2. Content Marketing in Education:
A Case Study
Shane Haggerty
CEO/Director of Strategy
Great Heights Marketing + Communication
@shanehaggerty
shane@greatheightspr.com
3. Why the Shift?
Internal Surveys Guided the Way (2008 survey):
>65% don’t subscribe to a local newspaper
>85% have home internet connection
>99.2% have a least one personal email account
>75% visit OHP’s website frequently
>93% watch online videos
>81% have no idea what Twitter is
>75% never use Facebook
4. Why the Shift?
Internal Surveys Guided the Way (2010 survey):
>77% visit the OHP website frequently
>85% use Facebook
>40% use Twitter
>70% visit Hipointjourneys.com
>87% want OHP to use social media to communicate
>49% prefer their cell to receive information, 46%
prefer the internet
5. Why the Shift?
Other reasons:
>Newspaper readership is down (our local paper has
a mere 6,000 readers)
>Radio listenership is down and fragmented
>Technology allows our audience to skip ads on
television
>A press release won’t reach everyone
8. Full-Scale Strategic Plan
-Raise the visibility of our school district
-Make a contribution to our industry
-Give prospective students & parents a look at what life is really
like inside the classroom at Ohio Hi-Point Career Center
-Give our constituents a better understanding of how we really
are preparing students for college and careers
-Increase participation in campus events and recruiting activities
9. Full-Scale Strategic Plan
-Target audiences: Sophomores & parents, community-at-large
-Guidelines established including a contract with the bloggers
and their parents
-Utilized existing district use of technology policy
-Provided training to students
-Content control and management
10. Tactics
Hi-Point Journeys Social Media Campaign
>Students use FlipCams & Digital Cameras
>Students blog weekly for an entire school year
>Students able to post on Facebook (Year 2)
>Students make personal appearances and take part
in recruiting process
11. Method
>Built on a WordPress blog
>Customized by Oxiem
>Utilized InnoGage’s InnoBlogs plug-in
>Students were able to upload their own content
20. Content is King
>Various trainings for students
>Students provided with technology to tell the story
>Utilize media outlets to share their content
>Push it out through various channels
21. Results
>Hi-Point Journeys site visited by 2,500 unique
visitors and 5,500+ visits with nearly 20,000 page
views
>Hi-Point Journeys Facebook page has 460 fans
>In a survey, Journeys was #2 behind direct mail as
top way to reach out to sophomores
>70% of current students visit Journeys
22.
23. What was learned?
>Students are responsible with social media when you teach
them how to be
>Parents are online and respond to social media
>There are stories to tell and they are more effectively told by
students
>Hand pick your students
>Less is more
24. Other Schools Inspired by Content
>EHOVE Career Center
>Madison Local Schools
>Upper Valley Career Center
>Apollo Career Center
>Delaware Area Career Center
