Does your school have a blog? If not, the time to start one is now! By publishing regular content, you become a trusted source of information in your community. Blogging can help you attract prospective families and serve as a fun way to engage with current students and families. Plus, blogs can be repurposed into several different content formats for various marketing channels.
Read on to learn how you can start a school blog and optimize it to be used as a marketing tool.
Plan Out Your School Blog
First, decide what your blog should focus on. Here are a few areas to consider:
- What topics do your families care about?
- What topics does your school care about?
- Important topics within the education space
Next, consider who will write blog posts and any necessary review steps. Teachers, administrators, and guest writers (families or volunteers) can all offer unique perspectives. You can also get students involved! This is one way that they can be creative and showcase their experience at your school. Consider forming a student blog club.
Then, determine how your school blog will fit into your overarching marketing plan. Who will oversee posting blogs? How often will you post? How long should each post be? Hash out these details ahead of time to maximize the time and effort that goes into creating each post.
Brainstorm Blog Content
You have a plan in place, now what? It’s time to start finding topics to write about!
Nothing is more intimidating than a blank page—here are some ideas to inspire your blog posts:
- Upcoming events or a recap of previous events
- Student spotlights or a student of the month profile
- Student teams or clubs and their projects
- Teacher highlights
- Trending education topics
- School projects
- Informational posts to address questions families might have
As you plan your blog topics, you may also want to consider a call to action (CTA) for each post. A CTA invites your reader to engage with your school in some way. You may want to direct them to an event registration page or to submit a form to get in touch with your school.
Take it one step further by adding a keyword to each topic idea. Targeting specific keywords on your website and blog can help your school be found in popular search engines. Learn more in our SEO basics blog.
Creating a master content calendar will help keep track of blog topics and posts. You can create a calendar that houses the topic, CTA, keyword, writer, publisher, due dates, live dates, and a final link once it is posted.
Best Practices for Sharing Your School Blog
After you’ve finished writing and publishing your blog post, it’s time to spread the word!
You can repurpose the content into several different marketing channels. Take a snippet and post it to social media channels with a link to read more (and you can do this more than once!). You can also encourage staff, families, and students to share blog posts on their social media accounts for greater reach.
You can also include blog posts as part of your school newsletter or start a blog subscription option for families to get notified about the latest posts. Direct website visitors to your blog by adding a direct link to the main navigation menu of your website. Consider embedding a blog feed on your homepage to showcase the most recent posts for even more traction.
Conclusion
Though planning and strategy certainly play a role in your school blog, the most important part is to enjoy it and have fun! Blogging offers the unique opportunity to tell your school story from various perspectives and showcases why it’s so valuable to be a part of your school community.
As your school blog attracts new families, make sure taking the next step is seamless with Ravenna ADMIT. Request a demo today and see how ADMIT can help you engage families and streamline your admission process from initial inquiry through acceptance.
