Should My School Have A Blog?
Blogging for schools has naturally taken off so far in 2013, and it’s great to see. However, there are still a lot of schools yet to join in. In this post, we’re going to give you an insight into whether or not a blog is actually right for your school and what the benefits of blogging are.
- Does your school have current parents and pupils?
- Does your school have prospective parents and pupils?
- Are they online?
- Do they read online?
If the answer to all these questions is yes, then your school would benefit from a blog. So what benefits does blogging have?
Community
Three of the ways that blogging benefits your community are:
- Attracts new prospects to a great school
- Helps and entertains current community
- Increases their social capital, with valuable and shareable content
Content is a great way to attract prospects. People share good content and this will increase the school’s visibility on social media. Social recommendations are so powerful today.
It is very important to always exceed the expectations of your current community. They are the people who will eventually be asked for their thoughts and opinions. Just like any other business, reviews are so important. More and more people are looking for social proof when looking to make an informed decision. They will search online, they will ask online, they will talk to their social network.
People want to consume good, valuable content that they find interesting. Provide this to your community, give them something to enjoy. More importantly, give them something to talk about.
Social Media
Blogging is social. It can act as a perfect catalyst for discussion, whether it be positive or negative. Remember, social has given us an incredible way of turning negative press into a positive outcome.
Excellent posts lead to discussions on social media. Your school can drive communities to converse about topics of interest and to engage people.
Posts can be adverts for your brand masked as a helpful, interesting piece of content. They help to capture your brand the way you want it to be perceived, and gain exposure for your school.
Great blogs can go viral. Your content, if highly valuable, can explode on the social web and potentially increase your school’s reach to thousands of new eyes.
SEO
Quality content is loved by search engines and can heavily influence your search rankings. Google, in particular, has long been in a battle against spam and low-quality websites. A good blog will help Google in this decision-making process, showing them that your website is different and will offer their users a better experience.
Long-tail keywords are a hugely important facet of every school’s online marketing strategy. Your school will have the few keywords that drive a large number of search visitors. This may only accumulate to 20% of all search traffic and long-tail keywords could make up 80% in total. 1 in 4 searches have never been performed before.
By increasing your visibility on search, you can begin to control your brand. Sometimes, negative or unwanted news links can appear in your branded SERP (search engine results page), and this is very hard to control when the brand has no content to promote.
School blogs are incredibly popular right now and it’s great that we are seeing a huge variety of topics being covered. They are adding personality to schools and every school has something quirky about them that makes them unique. Promote that unique something, whether it be a horror film club, weekly rock music performance, an on-site farm, or anything.
How does your school blog? Do you have any ideas for a blog? Share your thoughts in the comments.