You understand the benefits of blogging as an effective marketing tool in generating business for your school and are ready to start one. But where to begin? Here are 5 steps to starting a school blog.
Identify your audience
Before you begin writing, you need to identify who your target audience is. Who are you trying to attract? What challenges do they face? Developing student and parent personas is a great way to help you identify and better understand your audience. In addition, it will help you create the type of content they will want to read about.
Devise a content development strategy
The key to a successful blog is consistency. To achieve that, devise a plan that includes realistic and sustainable goals. One important thing to consider is identifying who is going to create content. Another one is to determine how often you plan to post.
Create content
Ideally, it is good to have a few blogs in draft and ready for publishing before you go live. This will provide a buffer as you get up and running. It will help minimize the risk of falling behind on your posting goals. For example, producing 5 blog posts ahead of time can give you the opportunity to assess how long it takes to write a blog post so you know how much time to set aside.
Build an editorial calendar
An editorial calendar is a great planning tool that can help you map out topic ideas, schedule and assign due dates, as well as facilitate regular and consistent blog post production. Whether you have one writer or a team, an editorial calendar is a valuable resource in keeping your efforts focused and on track.
Launch your blog
Once you are ready to go live, you will want to do some marketing to get people to notice your blog. Consider starting with e-mails to your enrolled students and ask them to spread the news. Additionally, reach out through social media and encourage your followers to share the word.
Thanks for taking the time to read our blog post on starting a school blog. At faethe.marketing we have been helping schools get more students through blogging. So if you are looking to recruit more students for your programmes with minimal cost and effort, feel free to reach out to us.