These same decisions should be incorporated in your school’s marketing plan.
Social Sharing. Entrepreneur Dan Greenburg recently said in a Forbes article that the Web has evolved from a network of sites to a network of people. How very true. Today’s online marketing weighs heavily on others sharing your information. That could include an article you’ve published about your facility, a video your students have created and published on YouTube, or even a photo gallery of a recent event on your school’s campus you’ve shared on Facebook. Regardless of what format the content is in, content should be interesting enough that others are inclined to share.
Blogging. Staffing levels are projected to remain low in 2011. This opens more opportunities for executives and managers to write direct editorials on behalf of their organizations. And, although continued low staff levels is bad news, blog postings are great news.
People enjoy reading blogs. In fact, blog sites and microblog sites such as Twitter continue to gain popularity. Promoting blog content through social media sites has also proved to be easy. It doesn’t consume much more than a few seconds to share a link with alumni and friends.
Multimedia Explosion. In 2011 we expect to see more editorial sites such as New York Times and Time incorporating video and audio into their headlining stories. Because it’s becoming increasingly important for sites to differentiate themselves from the masses, unique content and content with layers is going to aggressively advance toward becoming the standard.
Complementing your school’s annual alumni dinner article with images from the event, attaching a link to view a few minutes of your school’s musical on YouTube, or having your school’s newspaper editor record a quick podcast to summarize articles of interest are all powerful additions to a basic online publication. Not only will these inclusions increase your readers’ experience, they will also help boost your school’s Web site SEO (search engine optimization).
