Many schools maintain a blog, but it isn’t always clear how to make it an effective tool for achieving the strategic aims of the school. Here are three simple steps you can take to make your school blog more interesting, engaging, and effective.
1. Make it Visual
Like many others, your school’s audience is strapped for time and distracted by several sources of information vying for their attention. Eye-catching, visual elements will help keep the interest of your readers. But, we’re not all graphic designers with the time needed to produce striking visuals— so what can you use instead?
The best answer is to use photos of children, as research has shown that parents want to see more visual evidence of their children’s development at school. If consent is an issue, consider taking photos of quality work that has been produced, or attractive wall displays.
2. Put the Children First, but Don’t Forget Staff
It’s true that parents are most interested in hearing updates about their children, so be sure to include plenty of information in the school blog about what pupils are doing and learning in school. But, it’s important to also include interesting or useful details about the activities of staff members, as well.
Many staff members go out of their way to facilitate activities for their pupils. Why not give a shout-out to someone going above and beyond for the children? We’ve written before that doing so can humanise your school and make parents more empathetic.
3. Tap into Your Community’s Interests
Your school is a hub for the community, so its blog shouldn’t feel like it is siloed in and separate from what is going on locally.
Tap into local events and activities, find creative ways to connect these to school values and ways of working, or — ideally — get the school involved directly, which will produce lots of memorable moments for blogging.
These are just a few of the many things you can do to make your school blog more interesting and transform potentially wasted effort into a platform that helps your school meet its strategic objectives.
If you want to take your school’s marketing and communications to the next level, get in touch with the team at Eduprise.
