Blogs - Blogs are becoming a very popular form of interactive, digital communication by internet users and are now necessary for schools and their school marketing plans. Content may be brief or extensive.

Explained

Blogs are used to allow interaction between the website’s administrator/s and the website’s visitors.

Schools could benefit considerably through the effective use of Blogs. These are ideal avenues to promote your school and the various messages you wish to place in the public or private domain.

These days so many people wish to be valued through their involvement and feedback - blogs are one highly regarded avenue for them to achieve this.

Blog Posts

The website’s / blog’s administrators write a Blog Post (comment, information, news, challenge, etc.) and publish this to their website’s blog page. Blog Posts may also include photos, videos, audios and other graphic presentations.

The visitor to your website’s blog page would then have the option to comment on your blog post’s content.

Blog Posts may be of any length and literary style depending on the target audience. However, in most cases, brevity is the norm in these days of mass communication overload. Think newspaper article lengths for most blog posts. As a general guide I work on 200-300 words per blog post. 300 words is often quoted for a good SEO.

You need to make sure that the administrator has the option to accept or reject all comments posted in response to the blog post. If the blog post is available to the public, you need to be prepared to receive all sorts of comments, including spam (mainly advertising links). Unsuitable comments would then be deleted.

Two Major Blog Uses for Schools

School Marketers could use blogs in two primary ways:

•   School website Blog
•   External Blog sites, which you would point (link) back to your school website.

The DETAIL

More detail showing how necessary school blogs and school marketing blogs are, may be found in the e-book: School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed) 2010 by Bryan Foster.

For School Websites to gain higher positioning at various search engines, various methods of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are needed. A successful school marketing plan with carefully incorporate the necessary SEO strategies for this to occur.

Website Viewers

Many school communities may be interested in having their school and their website open worldwide. SEOs would likely suit these schools.

Some schools aren’t really interested in having their website visited from people all over the world. These school communities are more interested in their local communities. For these people SEOs are not needed.

Various school communities might like their website to be easily accessible to people from various parts of their particular country but not necessarily beyond their borders. This allows for people transferring to their school to preview what the school has to offer. A suggestion for these communities would be to select a domain name which ends in their countries code e.g. United Kingdom .uk, for Australia .au, New Zealand .nz etc.


Top Search Engine Page is the Aim

The aim with SEO is to achieve in the top three on the first page of any search engine.
 

Suggestions for Improvement

Some ways I have found which I believe help with Search Engine Optimization are:

•   The Domain name includes the school name and suburb.

•   Key Words such as the school name are regularly used throughout the site, particularly in titles / headings, first sentence and last sentence on each webpage.

•   Each webpage within the website would highlight something different about the school and hence also include other key words associated both with the school name / suburb and that webpage’s emphasis.

These other Key Words may be: principal, school staff, curriculum, religious education, contact us, priests, open day, prospectus, sporting / arts / welfare etc groups within the school, etc.

The key would for impact could have the school name before it e.g. aquinas college principal. This links the purpose of the webpage specifically with the school.

•   Each Blog Post’s title, along with the first and last sentences would include key words associated with that individual blog’s message and that it eventuated from your school.

•   The more links coming to your website from other sources, particularly .gov, .edu and .org the better. Having other sites point to your website helps SEO i.e. having other sites have your Domain / URL linked live on their website.

However, it is best not to swap links with others of similar level e.g. .org. That is, if each site has the other’s site linked from their site, this usually causes it to neutralize the impact for both sites.

Yet swapping these links may improve traffic to your site, just not higher SEO.

•   Include links within your own site to various other webpages on your site.

•   Another way of achieving the links from other sites may be achieved by developing various Blogs elsewhere which include the link to your website. (More on this in Blogs later.)

•   Be careful not to overdo all these links and key words as search engines may penalize you for being overambitious in gaining notice for your website.

•   Age of the website. Older sites have more credibility. Develop your website as soon as possible.

•   Update your site regularly. A fresh, updated site is appealing to both visitors and for SEO.

•   Paid Ads will gain you high positioning in the ‘Sponsored’ columns, but at a cost, usually on a pay per click per view system. This may be quite expensive for a school’s needs.

School Websites invariably require high SEO (Search Engine Optimization) - these suggestions above come from the School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), 2010, by Bryan Foster.

The School Marketing Plan (SMP) and associated School Marketing Strategies are the foundation for success in marketing your school. An example Overview of a SMP follows. Specific details for each step are found in the School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), 2010, by Bryan Foster. An analysis of the plan follows the overview.


School Marketing Plan Overview

Define what you have to offer:

Define your target group:
 
Budget:

Personnel and Talents available - including School Marketing Manager:

Develop School Marketing Aims and Objectives – from previous information:

Select Marketing Strategies:

Evaluation:

(Details for each section above are noted in the school marketing manual ebook.)


Analysis of the School Marketing Plan

•   The School Principal is ultimately responsible for the SMP.

•   The School Marketing Plan is based on the School’s Vision and Mission Statement.

•   A SMP is the plan used to market the school to the community. The community includes all people who know, or those who you want to know, about the school. These include the general public in your catchment region, parents, potential families, school staff, parish  staff, other schools’ staff especially from feeder schools, present and past students, parents, etc.

•   The SMP includes the strategies used within a defined budget.

•   The plan is used to inform all stakeholders, and other targeted groups, of the benefits and successes of the school.

•   It also informs about aspects which may be of interest.

•   It also needs to plan for issues which may arise of a controversial nature.

•   The plan should inform and emphasize the real nature of the school and the direction the school is planning or presently implementing.

•   A realistic budget is part of the SMP.

•   Marketing is relatively inexpensive when viewed in the terms of the potential gains made – reputation, new parents, supportive present parents, enrolments, etc.

•   The SMP can benefit from the combination of views of staff and others
associated with the school community.

•   In the initial stages of developing the school’s first real plan it is often best to include a variety of interest groups for gaining ideas and suggestions about how best to market your school. These thoughts may then be used as felt necessary.

•   The School Principal needs input and has the overall responsibility to implement the plan.

Other sections covered:

• SMP Evaluation
• SMP is Not ...
• Be Ethical
• Who Needs a SMP?

The School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), 2010, written by Bryan Foster details the essentials for a successful school marketing plan and associated strategies.

The best school marketing strategy is still word of mouth. However, the skills most needed by school marketing personnel are those which keep the school community well informed and supportive of the school, and hence capable of having the word of mouth as a successful marketing strategy within the school marketing plan.

I recently returned to St Mary's School, Goondiwindi, a country school of which I was the first lay principal in the 1980s.

This is the educational setting where I started to develop my school marketing principles and strategies, which now form the basis of my school markeitng e-books.

The basic school marketing startegies back in the 1980s revolved around the success of the community's word-of-mouth support, the school and parish newsletters and the local newspaper.

The community's word-of-mouth support is still critical to this day for all school marketing personnel. The challenge is how to keep the community informed and supportive.

Paul Ryan the present principal is doing a wonderful job. There is a real positive feel about the school. There are also a number of necessary expansions being undertaken by Paul in this thriving school community," said

I was also able to meet with Fr Michael O'Brien PP of St Mary's Parish Goondiwindi.

An enjoyable chat occurred in St Mary's Church while Fr Michael O'Brien rehearsed students from St Mary's School, the local parish school, for their Easter ceremony. Each person at this Sunday afternoon practice was very much enjoying the experience.

The contryside around Goondiwindi, which is 4.5 hours from the east coast of Australia, was showing the positive signs of a drought-break following major flooding in western and southern Queensland.

Photo above shows Paul Ryan, Principal St Mary's School, Goondiwindi, with Bryan Foster, first lay principal of St Mary's School.

Bryan Foster, Author of 'School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed)', 2010, complied this blog post highlighting the importance of the word of mouth as a crtical school marketing strategy in the school marketing plan.