Let’s be clear-a great product makes the marketing of that product a whole lot easier and we are working our butts off to evolve PlansForUs into a great product-or as we like to think of it-a great platform for idea exchange and use.

However, I should recognize that the story that we use to describe what PlansForUs is doing will be essential to the successful expansion of our business. Thanks to Lois Kelly, the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing I have a framework to explore how to market PlansForUs. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki and Joshua Porter for bringing this to my attention.

Without further ado, here’s how I might position PlansForUs. I would of course love to hear your opinion on the relative success of each of these positions.

1. Aspirations and Beliefs

PlansForUs is a platform for improving education by empowering teachers with engaging teaching ideas and methods from their peers.

We aspire to have an impact on the education of our future generations, not just on the lives of teachers. The world is getting more competitive and great education is the key to the success of students, workers and countries around the world. The PlansForUs platform is the means for teachers to exchange the ideas that create powerful, engaging learning experiences. You can see that we are definitely exploring this theme with the content on our homepage.

2. David vs Goliath

PlansForUs does not impose artificial, bureaucratic limits on ideas. We believe that it is the teachers, not the administrators that should define and lead the educational experience. PlansForUs is an exchange for ideas and is totally focused on aiding teachers.

In this case, teachers are the David’s in a world of administrative Goliath’s (NCLB, state testing, rankings, static administrations, etc). PlansForUs is the teacher’s slingshot. As a company, we are certainly David’s in the face of the Google’s, Yahoo’s and Blackboard’s of the world, but this positioning is nascent till we gain additional traction.

3. Avalanche about to roll

The rapid development of technology and the fact that 40% of teachers are retiring in the next 7 years has created an enormous challenge for teachers educating our future generations. A challenge, that if not met properly could cause enormous hardship for our teachers and their students. PlansForUs is the tool for capturing the knowledge that we are losing, as well as the rapidly accumulating information that is constantly entering learning networks.

This position ties different generations of teachers together to a common cause, that being to maintain what we know while simultaneously growing the knowledge base in the face of profound technological and global change. I like this theme a lot, except for the fact that there is not quite as much immediacy as I would like. This theme underpins a lot of what we do, but may not resonate to those who are making a decision of whether or not to sign up for PlansForUs.

More to come in future posts. I am of course interested in how to make these statements stronger and look forward to your comments.

by Tyler, CEO