When talking with private school clients about creating high-value blog content for their social media system, one of the most common questions I get is, “what do I write about?” Admittedly, it’s so much easier to think of self-promotional content (i.e., your next marketing preview event, a statistic about your school’s college acceptance rate, school growth, class size, etc..) But your social media system must include educational and informational content that will resonate with prospective families.
The 3 most common places where you can receive inspiration for your high-value blog content are:
- ONLINE RESOURCES – as seen in the image above, the NAIS website has a parent section (click “Parents” at the top as indicated in the photo). You’ll find a number of articles that are talking about issues NAIS has deemed important to prospective independent school parents. These are likely YOUR prospective parents as well. Get clues from these articles to craft your own articles, or simply link to articles on sites like NAIS to provide high-value content to your families. You can also get content ideas from other parent forums at Private School Review or GreatSchools (look for their “Hot Topics” forum) and even the educational areas of national news sites like CNN or FoxNews.
- ADMISSION Q&A – think through the 5 most common questions prospective families ask about your school during your preview events or school tours. These are excellent starting places for blog content. While a blog post answering questions about your school’s tuition rates may not sound very riveting, it could give you a foundation for talking about the VALUE your school offers a prospective family, a discussion of financial aid solutions, or an opportunity to highlight current families who have made the sacrifice to afford your school. When one prospective family watches a compelling 5 min video blog from one of your current families, there is an opportunity to move past the dilemma of “how could we ever?” to a more positive “we can do this!” attitude about enrolling in your school.
- CONVERSATIONS EVERYWHERE – asking questions on your school’s Facebook page can extend the opportunity for your prospective families to understanding more about the spiritual, academic or character-building advantages that your school offers. Ask prospective families to submit questions via Facebook or Twitter and then answer them on your blog. Every member of the marketing/communication/admission team and parent organization should start keeping a record of FAQs they get asked at church, at the little league game, or while sitting across from their friends at the coffee shop. These questions, concerns and curiosities of prospective families are your basis for every educational blog post you write.
*UPDATE* – If it can be of some help, I’ve recently a “Parent Articles” board on Pinterest to help you have a go-to resource for relevant articles that you can tweet out or include in your email or Facebook updates.
As you ramp up your organized admission/marketing events such as an Open House or Preview Night, you need to be thinking smart about social media. You need your very own social media command center.
As a Duct Tape Marketing consultant (learn why I believe Duct Tape Marketing is the best marketing system for any private school), we focus on strategically thinking about social media, not just treating it as an isolated island. Enjoying an integrated marketing approach for your private school will not only help you see better results, you’ll have the confidence of a long-term, strategic social media effort as opposed to a “fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants” way of doing things. Some of you know what I’m talking about. Let’s do social media better!
John Jantsch, the founder of Duct Tape Marketing, recently posted 18 elements of a strong social media command center. Have fun looking at this list and thinking about how you could implement one or more of them during your marketing season. You will need to put your innovation hat on and think “outside the box” as you adapt the suggestions to your admission event, but I suspect you will walk away with some game changing ideas that sets you apart from competing schools.
READ: How to Create a Social Media Command Center by John Jantsch
I love the infographic checklist in this article, “12 Things To Do After You Wrote A Blogpost“ by Ruhani Rabin. To tease you a little, here’s a summary of the first 6 items on the superbly simple checklist:
- Keyword optimize your post
- Syndicate your content
- Shorten your post’s URL
- Tailor your status updates
- Post teasers on other sites
- Bookmark your content
Click here to learn the final 6 suggestions and to read the full details (well worth your time!)
PS – if you need blogging ideas for your school, read “How to Think About Blog Topics For Your School” and “15 More Blog Topics For Your School” (articles from schneiderb.com).
PS2 – but why just put the responsibilities on heads of school? – consider “…Why teachers should have blogs” from Georg Couros.
As a Duct Tape Marketing consulting working with small business and private schools, we are always looking to help you spend your school marketing dollars wisely when the economy is tight. In this guest article “Marketing Smart When Times Are Tight“, I suggest 5 ways to be:
- Be Valuable
- Be Helpful
- Be Strategic
- Be Different
- Be Referrable
Sound like smart marketing to you? (Learn more about the principles of this international marketing system for your private school, too!)
Click here to read the full article on the Duct Tape Marketing Consulting blog to learn more specifically about the 5 ways to be.
In an upcoming episode on our private school marketing podcast, we are talking about retention and the efforts it takes to cultivate “loyal ambassadors.”
Today, I read 2 articles to encourage your school retention efforts:
- What can we do to encourage our families to re-enroll early? (by Rick Newberry of Enrollment Catalyst)
- Increasing Student Retention – The Power of “Thank You” (Hyatt Bolden of The Ratner School in Pepper Pike, OH)
The article by Bolden reinforces how simple efforts play such an important role in cultivating an environment where families return year after year (loyal) and they talk enthusiastically about your school to their friends as if they were on staff with the school’s marketing department (ambassadors)!
To learn more about retention ideas, download the free ebook, “3 Rs of School Marketing” at the bottom of our website. It’s FREE!
-Randy
