7 Ways to Increase the Visibility of your School's Blog.
There is a plethora of content being produced and shared across the social world. Schools need to increase the visibility of their blog in order to stand out amongst competition.
Here are 7 ways schools can make their blog more visible:
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Identify most popular posts and keywords
Use your Google Analytics account to discover which posts were viewed the most and created the most social activity. Also look at which posts created the most links and comments. This will give you a great insight into which posts garner the most interaction with you audience.
Again, use Google Analytics to discover which keywords people are searching for to find your posts. Are you number one on the ranking pages? If not, get there! -
Track and leverage trend
Take a look at other blogs from similar school’s are they beginning to share something that you are not? Subscribe to other blogs (not necessarily school blogs) and take a look at trends. If you see them doing something different, then begin to leverage this. It will keep you innovative and up to speed with what your users want and expect.
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Think ‘why would people share this?’
You should be able to give an answer to this about most of your blog posts. Take a look at previous blogs that you thought people would share and use data to
back you up! If the data shows that people did not share, take a look at other posts that you thought would people would share for the same reason. Were these not shared either? If not, then at least you know now. Marketers are not always right but by using data can make better decisions.
Not all posts are shareable. Just because somebody did not share it does not mean the post is invaluable. However, if you want people to find your blog then you need shares to not only increase referrals, social influence but also SEO.
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Make the most of the headline
Headlines are in some ways the most important part of increasing your visibility. You have to sell your blog post in just a few words and if you don’t sell your blog right then it will not attract targeted visitors. It is so difficult to hit this on the nail but luckily you can test headlines to determine which formula and words works best for your audience.
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Test different kinds of promotions
Where do you usually promote your content? Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Emails, Newsletters, Digg, Reddit? There’s a lot of channels, right? It is unrealistic to fully promote your posts through all the channels available to you (not just the listed channels). However, you can experiment with different kinds of promotions. All these channels have their own communities, they have their own etiquette.
Try something new. (But remember: track & analyse!)
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Optimise content for social
There are so many school blogs that have really good content but they are just not optimised for the social world. Many are static webpages that offer no social functionalities such as comments, social shares etc.
Comments allow you to engage with your users and thus they may become advocates. Social sharing buttons act as a reminder to users to share content.
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Have something waiting for new readers
Nobody wants to read a blog that is never updated. You need to keep your audience excited and engaged by providing great content, regularly. Having a range of new content for first visitors means that they can go through old content and gives them an incentive to subscribe or return. Once they return even a couple of times to find no new content, they will quickly forget about your blog.
Do you have any tips for school marketers? How to do you optimise your content? Let us know in the comments!