The compilation of school marketing blog posts, primarily from this SMA website as well as from the CPM website, was released this month.

Over 100 blog posts from my first year of blogging were released this month as an e-Book.

The 'School & Church Marketing Blog Posts: My First 100+' 2010 e-Book comprises blog posts covering a year of blogging.

These 100+ blog posts, as well as from the SMA and CPM websites, are also from my Blogger, WordPress and LinkedIn blog sites.

The primary topics are those revolving around school and church marketing.

The blog topics are based on the themes from my four e-Books released over the past year and a bit.

The latest topics come from the 'School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed)' 2010 and 'Church Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (2nd ed)' 2010 both just released.

The other two main e-Books covered are the 'School Marketing e-Handbook: Easy to Use Guide to Market Your School (2nd ed)' 2009 and the 'Church Parish Marketing e-Handbook: Easy to Use Guide to Market Your Church Parish Deanery 2009.

This School Marketing Blog Posts Released as an e-Book blog post was written by Bryan Foster.

The School Website Homepage is essential for a successful School Marketing Plan.

The homepage is the most important page to get correct. It is the page the viewer normally reaches on their initial search. First impressions are critical.

The appearance needs to be in-line with the school’s selected branding styles:

• colors
• photos (for ease of acquiring and using professional images, check out such sites as: istockphoto (http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php) and crestock.com (http://www.crestock.com/). These sites provide professional standard images at relatively inexpensive rates. You buy royalty-free images which you can then use on your website. You may, however, have good professional ones done for you. These photos need to be professionally presented. Don’t skimp on costs here.)
• logo
• motto or catchphrase
• selected key words and key phrases
• good graphics
• clear, directing toolbar/s and other links
• attention grabbing inclusions e.g.

• o news updates
• o upcoming events
• o webpages on your website listed

The school website is discussed through detailed summarised point-form in the School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed) 2010 by Bryan Foster.

The School Marketing Plan must include provision for a professional and inspiring school website homepage.

The school website is also where more and more students and parents will continually visit throughout their time in the school.

Target Audiences

School Marketing Managers and key school staff should use the website for interaction between the various stakeholders within the school e.g. their students, potential students, staff, families and other interested people including parishioners.

Regularly updated bulletin boards and newsletters, upcoming liturgical and social events, St Vincent de Paul and other charitable needs and requests, photo and video galleries of school activities, etc, are needed.

School Website Examples

To view good school websites, for ideas for your own school’s website, just go to your browser and type in such words as: ‘outstanding school websites’, ‘school websites’, ‘best school websites’, etc. There are so many good examples out there.

You may also visit various school websites, system-level office websites and diocesan websites for both ideas and for key personnel.

Two good examples which see the News as central to their homepage are:
 
St Joseph’s Hunters Hill at  http://www.joeys.org/index.cfm
Brisbane Catholic Education at http://www.bne.catholic.edu.au/.

Another couple of similar sites worth viewing are the Loreto Toorak site at: http://www.loretotoorak.vic.edu.au/home/ and Aquinas College, Southport http://www.aquinas.qld.edu.au/ .

Another good example follows and is a more detailed homepage version http://www.riverview.nsw.edu.au/, yet quite effective!

The School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed) 2010 by Bryan Foster develops these points further.

The school community will continually deelop their appreciation of the school's website and expect to interact more with it.

 

The school website is one of the most important forms of marketing the school.

It is often where school information is initially found, especially by families new to the area.

The website is often one of the first places that potential families, students and potential staff get an overall feel and basic appreciation of the potential for their involvement in School life.

Creating a Website - Background

• Investigation in this area is critical.

• The school will need expertise to create and then continually update a good website.

• The initial construction of the website may come from school IT staff or other staff, systemic IT specialists, parents with special IT skills or from outside commercial consultants.

• The continual updating would best be done within the School. In-servicing staff for making these updates would be money well spent.

• An option, I have found very beneficial, follows.

Management Software

• Another option is to have the website embedded in to management software which allows for management of the site. This takes the site beyond the static and into the realm of continual fluid development – Web 2.0.

• The expense of this option is not considerable and with negotiation within the field a reasonable monthly cost would be expected. I would suggest speaking with trusted others in deciding on the businesses offering this support. (See ‘Website Management Software Sample’ in this chapter for a specific example.)

 This software allows for various detailed reports of website usage. It could include:

• the whereabouts in the world of visitors to your site
• • number of webpages they visited
• • the content viewed from webpages and applications they visited
• • where they entered and exited the website
• • who is exploring your site, through IP (Internet Protocol) addresses
• • the browsers they used to link to your website
• • any commercial activities you may have as part of your website, etc.

This allows for the non-IT expert to update the website regularly, from uploading photos, literature items, to adding webpages, blogs, galleries of photos and videos, etc.

There are numerous other capacities depending on the management software. See the right hand columns in the screenshots below for details available though the management software I use.

Always Interactive (http://www.alwaysinteractive.com/) supplies my management software. Three such samples of my website’s details are included in the e-book School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed) 2010 by Bryan Foster .
 
One of the most important forms of school marketing is the school's website.