Your website is an important gateway to your school, It’s important that your website is organised and easy to use, otherwise it can be very hard for potential students to find information about your school. You could miss out on lots of opportunities if you don’t tell the world about your School, including missing out on new enrolments.
A healthy website presence that includes high-quality design, good user experience, relevant content and page optimisation will help you with your search engine visibility. A number of schools have seen content marketing help them get measurable results and boost enrolments.
Quality content is important for promotion. Articles, blog posts, videos and other resources can help increase awareness of your school. School content marketing does more than just give you leads. It’s also an SEO strategy that can improve your rankings in search engines and establish your School as an expert in the industry.
In this post, we’ll define what school content marketing is and how it may help your school. We’ve got some practical tips on how to come up with a solid strategy for your content marketing.
An introduction to content marketing
Content Marketing is all about producing useful and quality-driven content for prospective families. Schools can benefit from increased website traffic and an engaged audience that becomes dependant on their valuable information.
School content marketing can be utilised to inform site visitors about a particular course, event, concept, or strategy. This could include blog posts, videos, tutorials, or testimonials. For example, a school might create a ‘5 Things To Do Before The Start Of School’ blog post or a video from the principal giving a personal tour of the school. Creating quality content when not overly self-promotional is a way to build trust and to educate school visitors at the same time. Below, we’ll explain how Schools can take advantage of these strategies to boost coverage and include some key concepts to get the process started.
How content marketing can benefit schools
Those involved in education can get ahead of the game by implementing content marketing. School websites are a key part of their recruitment and enrolment strategy, and using school content marketing will allow them to increase the value of their website while branding themselves for success.
Parents and prospective students will most likely want to know as much information as possible before deciding on a certain school. If there are any doubts they have or questions that can’t be answered, then it may be best to look elsewhere.
School content marketing is a versatile way to interact with your audience. You can use it to create informative and interesting content on your school website, as well as on social media channels you run. Publishing articles on your site is not just an opportunity to boost enrolments, but also to establish yourself as a thought leader in the education space. Share what makes your school unique and how it matches with their needs.
For example, you might want to include educational guides for teachers to help others learn what they know, as well as testimonials from alumni who credit their development to your institution.
School content marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to boost your organic rankings, as it is best placed where people are looking for information. The more you produce, the higher likelihood that other websites will link to you and Google’s search algorithm will notice. Inbound links are a crucial factor in SEO because they’ll help you rank higher. The better your content, the more people will link to it. So make sure to invest in creating amazing content for this reason.
School content marketing is a way to get your company’s name out there. It includes relevant keywords that people might search for, leading your school to the top of the list. You can use a range of keywords throughout your page to tap into searches that other universities might not be able to. In fact, you can add more details in future posts based on feedback from current ones.
For example, you could create content that offers some advice about safely conducting a science experiment. Utilising strategic keywords, you can make your content more searchable and rank higher in Google and other search engines.
Here are three ways you can utilise content marketing to boost enrolments and traffic to your school website:
To make the most of school content marketing, you should pay close attention to these strategies. Not only are they easy-to-implement, but they can lead to increased traffic to your school website.
1. Create evergreen content to add lasting value to your school website
Evergreen content can come in many forms – such as blogs & infographics – and range from easy-to-digest content about topics that are popular right now, to timely pieces that offer fresh insights into recent happenings. Evergreen content feels fresh & new every time you read it, even if you open it 10 years later.
It will typically be designed in a way that encourages the reader to stay on the site longer. This differs from other articles you might often publish on your school site like announcements, event information, or other content that has an expiry date associated with it. Evergreen content can be your best friend when it comes to SEO. Exceptional long-term content will keep its relevance if it is relevance & just as read.
Evergreen content can help you create a wide-reaching blog post on your school’s website that provides the information needed to answer a lot of common education-related search queries.
Furthermore, think of evergreen articles in the same light as other types of school content marketing. By being constantly updated with new keywords and phrases they can be optimised to give them a crucial edge in search engine results. If you have a website, a blog or a social media account, having evergreen content will help you be more attractive to potential visitors. There are many benefits to using evergreen content in your marketing strategy. It can come in all sorts of formats like:
- Content that showcases the values and strengths of your school students
- How-to articles and guides that address important skills students need (e.g Time Management)
- Helpful advice for parents or teachers, such as how to prepare for parent-teacher evenings
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that your school receives
An evergreen topic should provide lifelong benefits for students, teachers, and parents.
Here are 5 Ideas for creating killer Evergreen content!
3. Showcase personal stories to integrate emotional marketing
One great way to show the benefits of your school and generate interest is through testimonials and stories. You can do this by sharing stories of alumni, or by interviewing teachers and students about their experience at the school.
With these stories, you can share your admissions journey with prospective students & their parents. This creates a more personal connection to your school which might generate interest. Influencer marketing has become an essential part of any marketing strategy. It appears to be successful because people turn to referrals, recommendations, and reviews before they make the final decision.
The use of testimonials can also help you rank higher in search, which is always a bonus. The more high rankings you receive on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), the more traffic you’ll see to your site. This will ultimately boosts your website’s rank, visibility and popularity.
The idea is that these stories should be impactful, touching and prominently featured for the greatest possible effect. This should translate to them being highly shareable, allowing your content to spread across social networks or other platforms.
One convention for testimonials is to put them under a “personal stories” category. WordPress post categories automatically generate their own pages, so all your personal stories will be organised in a single location. You can create a great online community for alumni, students, parents & teachers on your site. Let them interact with each other and show off their content.
3. Consider using infographics for fast comprehension of complex topics
A great way to content market your school is through infographics. For example, you can use them to showcase statistics on what grades your students are achieving or how many of them go onto university after finishing school.
Best of all, they provide an opportunity to showcase your ‘brand’ and increase awareness by adding your school logo. They also can be beneficial for driving traffic since infographics are easy to share on social media
Infographics may seem difficult to create, but today there are a bunch of tools that can help you, such as Adobe Spark or Canva. You can also use PicktoChart to create professional-looking infographics.
Canva makes it especially easy because it provides several free templates. You can make data beautiful—and easy to digest. With Canva’s free infographics maker, there’s no need to struggle with complicated design software. Simply choose an infographic template, add your information and there you have it: A stunning custom infographic.
How to make an infographic with Canva
- Get started with Canva: Open up Canva and log in or sign up for a new account using your email, Google or Facebook profile. Search for “Infographics” to start designing.
- Select a template: Explore Canva’s wide range of infographic templates for your visualization needs. Use the search tool to narrow down your choices by theme, color, style and more.
- Customize your infographic design: Begin with a template and branch out in any number of creative directions. Change the text, colors, fonts and backgrounds with just a few clicks.
- Perfect your design with elements: Browse our immense library filled with millions of images, illustrations and graphics. Find thousands of arrow designs for your flowchart and arrange them any way you like on your design.
- Save and share: Happy with the result? Download and save your infographics as a PNG, JPG or GIF file. Share it on your social media, embed it into your website or print it for handy reference.
It may take some time to get used to Canva, but it’s a great tool for creating infographics & other kinds of visuals for sharing information online.
Conclusion
School content marketing is an effective strategy to help your school get more traffic on its website and ultimately boost enrolments. Use these three suggestions to get you started with content marketing on your school site:
- Create Evergreen content to extend your audience lifespan.
- Consider using shareable infographics to make information easy to digest.
- Feature personal stories and testimonials to add an emotinal element.
Do you have any questions about how you can use school content marketing on your website? Send us a message today!
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