Gone are the days when schools relied solely on print advertising and direct mail to reach prospective students. In today’s digital era, schools have had to develop a digital voice to stay competitive and stand out in a crowded market. Over the past few years, school blogs have emerged as integral components of this endeavor, equipping educational institutions with invaluable resources to elevate their communication, foster engagement, and cultivate a sense of community.
In essence, a school blog is an information hub and a digital point of encounter where students and prospects can access the latest school updates, get some industry insights, and learn about the educational institution. Whether you want to improve your school’s website SEO or seek an effective channel to provide current and prospective students with the latest information, a school blog will likely become an indispensable tool in your marketing toolkit. In this blog post, we will provide some essential tips and insights on building and maintaining a successful blog.
What Is a School Blog?
A school blog is a platform or part of a website where schools, colleges, or universities, publish content related to their activities, news, events, and educational initiatives. School blogs serve as effective means of communication between your educational institution and its various stakeholders, including students, parents, teachers, staff, alumni, and the wider community. In addition, blogs also serve as powerful tools to attract, retain, and convert prospective students.
Example: Medix College’s blog section features various captivating and informative blogs.
Source: Medix College
While there is no definitive right or wrong approach to blogging, specific key attributes define a successful educational blog:
- Particular focus on topics directly related to your educational sector, including trends, strategies, and challenges.
- A distinctive and authentic brand voice that speaks to your students.
- Consistent delivery of content that is well-researched, informative, and captivating.
By embodying these characteristics, an education marketing blog can establish itself as a valuable and trusted resource within the education industry and build a loyal and growing readership over time.
Educational institutions interested in crafting a blog post for students should start by integrating this approach into their inbound strategy. To develop an exceptional content marketing strategy, schools should first define their target audience and establish their key messages. Once that is clear, schools can draft a blog development strategy, as seen in the example below, that outlines the guidelines for writing blogs.
Need help developing a content strategy for your school? At HEM, we are experts in developing comprehensive and content strategies for all types of education client requirements. Get in touch with us today!
Exploring the Power of Educational Content
Now that you understand the basics of a school blog, you might be thinking, “But why spend some time and resources blogging if I can communicate with my prospects via email?” While it may not be obvious, many benefits will make you consider blogging for private and independent schools.
As mentioned, school blogs facilitate effective communication between your school and current and prospective students or parents. They can also help your school reach prospects at the top of your funnel. You can think of your blog as a cost-effective medium through which you can share stories, showcase accomplishments, address concerns, and address your audience’s specific needs and interests in a timely and accessible manner. For instance, institutions like Algonquin Careers Academy use blogs like the following to foster a sense of community while providing prospects with the information they need to make informed decisions.
Source: Algonquin Careers Academy
In addition, a school blog can assist in establishing your school’s online authority, credibility, and reputation while increasing website traffic. While the content of blogs allows schools to showcase their expertise and promote their offerings, blogging can significantly improve your website’s SEO. That’s because search engines like Google prioritize fresh, high-quality, and relevant content, and blogging provides an ideal avenue for consistently delivering such content. You can improve your website’s visibility in search engine results by regularly publishing informative and engaging blog posts that incorporate well-researched keywords and phrases relevant to your niche.
Finally, given that blogging requires a lot of research, your school can always repurpose blog content for social media purposes. You can use it to develop video content, infographics, and carousel-style content, among other things.
Some Tips to Start Working On Your School Blog
Our content specialists often get the same question: “How do you write a school blog?” To begin, you will have to determine the goal of your school blog and identify your target audience as well as their interests. These two elements will guide your writing. To identify your goals and unique selling points, you can ask yourself what it is that your school wants to communicate through your blog and why. Once you have your answers, consider how your unique selling points address your target audience’s needs.
The next step is to develop a unique voice. This might depend on your target personas, the style of communication they prefer, and your school’s branding guidelines. If you’re crafting new content or inbound strategy, it’s advisable to dedicate some time to establishing a writing style guide that outlines your writers’ desired tone and writing style. Additionally, consider developing blog guidelines to ensure the consistency of your blog posts.
Your blog guidelines might include the following:
- Length of your blog posts.
- Use of SEO keywords.
- Use of SEO titles and meta descriptions.
- Use of headline tags and keywords within your headlines.
- Use of images and alt text.
- Use and placement of a call to action.
- Preferred spelling and grammar.
- Preferred tone and writing style.
- Content that should be avoided.
When the aforementioned elements are clear, you can move forward with the creation of a content calendar. Include topics, blog titles, keywords to be used, relevant links, and publication dates to ensure your content aligns with your school’s goals and priorities. Additionally, compile a comprehensive list of key school dates, including significant events like graduation day and open houses, while brainstorming potential topics to enhance your promotion efforts for these occasions. For example, if you are working on a high school blog, you might want to make sure your blogs align with back-to-school season, and that you mention what resources your school offers to students applying to universities around university application deadlines. At this stage, it is also recommended that you assign roles (writer, editor, etc.) and deadlines.
Something that always works is the use of relevant images, infographics, or videos. Not only will these elements enhance your blog posts, but they will also make them more appealing and easy to digest. Images and videos can be beneficial when discussing complex concepts as you can use them to illustrate or provide examples that text alone may need help to convey effectively.
The following school blog must-do is to optimize for SEO! Research keywords that are relevant to your niche and plan to use them naturally throughout your content to improve search engine visibility. We also recommend optimizing titles, headings, and meta descriptions using your chosen keywords and not forgetting to add appropriate alt text and descriptions to your images.
Last but not least, make sure your blogs are well-structured. While you want to promote your school and programs, you also want your blogs to be engaging and informative, so aim to balance the two. We recommend you use clear and concise language and proofread for errors. Once you think your blogs are ready, publish them, and don’t forget to share them! There’s no better way to promote your blogs than through social media and email marketing. Share the links and encourage your followers to reshare.
Example: University of Alberta shares all its blog posts on Facebook.
Pro tip: Showcasing your community and its achievements through blogs is a fantastic way to engage and captivate your audience. Your community will genuinely appreciate and enjoy these blog posts.
Pro Tips to Make Your Blog Stand Out
Another question we often get at HEM is, “How do I grow my educational blog?” Though no one-size-fits-all answer exists, having a consistent posting schedule, crafting content that resonates with your audience, and maintaining a well-structured blog can serve as valuable initial steps. If your school has been publishing blogs regularly, but your audience is still relatively small, the following tips are for you!
- Make sure your topics are relevant and timely. This requires constant research and some level of flexibility as you might only sometimes follow your calendar, but responding to the needs of your community is always a must. You can develop a list of useful blog topics for educational institutions and think about ways to address current issues while still keeping your blogs focused on your industry.
- Create evergreen content and update your blog regularly. Evergreen blog content refers to content that remains relevant, valuable, and useful to readers over an extended period of time. These school blogs can benefit schools because they provide a consistent stream of traffic and help them establish their authority.
- Don’t publish blogs that don’t have a clear structure with headlines, subheadings, and bullet points. Long blocks of text in blogs are less likely to be read, so we recommend adding these elements to ensure the content of your blogs is scannable and easy to read.
- Consider long-form blogs. While short-form blogs tend to be popular, long-form blogs have gained popularity over the past years. Through long-form blogs, brands and schools can offer more in-depth information, but also because Google has been slowly favouring long-form content over short-form articles.
- Always, always, always research your topics. Before you start writing, make sure you’ve gathered all the facts, statistics, and reliable sources needed to support your content.
- Don’t be afraid to experiment with infographics. This kind of content is effective for storytelling and can make content digestible and fun to read.
- Make sure your blog is optimized for mobile devices. Don’t forget that most of your readers will access your articles from a phone or tablet, so ensuring they have a smooth experience is a must.
- Implement an effective internal linking strategy. This will improve user experience by facilitating navigation, encouraging readers to explore more of your content, and reducing bounce rates. Additionally, by adding links to authoritative content, you establish your expertise and trustworthiness while also promoting pillar articles.
