbook digitally will give you a good idea of what the final print will look like. It also gives you the opportunity to see the text highlights, calls to action and captions as they will appear.
The truth is, sometimes it’s easier to spot mistakes when you’re looking at the final product. It can be too easy to gloss over typos or grammar errors if you’re doing nothing more than looking at a word document! With YearbookLife’s Design Software, you can preview your yearbook digitally to get your yearbook proofreading process underway.
Prepare
It can be tempting to start the proofreading process right after finishing the writing process. However, this isn’t always the best idea! Creating the yearbook content uses the creative part of your brain. Proofreading, on the other hand, requires the analytical, detail-oriented side of your brain.
Make sure that your yearbook content is complete before you start proofreading. Begin the process with fresh eyes. If you have stuck to your yearbook deadlines, you should have plenty of time!
Work with a Team
Proofread your yearbook with a team. Make sure that you have multiple pairs of eyes reviewing the content. You’ll be surprised how many mistakes can be missed by one person!
Ensure that you have a process in place to highlight any mistakes that the team catches. You may opt for a collaborative spreadsheet or add notes directly onto the page. Whichever way you choose to track things, make sure it is consistent across the team.
Take Your Time
Proofreading your yearbook isn’t something that you should rush. Make sure you are taking your time to read through the content. Check headlines, captions, content, snippets, quotes, etc. And make sure that names are spelled correctly underneath the portraits! There is nothing worse than having a student’s name misspelled or wrong.
You may even want to break up your proofreading process. For example:
- Start with only looking for misspellings.
- Go back and reread the content, this time looking for punctuation issues.
- On the third pass, look for grammatical errors.
- Finally, make sure someone has compared the school roster to the portraits.
Read Out Loud
Sometimes, especially if we have written the content, we ‘read’ what we are expecting to read. And the truth is, what we think we’re reading isn’t always correct!
Reading something out loud can often help identify mistakes we hadn’t previously noticed.
Make Any Necessary Updates
Once you’ve done your first review, it’s time to go back and make any necessary changes. Make sure you then go back and proofread thoroughly!
Order a Yearbook Proof
When you’re confident that you’ve proofread your yearbook thoroughly, it’s time to order a printed yearbook proof, if available. This will show you the final yearbook layout. Remember to look again for any clear mistakes. The proof will also let you see if there are any issues with page bleeds or photo placements.
Need Help? Have a Question? Contact Us Today!
YearbookLife offers a wide range of yearbook publishing and printing services. Our customer support team is always on hand and ready to help you with your yearbook creation process. Request your yearbook sample by clicking here.
Designing your yearbook can be a lot of work. It can also be a lot of fun! Your yearbook page layouts provide the perfect opportunity to really harness your creative skill-set.
The real question though, is how you can design captivating yearbook page layouts? It’s one thing to have a creative, artsy layout. It’s an entirely different thing to have a yearbook layout that really captivates your audience!
We’ve put together some tips to help you design a captivating yearbook page layout.
Creating A Yearbook Page
A great yearbook is organized, well-structured, and maximizes all the space available. Your yearbook page layout is more than just the copy and visuals.
Let’s start with the basics. In order to make a yearbook page, you need to:
- Start with your yearbook’s style guide or master template
- Set the goals for your page, such as content and theme.
- Choose a yearbook page template. Alternatively, create a custom yearbook page layout. Your choice should depend on the goals for your page.
- Add your content. This will include captions, copy, photos and headlines.
- Edit your page. Get feedback from your yearbook team.
- Proof your page.
These steps can be followed for every page of your yearbook. Following this process can make creating your yearbook much easier!
How to Design Captivating Yearbook Page Layouts
Now that we’ve covered the basics, it’s time to get into the details! Designing a captivating yearbook page layout is easier than you may think. Follow these tips to make sure your yearbook is one that really captivates.
Write Effective Headlines
A headline has one primary purpose: to tell the reader what the page is about. Your headline needs to jump out at the reader. A good headline is short and descriptive. Make sure it’s readable, and in a large font that captivates your reader.
Compliment your primary headline with subheadings throughout your copy. These are a great way to break up the content. They also help to further highlight what your page is about. Your headlines can be a great way to grab your readers eye. Try using drop shadows or other effects on your headlines to really make your page pop!
Choose The Right Photo
Choosing the right photo for your yearbook page is important! Make sure the photo that you choose relates to the content of the page. Just like your headline, the right photo will jump out at your reader. It will entice them to read more.
Feel free to add additional photos or pictures to your page. Make sure they relate to the primary content and theme.
Selecting Your Font
It may not be something that you immediately think of, but fonts can help define a page. It’s also a great opportunity to get creative. You can highlight elements of your page with different fonts, or different colors.
Margins & Bleeds
As part of creating your yearbook layout, you should have an understanding of your margins and bleeds. Remember, not all of the workspace you see on your page will be printable space. You’ll want to know where the trim zone on your page is (spoiler alert – this is part of the page that’s cut off at the printers).
Your yearbook design software can be a great help here. It should highlight where on the page you can place your various design elements. Background colors and elements should span the entire page so that they bleed from one corner to the other post-trim, but other design elements should stay within a safety zone to avoid being trimmed in production.
Find Your Perfect Yearbook Design Software
The best way to create a captivating yearbook page, is to play around with different options! Using yearbook design software can give you the flexibility to try different design elements on your page. It may also offer various templates and backgrounds for you to choose from, to help you create a one-of-a-kind yearbook.
At Yearbooklife, we want to help you create a professional, memorable yearbook. That’s why we offer easy-to-use yet sophisticated design tools like Pictavo. Create a unique yearbook, keep your staff organized, and get help marketing your yearbook. Interested in learning more? Contact YearbookLife by clicking here today.
Some things this year have been very different. Other things less so. One thing that hasn’t changed are yearbook deadlines.
In order to create a successful yearbook, and to do so smoothly, setting yearbook deadlines is an important step. Even if you’ve not had a deadline yet – the first deadline will be imminent!
For some people, the first yearbook deadline is a memorable experience. It marks the point at which the character, feel, and voice of your yearbook is beginning to take shape.
To help you meet your yearbook deadlines successfully, here are a few questions to consider:
Does your yearbook staff know their tasks and responsibilities?
Creating a yearbook requires team effort. You probably already have your yearbook staff members for the year. Each person will have a set of responsibilities. These may include yearbook advisor, managing editor, layout, fundraising, sales, and more.
Make sure that your yearbook staff members know what their tasks and responsibilities are. Also make sure that everyone is aware of the various yearbook deadlines that are approaching. A clear understanding of tasks and responsibilities will help make sure you meet your deadlines with ease.
Is your yearbook staff trained to do the jobs you’re asking them to do?
It can be tempting to spend every day mentoring your yearbook staff. But that’s not practical or realistic! Effectively training your yearbook staff helps to empower them, and it frees up your time.
For tips on how to train your yearbook staff, please click here.
Does your yearbook staff know what high quality work should look like?
To make your yearbook truly memorable, it has to be high quality! Make sure that your yearbook staff knows what high quality work should look like. Provide examples of well-written and structured stories. Discuss and provide examples of good photography.
Have you allocated enough time to produce high quality work?
Along with understanding what high quality work looks like, it’s important for your yearbook staff to have enough time to produce that work. Make sure you’re planning in advance. Keep an open dialogue about upcoming tasks and deadlines, to avoid any last-minute scrambles.
Have you planned for regular team catch-ups?
Each yearbook deadline will correspond to a different element of your yearbook. When you’ve met your deadline, have you planned for a team catch-up and debrief?
Make sure to encourage conversation amongst your yearbook staff after each deadline. Discuss what worked, and what could be improved upon. This will make your next deadline easier to meet.
Are you providing the right level of support?
Even the most experienced yearbook staffers may at some point require additional support. Are you making sure that your staffers have access to the support that they may need?
You may also benefit from additional support from your yearbook publisher. At YearbookLife, we offer a range of programs to help support your yearbook process. Our Marketing Assistance program, for example, is designed to help you market and sell your school yearbook to students via parent’s emails. Interested in finding out how YearbookLife can support you this yearbook season? Please contact us today.
