Marketing & Sales

School finances are tough. Compound that with murky yearbook invoices, and you’re left repeating, “I don’t know,” when meeting with the school finance clerk. Between boxes of “extra” yearbooks that will sit in a storage closet instead of a student’s shelf and a final invoice amount that differs from the initial bid, it’s a pain.

https://blog.treering.com/why-are-yearbooks-so-expensive/

Many yearbook creators tolerate vague yearbook pricing because the thought of going publisher shopping is a worse evil. It’s not until we hit our breaking point with one of these:

• Price
• Turnaround time
• A general sense that there has to be a better way

Yes, it’s a memory book, and it gives all the feels. One of those feels shouldn’t be a burden.

Understanding Itemized Bids

Shipping, art fees, camp costs, and proof charges may appear as line items on a final invoice. They don’t always appear on yearbook pricing proposals. That’s why you must be proactive when soliciting different yearbook publishers for a bid. 

Pro tip: include your current publisher in the bidding process.

The Timeline: When to Look for a New Yearbook Publisher

It will take about a month or two to complete the bidding process. Beginning is simple: define your needs and non-negotiables to share with each publisher:

• Book size
• Cover type
• Page count
• Number of copies

Allow two to three weeks to evaluate the bids, ask clarifying questions, and get everything in writing. Align this with your school’s budget process for best results.

The Bid: What to Expect When You’re Expecting

The scope of your bidding process differs if you are shopping for a single school vs. a district. (More on district bids below.)

Schools should consider specs, staff needs, and budget when soliciting bids. Your bid should include

• Set up charges
• Personalization charges
• Donated yearbooks
• Shipping estimates
• Included training
• Materials: cover board, paper weight, cover treatments
• Contracted minimums
• Ad fees (aside from credit card processing, ads should be pure profit)
• Image storage fees
• Technology credits
• Contract length
• Reprint or second order policy

Add it all up and divide by your contracted minimum for the per-book price. Oftentimes, these costs of doing business increase your core book price by $2-12 each. And if yearbook math wasn’t your college minor, there is another way.

The Treering Difference

When yearbook creators receive a bid from Treering Yearbooks, it includes a per-book price with no minimum order. The core book price is based on cover finish and page count. It includes:

• Custom cover
• Bulk shipping to the school
• Software usage, including access to themes, art, and templates
• One free printed proof and 99 PDF proofs
• Professional development and support through live webinars and Treering’s Help Center
• Yearbook curriculum
• The flexibility to extend your deadline or reduce your page count

That’s it. 

How to Evaluate Yearbook Bids

It’s safe to say most yearbook companies will look fab on paper (or spreadsheet). Resist the temptation to choose on price alone. By personalizing the process, you position your yearbook team as the leader. Your publisher should work for your program. 

1. Talk to other users. Each company should provide you with three users from a similar situation. Consider size, quantity of yearbooks ordered, and staff structure. Not only will you hear individual experiences, but the synergy of the reference will show whether or not the publisher understands your situation.

2. Do a trial of the software. Spend an hour playing with any proprietary software tools. Are you able to create a sample page? Do you know how to find self-service help?

3. Define your publisher support team: who helps with technical questions, how you find design inspiration, and who is training your team. If you have an individual servicing your account, define the role your rep will play and how you expect the rep to support your yearbook creation process, including expected response time.

Finding the right fit for your campus will take time. Trust us: it will be worth it when you have your Cinderella moment.

Navigating an RFP

Those who represent a larger group have purchasing and negotiating power. Learn the requirements in your district or state before you solicit bids. You may not even need to bid because your school may have more flexibility than you thought. Or, if there is a purchasing cooperative in your region, your school may be able to piggyback on a neighboring contract.

If you are managing a bid for multiple schools, create an itemized list for each site's individual needs. For example, a high school may want a hardcover 9x12 book, and an elementary school may want to offer hardcover and softcover 8x10s. 

Treering works with each district’s process, whether it’s co-ops, POs, invoicing, or vendor approvals. Each RFP is customized to the needs of the schools within the district. (We’ll leave the templates for easy yearbooking design.)

In honor of the season of giving, Treering will match up to five yearbook donations per school account. From Tuesday, December 3 through Tuesday, December 31, one community book donation equals one Treering book donation. Editors can reassign these books to teachers, promoting students, the principal, or students in need.

How the Donation Match Works

1. Enable the Book Donation option on the dashboard
2. Let your campus community know 'tis the season to share the (yearbook) love
3. Re-assign the yearbooks so recipients can customize or order non-custom books to hand out

This promotion ends at 11:59 pm PST on December 31, 2024. Matched yearbooks will automatically be added to your account by January 30, 2025.

The Fine Print

• Promotion ends at 11:59 pm PST on December 31, 2024.
• Matched yearbooks will automatically be added to your account by January 30, 2025.
• Donations may not be combined with any other promotions.
• Donated yearbooks cannot exist on ship-to-home, invoiced, or PO orders. Credit card or PayPal orders only.
• Ordering donation books will not be available for After Deadline Orders.

Avoid the pitfall of waiting until the yearbook is complete to begin selling. Keep reading for reasons you should begin marketing the yearbook now.

Financial Incentives to Sell Yearbooks Early

Back-to-school time is when everyone is excited about the new year. Parents know there are a lot of expenses for clothes, school supplies, and yearbooks.

• Early bird discounts: Better than a worm, Treering families save 10% on the cost of their yearbooks from August to October. Schools that purchase in bulk also enjoy the extra savings.
• Start accumulating your fundraiser: Schools using the yearbook as a fundraiser will have extra time to meet their monetary goal.
• Earn four free yearbooks: Treering customers who sell five books by September 15, earn a free yearbook. They earn a second if they sell 25 books by December 15, and two more if they sell 50 books by January 31.

Build Hype

Create excitement about the yearbook on day one. When families see the yearbook team out and about, it tells them two things:

1. I need to buy a yearbook.
2. The yearbook team is committed to covering the whole year.

Early sales encourage students to participate in yearbook-related activities. It also offers the yearbook team extra time for teasers and keeps them accountable for progress. That said, take advantage of this added engagement for crowdsourcing opportunities. If students know they are in the yearbook, they will buy the yearbook.

Help Parents

Let's face it, we need reminders too.

• Customization: Families can purchase their yearbook early and have until the purchase deadline to work on and finish their custom pages.
• Reduce stress: Let's face it, Maycember is real. And who doesn't love adding a fat checkmark to the to-do list?

How Do You Begin Early Yearbook Sales?

Begin sales—like all things yearbook—with a plan. An easy win is to include a yearbook flyer in the registration packet that goes home with every child. Level up your approach with a school calendar and your team and create a yearbook presence at

• Back-to-school events
• Parent group meetings
• A staff meeting (or three)
• Picture day
• Homecoming
• Fall festival

https://blog.treering.com/teaching-yearbook-making-a-marketing-plan/

Sell early, sell often. Treering's order processing and tracking make for one less paper trail for advisers to chase. You won't regret the momentum.

Each unsold yearbook represents a missed opportunity for students to have a record of their memories from the school year and possibly is a financial burden for the school.  There’s also the potential for frustration among the yearbook staff: it can be disheartening to see our efforts go unrewarded and their expectations unmet. It’s the final stretch, so we have last-minute yearbook sales ideas. Let’s turn things around together. 

We interrupt this blog to remind you if you’re a Treering adviser, sales quotas don’t matter. We only print and ship what you pre-sell. And if someone wants to order a yearbook later, they can do that too.

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

Flash Sales

FOMO is real. It’s one part urgency, it’s one part excitement. A brief, pervasive push for last-minute yearbook sales has a clear call to action: buy now. Here are four campaigns to jump-start the year-end push.

• Offer a limited-time incentive for students who purchase their yearbooks within the next week. This could be as simple as a popsicle party or an extra 10 minutes of recess for classes with the most participation.
• Create a countdown timer on your school's website or social media platforms to create a sense of urgency.
• Hold a "Flash Sale" where yearbooks are available at a discounted price for 48 hours. Only do this if you bump up the price year-round and never as good as your early bird pricing to mitigate complaints.
• If you use a publisher that requires an order minimum, create a sense of exclusivity by emphasizing that yearbooks are limited in quantity and may sell out quickly. If you have fewer than 25, advertise it.

“Extra” Marketing Ideas

Naming this section “labor-intensive” might be poor marketing. That said, these ideas aren’t drag-and-drop solutions like Treering. They do require work, and if your team is primed for action, start your project plan.

• Hold a raffle where every yearbook purchase enters the buyer into a drawing for a special prize.
• Partner with local restaurants or cafes to offer discounts or freebies with proof of yearbook purchase.
• Hold a competition among classes or grade levels to see which percentage buys the most yearbooks, with a prize for the winning group.
• Stir up excitement by revealing sneak peeks of the yearbook content on social media leading up to the deadline.
• Initiate a "Yearbook Ambassador" program where students can earn rewards for promoting yearbook sales to their peers.
• Cultivate a sense of nostalgia by sharing throwback photos from past yearbooks on social media.
• Host a scavenger hunt around the school where students can find clues that lead them to purchase their yearbooks.
• Create a "Yearbook Memories" playlist on a streaming platform and share it with the school community to promote yearbook sales.
• Develop a social media challenge where parents, teachers, and students can win prizes for sharing their favorite yearbook memories.

https://blog.treering.com/seek-out-yearbook-sales-scavenger-hunt-can-get-everyone-excited

Events to Boost Last-Minute Yearbook Sales

We’ve learned the value of in-person events. Paraphrasing from the Elle Woods playbook: events evoke emotions, emotions create memorable experiences, and memorable experiences make up a yearbook. Seeing others choose to attend a yearbook event provides social proof, reassuring potential yearbook buyers that their decision is valid and worthwhile. (Yes, we know it’s a no-brainer.) 

• Invite every student on campus to the distribution and signing party.
• Set up a booth at all-school events, PTA meetings, and during lunchtime where people can purchase yearbooks on the spot.
• Create personalized advertisements featuring students and distribute them digitally or in print. Students want to know they are in the book. If you’re doing this at the elementary level, send the ad to mom. 
• Create a video featuring highlights from the school year to show off a bit of what’s in the book.
• Hold a live Q&A session on social media where students and parents can ask questions about the yearbook and the ordering process. 
• Host a custom pages webinar.
• Partner with the school's sports teams to promote yearbook sales at games and events. 
• Create a themed photo booth at school events where students can take pictures to be included in the yearbook. If you are at a uniform school, use this to show how many uniform combinations you have.

These limited-time promotions, strategic competitions, social media campaigns, and release events aim to maximize participation so your hard work gets into more hands. 

This blog is part two of a four-part series on creating a yearbook in 60 days. Each part contains two weeks' worth of tasks and inspiration, and this time, it’s all about promoting and designing the yearbook.

There are links to articles, videos, and additional blogs throughout. Treering editors, you'll need to log in to your dedicated help center to view some.

Yearbook (yes, it is a verb) along with us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

1. Share the Good News

You’re building a yearbook, which is a mic-drop task in itself. People need to know how awesome you are the yearbook will be. Treering created flyers, QR codes, and personalized links for you to quickly share.

Yearbook Marketing 101

“Buy your yearbook” is not your only message. 

Yes, you are selling the yearbook. You are also rallying stakeholders (administrators, teachers, plus students and their families) to support the yearbook project by purchasing, sharing photos, donating books, and joining the yearbook staff next year. So, go get them!

Identify the best to reach each stakeholder where they live. In other words, go to them. Utilize all the communication channels available to you and evaluate which ones work best for each group. 

Possible channels include:

• Email
• Staff newsletters
• Morning announcements
• All-call services
• Parent organization website
• In-school bulletin boards
• All-school events
• School meetings
• School sports games
• School arts events
• Social media

Yearbook Marketing Resources

• Article: Tools for Promoting Your Yearbook
• Blog: 5 Social Media Posts to Sell Yearbooks

2. Autoflow Portraits

Ready to level up your yearbook achievement? Portraits comprise 40-60% of a yearbook. Between the choice of a Heritage Cover and building portrait pages, you’ll be halfway finished. Take a minute to let that soak in.

If a professional photographer took your school photos, chances are you have a PSPA (Professional School Photographers' Association) file. This is industry standard. With it, you'll be able to go to the portrait tab and follow the prompts. (If you don’t have a PSPA file, you can still use autoflow. See the resource section below for instructions.)

Portrait Resources

• Video: Importing Portraits with Portrait Auto Flow
• Article: Uploading Portraits Without a PSPA File

3. Fill Your Photo Folders

Remember when we set up the photo folders, and some were green? That means only the editorial team (you!) can see them and their contents. The yellow public folders are marked public, and your school community can share photos by

• Emailing to the folder
• Using a link to access the folder
• Signing in and accessing the public folders
• Using the Treering app to upload

Treering’s privacy measures prevent just anyone from uploading to your shared folders. Only your invited school community members with activated yearbook accounts can see and share. 

Parents and editors can add photos from their computer or mobile device as well as third-party connections to your personal Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox, Google Photos, and Google Drive. 

5 Ideas to Source Yearbook Photos

If you build it, will they come? 

1. Send each teacher a link to their class folder; ask them to share it with their room parents
2. Share event-specific (hello, last Friday’s zoo trip) asks via social media
3. Show coaches and club leaders how to add photos via their phones
4. Connect with event organizers so they know you have dedicated space and you need pics
5. Comment, “Will you share this for the yearbook [email/link]?” on Facebook photos you want to include

Crowdsourcing Resources

• Article: Email Photos Directly Into A Photo Folder
• Article: Sharing Photo Folders with the School Community

4. Build Your Spreads (First Semester Events)

As your photos fill your folders, drag them onto your spreads. There are two ways to quickly complete pages using Treering’s built-in tools: auto page layout and templates. 

Everything is fully editable, so if you need to add or remove a photo, text box, or piece of theme art, permit yourself to do it!

Yearbook Design Resources

• Article: Changing the Background on a Page (remember to login to view)
• Article: Page Editing Options - Graphics
• Article: Page Editing Options - Layout and Design 

Feeling Adventurous?

Create your own layouts using Treering’s drag-and-drop design tools. 

Intermediate and Advanced Design Resources

• Examples: Winners of the 2024 Design Contest 
• Blog: What is Modular Yearbook Design? 
• Article: Setting Default Text Styles 
• Article: Setting Default Photo Styles 
• Article: Alignment Tool - Customizable Guideline Grid 
• Templates: InDesign

Halfway through building a yearbook in 60 days, you should split tasks between gathering photos and adding them to the book. The cover is finished. Portraits are flowed. First semester events are filling in. Congrats!

In honor of the season of giving, Treering will match up to five yearbook donations per school account. From Tuesday, November 28 through Sunday, December 31, one community book donation equals one Treering book donation. Editors can reassign these books to teachers, promoting students, the principal, or students in need.

How the Donation Match Works

1. Enable the Book Donation option on the dashboard
2. Let your campus community know 'tis the season to share the (yearbook) love
3. Re-assign the yearbooks so recipients can customize or order non-custom books to hand out

This promotion ends at 11:59 pm PST on December 31, 2023. Matched yearbooks will automatically be added to your account by January 30, 2024.

The Fine Print

• Promotion ends at 11:59 pm PST on December 31, 2023.
• Matched yearbooks will automatically be added to your account by January 30, 2024.
• Donations may not be combined with any other promotions.
• Donated yearbooks cannot exist on ship-to-home, invoiced, or PO orders. Credit card or PayPal orders only.
• Ordering donation books will not be available for After Deadline Orders.

You’ve heard the adage, and likely uttered it yourself: fail to plan, plan to fail. That advice works whether you’re saving for retirement or just trying to get yearbooks in the hands of students across campus. It’s also why you need a yearbook marketing plan (and all the free tools below). It may seem backward to start marketing a book that hasn’t been finished yet but this is the best time to create a plan and put it into action. 

Three Ways to Start Your Marketing Plan

1. Set Your Goals

SMART Goals are prevalent in the ed world. My favorite principal once said, “We tell students they can achieve anything. But if I want to be an astronaut, I can’t just go into space tomorrow.” (There’s that planning need again.)

Reverse engineering the school year and yearbook production cycle will help you achieve your goals. 

Here are some examples of SMART goals:

• Sell XX amount of yearbooks by November 15th
• Increase Recognition Ad sales XX% by April 15th
• Increase all Yearbook sales XX% by May 30th

2. Create a Calendar with Important Dates

We created this yearbook marketing calendar so you can plot important dates while creating a schedule that fits your school (and your sanity). 

3. Recruit Your Team and Delegate Tasks

For each campaign, spread out the responsibilities. Using a marketing campaign template will help you stay organized by listing the budget, design development, communication modes, important dates, and who is responsible.

https://blog.treering.com/4-strategies-for-collaborating-with-parents-staff-and-students-on-yearbook/

Customize Your Yearbook Marketing Plan

Know your audience. Toastmasters has been preaching this one sentence since 1924 and it’s worked out well for them. Determine who wants what you are selling and why. Below, we've literally taken a page from Marketing Unstumped, Treering’s guide to yearbook marketing.

Because the same message will not resonate with everyone, you want to spend time understanding what the message is for students, parents, faculty, and local business owners. Then, go find them.

Identify your best channels to reach each audience section where they live. In other words, go to them. Utilize all the marketing channels you have available to you and evaluate which ones work best for which audience. Possible marketing channels include:

• Email
• Staff newsletters
• All-call services
• Parent organization website
• In-school bulletin boards
• All-school events
• School meetings
• School sports games
• School arts events
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• TikTok

https://blog.treering.com/5-social-media-posts-to-sell-yearbooks/

Forget resolutions, it's time to get to work. Our staff brainstormed the top yearbook hacks you can use at any stage in the yearbook creation process and packed this blog with videos, how-tos, and examples. Use the quick links below if you need to jump to a specific area.

• Yearbook Design Hacks
• Get More People in the Yearbook
• Marketing Tips
• Hacks for Yearbook Advisers

Yearbook Design Hacks

Designing a yearbook is much more than just putting pictures on pages. Intentionality, storytelling, and branding are included. The following time- and sanity-savers will help you progress in your role as editor, adviser, coordinator, or yearbook fan girl.

1. Auto Layout

What if you could just drag the photos you want to use on a spread and they would magically be organized and re-sized? Voilà!

The best part? Everything is still fully editable, so if you need a starting point, you can continue to build your spreads with more photos and text, swap our images, and change the color of the elements.

2. Color Picker

You can pull the exact color from any picture to add to your design. This builds the yearbook’s visual cohesiveness because you can pull from photos or graphics to create your custom palette.

3. Layers in Design

Up your design by using layers to arrange photos, images, and text. In the examples below, you'll see graphic elements used as photo frames (movie night spread) and editable shapes used to organize content (table of contents). Using the forward and background tools in the options panel can help you arrange elements.

4. Custom Pages

Schools are used to offering senior ads as a way to congratulate students. Treering schools take it a step further and allow every family to tell their story with two free custom pages (and the option to add even more).

https://blog.treering.com/custom-pages-or-senior-ads/

5. Missing Portrait Hack

"Picture day is the easiest day of the year," said no adviser ever. As hard as we work to make it a flawless experience and to capture every student and staff member, perfect attendance is out of our control. One way we love to see people included in their respective sections is by flowing them in with this spirited touch.

6. Advanced Portrait Settings

Another hack for your people section is included with the advanced portrait settings. Subtitles are a simple way to add marks of distinction such as student activities and honors as well as staff department or job titles. Other advanced portrait settings include spacing and sizing options.

7. The Magical Shift Key

Shift your process for aligning and rotating objects.

8. Printed Proof

A printed proof is an exact copy of your yearbook, and every school gets one free. Use your printed proof to

• Check the placement of cover art
• Assess the readability of fonts, especially the names on your portrait pages
• Show off your amazing work (more on this in the marketing section)

9. Picking Favorites—it's OK!

"Liking" graphics, backgrounds, and photos makes it easier to find them to add to yearbook spreads. To use your hand-picked collection in your book, filter by "My Likes" and "Team Likes" in the drop-down.

10. Pre-Designed Pages

Annually, Treering publishes elementary and middle/high school "Year in Review" and "Best of the Year" Pre-Designed yearbook spreads. These spreads include noteworthy highlights from pop culture and current events, and like all things Treering, these pages are editable so you can choose to replace the content with your own. Some communities prefer school or local election news, campus trends, or athletic records. Pre-Designed pages which include mention of our philanthropic partner, Sandy Hook Promise, are also available as well as about me, art gallery, and puzzle pages.

Get More People in the Yearbook

The best practice for yearbook coverage is to ensure each student is in the yearbook three times. Think one photo in each section: portrait, classroom, and activity.

11. Crowdsourcing Features

Treering’s crowdsourcing tools include integrations with Facebook, Instagram, and Google Drive as well as shared photo folders. Teachers, parents, and students can email photographs from their devices directly to event folders in your school account. 

According to adviser Lauren Casteen, Yearbook Hero and leader of Treering’s Teaching Yearbook cohort, there are four reasons to crowdsource content:

1. Equity: if you want your book to look like your school, your school needs to help you build your book.
2. People are already familiar with documenting and sharing their lives via social media—it’s an easy next step.
3. Your yearbook staff can’t be everywhere all the time.
4. Less work for you! (This is our favorite.)

12. Monitoring Coverage

A big question we hear is, "Why would you want to tag student names when we're not doing an index?" Since our job as advisers is to cover all the students on campus, tagging is one way to track how many times students appear in the yearbook. It also helps you find out who is missing from your pages and craft strategies to include them.

13. Keyword Tagging

By using keywords such as event names and topics (e.g. AP Lit), your search just became that much more powerful, and the English folder less intimidating to navigate.

14. Find Carmen San Diego

Tagging by student name helps you easily find students within your web of folders.

15. Polls

Create polls to give a snapshot of the student body's preferences. Treering's software even makes the graphs for you. Expand on this or that-style questions or multiple choice ones by interviewing a respondent for more detail. You may be surprised why your star soccer player is a cat dad.

https://blog.treering.com/50-yearbook-survey-questions-better-polls/

Marketing Tips

The second semester is when we see surges in book sales. Here are some hacks to get more yearbooks in more hands.

16. Free Yearbook Flyers

The price is right. So is the message.

17. Use Your Printed Proof as Social Proof

Social proof is one way you can positively encourage others to support your program by buying a yearbook.

• Show students, teachers, and parents how you are using the photos they submit by posting a PDF proof with their snaps in use
• Share sneak peeks
• Photograph your printed proof around campus as if it were a student (tag us!)
• Video your yearbook team swooning over their work

Hacks for Yearbook Advisers

All of the above definitely apply to yearbook advisers and coordinators, and here are few extras because you are our people.

18. Free Webinars: Yearbook Club

A yearbook adviser PLC? Live yearbook training? Technology pro-grow? However you want to sell it to your admin, we have it. And it’s free. 

19. Styles

By establishing photo and text styles early on, you create a cohesive look for your yearbook. Because the font library continues to grow, it's nice to set some limits, especially with emerging designers!

20. Portrait Proofing with PDFs

Printing PDF proofs from the editor dashboard as soon as you get your portraits flowed is one quick way to ensure accuracy. Distribute them to the office staff and classroom or homeroom teachers for a double and triple check.

21. A List of Evergreen Content

Evergreen content for yearbooks is a collection of interview questions, infographic topics, and story ideas that can be used throughout the year. While we want to have a yearbook that reflects the current year and trends, having a timeless collection keeps your students working on interviews and photography and provides material to fill in on portrait pages, sports sections, and even in the index. 

https://blog.treering.com/evergreen-content-yearbook/

22. Supplemental Books

Sometimes club sports, special events, and alumni need a little extra. You can still attach a fundraiser, take advantage of our free design software, and enjoy all the other perks of making a Treering book: no minimums and a three-week turnaround from the day you submit.

Treering’s printed books for family reunions, church or neighborhood directories, scout troops, sport associations (rodeo, mountain bike, cheerleading, gymnastics), 4-H, school auctions, cookbooks, performing arts studios, first responders, and more.

23. Yearbook Hack Central: Treering Blog

(Shameless, we know!) We're glad you're here and hope you find more yearbook hacks by searching the blog or signing up for notifications when we post new content.

Treering Yearbook Heroes is a monthly feature focusing on yearbook tips and tricks. 

Five years ago, Yearbook Hero Arielle Shansky took over the yearbook production for her Classical Conversations Community. Leading a team of three in Central Florida, she also manages an online community for over 650 others via the CC Yearbook Support Facebook Group. As the default tech person in her social circles, she enjoys helping other homeschool yearbook coordinators plan and organize their yearbooks. 

What’s unique about a homeschool yearbook?

Everything is a volunteer job. There’s no budget and possibly no team to help. Most of us do not have a yearbook background and we have to create our systems from scratch.

That said, there are many opportunities to showcase families. Under each portrait, we do a mini interview so students’ thoughts flow throughout the book. We also do a “Family Spotlight” in our yearbook. Homeschool parents take tons of photos at home because that’s where the bulk of our education occurs. Normally, those never get printed, but with a yearbook, we are able to put those moments in there.

You said you love organization. What are some tips to share?

I track everything on my phone: running notes of things to do and hex codes I’m using. I can also monitor core book page progress and check book sales using the Treering app.

How else does Treering help?

The biggest thing is allowing families to upload directly to shared folders. I send out weekly reminders to our community so we get photos throughout the year. During National Yearbook Week, we are doing our big kickoff. We have a lot of new families this year, so our goals are to get everyone to log in and upload one photo. Whoever does that will get an entry into a drawing for a coffee gift card or something. Then whoever orders by the end of the month for the discount will get another entry. We are going with a Happy Yearbook Day theme for the kick-off (to the tune of happy birthday). One of the ladies is wearing a birthday hat and making a sign that she will wear around campus with a QR code to take people to the upload page and a box to drop their name in for the drawing.

The personalized pages are also great. I scan my kids’ art and the notes they write me to add to their books. I laugh because we only have one family photobook—the yearbook replaced that.

With Proclamation 5703, former President Ronald Reagan made yearbooks even more celebration-worthy by setting apart the first week of October for “appropriate ceremonies and activities” to recognize the creators and the power of a yearbook program. Over 30 years later, National School Yearbook Week remains a time to reminisce and a time to look forward. In 2022, we are celebrating on social and at our annual Treering Live (TRL) event.

Week of Prizes

Win big during National School Yearbook Week by participating in one of Treering Yearbooks' five social media challenges. It's as easy as contributing a memory. You can also take the challenge of making an epic video to promote your own program, using the curated audio we'll share. Follow us:

• @treering on Facebook
• @treeringcorp on Instagram
• @treeringcorp on TikTok
• @treering on Twitter

There are no entry limits, so you and your yearbook team can enter as many times as you like. (We'd like a bevy of responses on Thursday, please and thank you in advance.)

Hashtags to use during National Yearbook Week

Share your celebrations and see what others are doing by using any of the hashtags commonly associated with National School Yearbook Week: #nationalschoolyearbookweek, #schoolyearbookweek, #YBWeek, #nationalyearbookweek, #yearbookweek, and, of course, #treeringyearbooks.

Week of Celebration

Imagine, yearbook staffs from coast-to-coast celebrating the power of a yearbook and the work our teams do. There's something to be said about a national week of unity for us memory makers. Remember to celebrate the yearbook heroes in your halls:

• Post profiles of your staff and celebrate their strength on social media
• Educate your school community with some behind-the-scenes edu-tainment
• Offer your campus 5% off on their yearbooks (Treering does this for you... just take the credit!)

Capstone Event for National School Yearbook Week

Treering Live is back to drop a little 24-karat magic. In this free, totally online event we’ll give you all tips, tools, and expert-led advice to make some serious yearbook magic. TRL 2022: Yearbook Magic will take place via Zoom Events on Thursday, October 6, 2022 at 4:00 pm PT/6:00 pm CT/7:00 pm ET. (Please note: you must have a Zoom account to register and attend.) In addition to a live magic show and instruction on yearbook themes, we'll have breakouts on

• Yearbook marketing
• First-time adviser tips and tricks
• Fundraising
• Best practices for teaching yearbook

And if that's not enough to pump you up for the new school year, check out our ongoing Yearbook Club training.

Getting social to sell yearbooks sounds easy: just post and parents will pay up, right? We get it, yearbook sales can be stressful, especially if you have a publisher who requires an order quota. Adding social media to your yearbook marketing strategy can only help increase the visibility of your staff and your product. Here are five types of Instagram and Facebook posts to add to your yearbook's social cadence. (Share if you love your yearbook… kidding.)

1. Positive Peer Pressure

Customer loyalty is a big deal–it’s why we collect stars and points and become an Insider. You can erase the thought of a back-end engineering feat to get students a digital punch card in their Remind account and head to the local dollar store for a bag of candy. (We like candy necklaces because they are wearable reminders, thus reinforcing our campaign.) 

A simple, reward offering of “Sweet! You bought a yearbook!” followed by the names of buyers will create a positive buzz around campus.

How it Helps Sales

We’ve talked about social proof. We’ve talked about FOMO. This yearbook social media post does that and

1. Shows appreciation to those who listened early on and bought a yearbook.
2. Answers the age-old question: “Did I buy a yearbook?”

2. Call to Action: Crowdsourcing

Specific asks give you specific results. Consider these the two above: which one brought in 35 submissions in 24 hours? 

How Pictures Yield Purchases

This is not new information: if students know they are in the book, they will want the book. Using student-sourced photos from social media help sell yearbooks because it tells more of the year. And that’s our job. Follow up these calls to action by showing students you used their photos.

3. Sneak Peeks

Sneak peeks include: cover shots, close-ups or excerpts of spreads, and releasing yearbook photos. Be sure to include a countdown to distribution.

A few weeks before your final deadline, order your printed proof. Besides seeing the top-notch quality, you can use your book in photos to promote last-minute sales.

Use the Yearbook to Sell Itself

Product teasers are a mainstay in the marketing world. They pump up potential yearbook buyers and answer “What’s in it for me?”

4. Show and Tell

Giving glimpses of the work behind the scenes connects customers to the product. It builds trust among the student body because they see your team them working hard to photograph track meets in 100-degree heat or giving up their time at Homecoming to take photos on the dance floor. Beyond work, teambuilding, editor lunches, and TikTok trends can also serve as recruiting tools for next year’s staff.

Sell by Showcasing Your Yearbook Culture on Social Media

The yearbook shouldn’t be about your yearbook staff, but because of them. Parents, students, and teachers will believe in the work you are doing if they see themselves in it.

5. Nitty Gritty

The most important thing you can do it tell people how, when, and where to buy. Give them the details and make it easy. While a general “Buy a Yearbook” post shouldn’t be the only yearbook marketing post in your social toolkit, friendly reminders do help. You will sell more yearbooks by varying posts and increasing engagement on your social media channels.

Why We (Still) Share Yearbook Info

For the same reason your five year old knows the phone number for an all-inclusive resort, mere exposure leads to sales. People tend to love familiarity, and that’s why yearbooks are a tradition.

We’re just going to leave this here.

On the way home in the carpool, yearbook mom Kristie overheard her daughter and three friends talking about their yearbooks staying overnight at school so their teacher could look them over and cover up things like “stinky skunk” and “Chungus.” There were hurt feelings and students who felt uncomfortable through the yearbook signing process.

Kristie said, "The kids are constantly being talked to about kindness and all that jazz, and I think much of what happened today was one kid thinking they’re hilarious and the other thinking they smell like a skunk."

Bottom line: we haven't taught our kids how to sign a yearbook.

[Old lady voice] When I was in high school, I had already combed my parents' yearbooks and learned their deep secrets. I knew the art of reserving a page in my BFF's yearbook so I could fill it with Spice Girls' lyrics, inside jokes, and the obligatory, "Thanks for always being there for me." I wasn't commenting on her posts daily and DM'ing her. Her yearbook was the one-stop shop to confess my deep admiration and devotion.

For those who weren't in my circle in the quad, a shorter message strategically squeezed between longer passages made it look as though I ran out of room. (The winning formula is below.)

How Do You Sign a Yearbook for Someone You Don't Really Know?

1. Spell names correctly
2. Choose something specific to call out
3. Say thank you for being you: Gen, I love your smile. Thanks for sharing it with the world.
4. Sign your first and last name

How Do You Sign a Yearbook for Someone Who's Not Your BFF?

1. Spell names correctly
2. Find something positive to say
3. Say thank you for being you: Paulo, You are confident in your abilities. Thanks for sharing your interest in horses with us.
4. Sign your first and last name

Yearbook Signing for the Besties

Add Yearbook Lingo

Some things never change; we bet every 90s mom has two or three of these acronyms in her yearbook.

• BF Boyfriend
• BFF Best friend forever
• GF Girlfriend
• HAGS Have a Great Summer
• KIT Keep in Touch
• LYLAS Love you like a sister
• TTFN Ta-ta for now

Add Variety

Creative yearbook signing ideas, such as adding in song lyrics or writing messages in a more artistic form, break up the passages from others.

Remember, your signature will last as long as that book. Make it count.