Marketers who prioritise blogging are 13 times more likely to see positive results – this is because search engines love a constant stream of fresh engaging content and prospects love reading them. Blogs are a great way of presenting your school values, ethos and curriculum as well as showcasing how your school is unique. However, don’t be intimidated – filling your blog with relevant and interesting content doesn’t have to be as time-consuming as you think! Here are four ways to generate content for your school’s blog.
Answer questions, solve problems
At the awareness stage of the enrollment process, blogging can have a significant impact. Although people won’t sign up to attend your school from a blog post, they will remember that you wrote something which made their journey to finding the right school easier. Blogging allows your school to become a resource, increasing your authority and therefore opening the door for prospects to come back to your blog again and again. By providing this information, and answering key questions, your school is a lot more likely to be considered when it comes to shortlisting potential schools, as the prospect will see that you clearly know your stuff
Focus on your personas
In order to keep your blogs interesting for your audience, it is important to know them well, and anticipate what kind of questions or problems they will have. The best way to do this is to work on your personas before building any kind of content strategy for your blog. Once you have done this, you will know exactly what kind of content to produce in order to keep your blog interesting and keep those prospects engaged and coming back.
Utilise what you have
You can get lots of interesting content out of the material you already have, so you don’t have to be a creator all the time. Each subject has its own syllabus, program descriptions, and even internal productions like newsletters. Review all of this content, as well as any others you may have created for admissions purposes. Your students are also a great resource – you could look to the student newspaper, or even publish something written by a student. However, one thing to bear in mind is that when you are repurposing content, you shouldn’t just copy and paste, but rewrite it so that you are answering the questions your prospects have.
Pro tip: Look at blogs already live on your website and see which ones get the most traction – this will give you an idea of what your prospects are most interested in. With this information, you can brainstorm new ideas related to your most visited blogs!
Explore comments about your content
Another great tool to keep your blog interesting is to hone in on the conversations around the content you are posting. Often, people will ask questions and make comments inspired by your content. Some prospects may send emails to admission officers or course administrators, leave comments at the bottom of your blog, or raise questions on social media. Try to make it a habit to check and respond to these and you’ll discover a wealth of topics to address in your blogs.
If you would like more professional tips on marketing your schools do get in touch with the Digithrive For School’s team who are always happy to help. contact us here