10 steps to writing engaging posts for your college's blog

10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts
For Your College’s Blog
Slide 1
10 Steps To Writing Engaging
Posts For Your College’s Blog

Slide 2
1. Pick your topic
2. Pick your keywords
3. Do your research
4. Write, write, write!
5. Add links
6. Add a visual
7. Post your blog post
8. Measure and optimize
9. Share your content on social bookmarking sites
10. Create a newsletter
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog

Slide 3
1. Pick your topic
 Although your blog posts should include news about your
programs and what is happening at your school, do not
make the same mistake many schools are making by just
pushing their content and making their blog a blatant
marketing tool that only serves the Marketing
department.

Slide 4
1. Pick your topic
 Whether your career college specializes in dentistry or your
community college is reputed for its business
programs, make sure your posts are useful to students and
prospects:
 news about:
 the industry
 community partners
 alumni succeeding

Slide 5
1. Pick your topic
 Create a list of blog topics.
 Your posts can be news-based or more research-based, but
they have to be relevant.
 Listen to your current students to learn about what is on
their minds, and what may attract other students to your
school.
 Use an editorial calendar to help you define monthly themes
and make content creation and coordination easier within
your team.

Slide 6
 Using tools like Google Analytics will allow you to see how
your college or university ranks in respect to specific
keywords.
 It also shows you variants of your keywords that are being
used online and for which you can choose to try and rank.

Slide 7
 Keep in mind that keyword ranking is dependent on
several different factors (SEO, PPC, and web
development).
 Be sure you use keywords important to you in each of
your posts and that they appear in the anchor text of the
link.

Slide 8
 The goal of a college or university blog should be:
to present unique perspectives on matters of interest
 Your research will help you determine:
 what has already been written on the topic
 what you can add to it
 gather useful references for your posts (with these you can
create links in your blog)
3. Do your research

Slide 9
4. Write, write, write
 Blog posts do not have to be a specific length, but typically
you should aim for your posts to run between 500 and 700
words.
 For the form and structure, here are a few tips to keep in
mind:

Slide 10
 Craft a key-rich title that will pique your reader’s curiosity:
 a question, an intriguing statement about their industry,
 something most of your students are doing wrong (3 Deadly Sins
of College Freshmen),
 or are doing well (5 Secrets of Successful Chiropractic
Students).
 Make your points scannable: Make it easy for your
readers to know what the article is about.

Slide 11
 Optimize your blogs for search engines crawlers : Your
blogs have a secondary, but just as important, audience to
satisfy: search engine crawlers. Optimizing your blog posts
will help search engines position your content.
 Call to action: Make sure you end each of your posts with
a call to action. Invite your readers to comment and interact
with you. “Tell us what you think about…” is a good way to
start conversation.

Slide 12
5. Add links
 Your blog posts should include 2 or 3 links:
 1 should be an entering link (going to one of the main pages of
your website).
 the others can be external links.
 Some posts will demand more links than others, but try to
hover around a maximum of 1 link for every 200 words.

Slide 13
6. Add a visual
 Make sure each post is visually appealing.
 You can find great visuals online or create your own.
 Pixlr (http://pixlr.com) is one of the tools we use
regularly.

Slide 14
7. Post your blog post
 Always fill in the category, description, tags and meta-tag
sections on the Dashboard.
 The more fields you are able to fill, the better it will be for
SEO.

Slide 15
8. Measure and optimize
 As with any marketing activity, measuring is key to knowing
what works and where to make tweaks.
 Google Analytics metrics will help you see which posts are
most popular and what your audience really cares about.

Slide 16
9. Share your content on social bookmarking
sites
 Social bookmarking is a great way to give visibility to your blog
posts while building links.
 All you need is to create an account for your school on social
bookmarking sites and share your content there.
 Stumble Upon, Reddit, and Delicious are some of the examples.
 Find those where your students are, Share with them, follow
them, and respond to their comments.

Slide 17
10. Create a newsletter
 After a few months of blogging, depending on your posting
frequency, you will be able to set up a newsletter.
 A newsletter is a great way for your college or university to
stay in the minds of prospects, future students, etc.
 The more interesting content you have to share, the more
you can pluck out for your newsletter.
 You can add a button to have all people who stay on your
blog long enough to sign up for your newsletter.

Slide 18
Have you been blogging for your school?
Please share any tips to make posts more engaging and
more visible!

Slide 19
Questions?
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info@higher-education-marketing.com
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