education marketing online: social media, search marketing & websites
DESCRIPTION
Schools are now creating vital online homes for their communities, including parents, students, staff, community leaders, donors and administration. Knowing how to harness the power of your community is key to drive marketing, search engine results and rankings and develop online engagement through social media for your school. Here’s a peek at how Oxiem helps marketers and communicators in education tell their stories.TRANSCRIPT
Engaging Branding | Top Technology | Easy Manageability
> Sites that perform & convert visitors to customers
Holistic Web Marketing | Organic + Paid + QOV Metrics
> Continually-managed, for traffic and conversion
Connect | Convey | Converse With Audiences
> Active dialog that creates a bond and advocacy
Source: Gallup Poll 06/08
10
25
40
55
70
1981 1984 1987 1990 1993 1996 1999 2002 2005 2008
"Gre
at
Deal of
Confidence"
(%)
Banks Public Schools Newspapers Congress
Changing Expectations for School Websites
• Not a brochure, a tool for educators, marketers, parents & students
• Driven by rich media: Videos, podcasts, blogs & photography
• More people managing sites instead of just IT: Marketing, information
services, teachers, administrative professionals
• Community advocacy: Donor development, levies, alumnae relations
A Growing Familiarity with Online Tools
• Students & teachers taking initiative to create own sites, pages, etc –
sometimes outside of school control and organizational brand
• Parents advocating for more ways to connect to classroom
• Ever-increasing need to teach more technology & science
• Gaming & digital media in the classroom is growing
• Social media usage is happening at all age levels, regardless if the school
itself officially is participating in the social media space
TRADITIONALMARKETING
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
SOCIAL MEDIA
WEBSITE
Traditional
Marketing
Search Engine
OptimizationSocial Media
WEBSITE
• Facebook has over 400 million users worldwide
• Twitter grew over 1,000 percent in 2009
• LinkedIn has over 60 million users
• Social media is the top digital priority in 2010
among senior marketers
• 70% of bloggers are organically talking about
brands on their blog
• There are more than 3.5bn pieces of content
(web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) shared
each week on Facebook.
Tactics:
• Blogs
• Whitepapers
• E-books
• Sharable content on your website
Remember, good content gets shared.
Are you making it easy for your
community to share?
Top Sites to Consider:
• Delicious
• Digg
• Technorati
• Google Buzz (maybe)
• Integrate your top performing keywords
• Download the “All in One SEO” Pack for Wordpress
• Outbound Links
• Offer RSS & Subscriptions buttons
• Headlines, Tags & Categories
• URL Structure
•www.yourblogsite.com/?p=123
•www.yourblogsite.com/2007/01/01/blog_entry_title_here
• What are your objectives & goals?
• Use Google Analytics to monitor, measure and adjust
• Use bit.ly to track and measure all links you are sharing
• Teach safety first, for students and educators
• Create a social media policy & actively listen
• Enable others to share the values and mission of your organization
• Content is king – Quality content will always win!
• Be a resource – Share unique, relevant and helpful stuff
• Be real & authentic – It actually works!
• Social media is a two-way space
• Make sure you’re linking to your website in all profiles!
• LinkedIn links
• Facebook Fan Pages
• Twitter bios
• Delicious, Digg and other social bookmarking profiles
• Integrate keywords in bios
• Use bit.ly to track and measure all links you are sharing
• Keyword rich text
• Headings
• Title tags
• Meta tags
• Calls to action
• URL structure
• Internal linking
• Much more!
• Solid keyword list
• Linking strategies
• Anchor text
• Directory submission
• Keyword focused links
• Social media!
• Reflects the brand, captures emotion
• Look, imagery, language
• Created with specific user groups in mind
• Clean, unified design approach
• Incorporates the features/information users need
• Easy, intuitive navigation
• Content management system that is flexible, easy to use
• Active and engaging, with useful information for the visitor
• Supports active media, goes beyond a flat, traditional approach
• Search-engine friendly; accessible
• Simple to manage, update and change
• Security to fend off breaches
• Integrated measurements
• Dynamic content (video, images, podcast, etc.)
• Use quality headlines and keyword-rich descriptions
• Don’t forget keyword-rich tags
• Should allow for flexiblity – never a static template
• Easy for users to navigate and use – good, personalized training
• Granular permissions available – i.e. Administrator vs. teacher
• Advanced calendar functionality – grade levels, departments, internal &
external, lunch menus
• Allow for rich media usage and linking to social media if applicable
