Does your school have an active blog that gets updated regularly every week?
If the answer is no, my next question is, why not?
I know on the surface it may seem like your school’s blog is not as important as some of the other tasks on your growing to-do list, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
See, your blog serves as a way to inform both current and potential parents about what’s going on at school. It serves as a simple, yet effective way to build a community by connecting parents and your school’s administrative team.
With these benefits, it’s easy to see that keeping an active blog is a must-have for any school, but doing so may pose quite the challenge initially, especially if you’re not social-media savvy.
To help you out, I’ll show you my favorite tips for keeping your school’s blog active and engaging.
By the end, you’ll have a blog that parents can’t wait to check out every week. If done correctly, parents will be compelled to share what you post, which is awesome for increasing your school’s exposure and potentially boosting enrollment.
I know you can’t wait to get started, so let’s not waste any more time!
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Tip #1: Be Consistent Above All Else
Whether your school is just starting to blog or dusting off the cobwebs from your school’s inactive blog, one of the biggest things to keep in mind with blogging is consistency.
As the Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee put it perfectly, “Trust is built with consistency.”
Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need to post every day in order for this to work. Rather, you just need to create a posting schedule and stick to it. This could be every other week to start out and can gradually increase as you get the hang of it.
Ideally, you’ll want to send out a post around the same time and on the same day each week.
By creating this consistent schedule, parents will come to expect an update and they’ll be eager to see what’s in store every week. Plus, posting regularly will establish your school as a trustworthy authority—a reassuring distinction for both new parents and existing ones alike.
Action tip: Using your teachers and your administrative team, carve out a posting schedule that’s not too daunting. The best way to do this is to assign a different teacher or administrative team member each week to post something.
You can agree on a theme each week and ask your team members to come up with something relevant to match. This makes it much easier to decide what to discuss.
Tip #2: Find Relevant Topics
In addition to using themes each week, find relevant topics that parents actually care about.
To do this, ask your teachers and administrative team members to keep an ear out for what parents are talking about.
If you’re hearing the same or similar questions about issues such as flu outbreaks or how to pack healthy lunches that won’t spoil, write these down and keep them for potential blog topics.
You can also check what’s trending on popular parent blogs or even Yahoo parenting to find inspiration about what to post.
By browsing through these sites, you’ll see what’s doing well based on the number of shares or comments. Higher share numbers means there’s a good chance the topic will resonate with your parents, too.
Of course, you need to make sure the context makes sense for your school and the message you’re trying to convey. To be clear, you don’t want to post something just for the sake of getting something out there.
Generally speaking, the more you can help your parents—by providing tips, education, or helpful advice—the more likely it is to resonate with them.
Action tip: Have your team brainstorm a few possible topics for your blog and be sure to keep one master list of ideas so everyone is on the same page. You can ask each teacher to come up with one topic and you’ll have the next few months planned out in no time.
Remember, you want the topics to be relevant so you shouldn’t plan too far out. A topic that’s popular now may not be that way in six months.
You may want to ask only a small portion of your teachers at a time to contribute to the ideas list so you can plan out just the next two to three months. Once that time has passed, you can ask another batch of teachers to do the same thing and keep this rotation going throughout the year. This ensures that your blog constantly has fresh topics that are still relevant.
Tip #3: Be Authentic
On top of being relevant, it’s important that your blog showcases your school’s values and exemplifies your mission. Ideally, you want to keep your school’s blog as authentic to your school’s image as possible.
Remember, the goal and focus of the blog is to connect with parents and build a welcoming community.
To do this, you need to find topics that reiterate your school’s message and values. Does your school place an emphasis on volunteering? Host academic decathlons? Have a mission to end childhood obesity?
Find topics that relate to these messages and build support from your parental community by keeping them informed with relevant updates.
Don’t choose any polarizing topics that may spark an argument instead of a healthy conversation. You certainly don’t want to post anything inappropriate or irrelevant just because it’s gone viral.
If you create topics that engage and resonate with parents, they’ll be happy to share your posts so they may go viral naturally. The point is, you don’t want to force it.
Action tip: When choosing topics, identify the underlying theme or message that the post will try to drive home to parents. Make sure this message matches what your school stands for.
If it doesn’t fit, don’t use the topic even if it’s trending across the globe.
Tip #4: Change Up Your Posts
Your blog should not be limited to only writing and posting articles. After all, your parents may not have enough time to read articles every week.
Instead, you’ll want to switch up the types of posts you publish each week to keep parents interested.
You could post an article about chicken pox one week, and then post a video, image, or quote with a short snippet of the point you’re trying to get across the following week.
For example, you could post a video of an unlikely friendship (let’s say between a dog and a wild animal) and drive home the message that friends come in all shapes and sizes. This could be a great anti-bullying message without you having to directly label it as such.
The main idea here is that you don’t always need articles. In fact, I encourage you to mix it up to keep parents engaged.
Action tip: Find videos, quotes, or images that align with the messages your school is trying to convey to parents and students and then sprinkle them throughout your blog updates.
These are an effective way to add content without taking up too much of your time like writing an article would. Plus, these types of posts are more likely to be shared, so you’ll be raising awareness about your school along the way.
Again, you want to make sure these posts are still:
- Educational
- Helpful
- Inspiring, or
- Cohesive with your school’s message
As you can see, creating a blog that parents actually want to read and share is easier than you probably thought.
You just have to stay consistent by posting regularly each week, find relevant topics that your parents are already talking about, be authentic to your school’s image, and surprise parents with different types of posts every so often.
If you can keep these four tips in mind, your school’s blog will be a hit with parents in no time.
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