Reasons Why Schools and Universities Should Embrace Blogging as a Marketing Tool

Because of the growing importance of inbound marketing, not just enterprise marketers have started to implement inbound strategies such as blogging into their marketing planning to attract customers. Universities and business schools have  also slowly started to join this effective tendency, which was coined for the first time in 2005 by Brian Halligan, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot.

Consider that blogs are a great way to educate your audience and to demonstrate your knowledge about the industry. Admissions and marketing departments should start blogging properly in order to attract, engage and influence the decisions of potential applicants and parents. Blogging is as an important online marketing tool that will help to increase the reach of your educational institution.

Since asking questions is important to improve what we’re doing, here are 4 important questions to ask yourself…

…is the person in charge of social media of the institution blogging?

…what’s the purpose of blogging for your institution?

…does this person do it often?

…is this content relevant to the students?

Keep in mind that it’s always a good idea to provide through blogging a snapshot of the lifestyle opportunities students will have when enrolling to your programme. By making your admissions blog a hub for both campus and local cultural life, you’ll create a stronger connection and raise the desire of potential students to join your institution. Blog posts can also blend culture with information about general information of your institution or specific programmes you offer, e.g.:

“7 important facts you didn’t know about X university”

“Top 10 reasons to take an MBA in Sweden”

“8 reasons why you should study in London”

After deciding your content strategy, how often will you blog and what’s the purpose behind blogging for your institution, don’t forget that every new blog post is a new opportunity for you to be shown by search engines and drive traffic to your website through organic search.

Among the reasons why schools and universities should embrace blogging as a marketing tool, blogging helps you get discovered via social media and to keep your social media presence going. Every time you write a blog post, you’re creating interesting content that people can share on social networks, which helps expose your school to prospective students that doesn’t know you yet. Once you’ve started to have traffic coming to your website through your blog, you have an opportunity to convert that traffic into leads.