10 steps to writing engaging posts for your college's blog
DESCRIPTION
Here are 10 quick steps to start writing engaging blog posts for your college or university.TRANSCRIPT
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your
College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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1. Pick your topic2. Pick your keywords3. Do your research4. Write, write, write!5. Add links6. Add a visual7. Post your blog post8. Measure and optimize9. Share your content on social bookmarking sites10. Create a newsletter
Overview
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
2. Pick your keywords
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
2. Pick your keywords
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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:
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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4. Write, write, write
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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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4. Write, write, write
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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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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.
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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Have you been blogging for your school?
Please share any tips to make posts more engaging and more visible!
Source: Higher Education Marketing - 10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
10 Steps To Writing Engaging Posts For Your College’s Blog
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