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Twitter, SEO, Facebook, Social Media Tips - From My Twitter Account

By admin | June 18, 2009

Twitter Tip: It pays to LISTEN and MONITOR what people (parents/alums/students/other schools) are saying. Follow them.

SEO Tip: If your school is in the #1 (top) position on Google expect to get 42.1% of clicks, #2 - 11.9%, #10 - 3%. Pays to be #1

Facebook Tip: Facebook now allows u 2 grab ur own school/name for ur Facebook acc. No more ugly links to ur page. Act now b4 its gone.

For more, follow me on twitter #galibrayani

Topics: Tweets | No Comments »

5 Ways to Market Your School in Under $5/day

By admin | January 22, 2009

Smart MarketingAre you directly feeling the impact of the current US economic situation? Are you getting more requests from parents for financial assistance? Are your enrollment numbers down today or at risk in 2009? Are you carefully scrutinizing every dollar you spend?

It is hard to ignore the headlines about the US economy, and independent and private schools across the country are starting to feel the pinch; some even closing their doors after decades in operation.

Should you slash your marketing and advertising spending?

Like most businesses today, the marketing budget is the first to get sliced and diced. Marketing, unfortunately, is seen as an amenity when in reality it is a necessity. If you don’t consistently market and promote your school (or any business), how will people find out about you? That’s a recipe for disaster – it’s like turning off the tap.

But, what do you do if you simply don’t have the resources (like many schools) and you need to stretch your dollar as far as you can.

Here are 5 ways to reach out to your target audience for less than $5/day.

Forget expensive media advertising mailings, conferences, etc and instead… Go Guerilla!

The following 5 tips are sure-fire ways to get in front of your target audience;

  1. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising: Google, Yahoo, MSN and even Facebook all allow you create Ads and serve them to people who are already doing Internet searches and looking for a school like yours. You can set-up an Ad Campaign in 10 min and set a budget as low as $5/day and instantly get people (targeted traffic) to come to your website. Now of course just creating and distributing Ads is not good enough. You’ve got to be a savvy marketer and solve a problem for your audience that makes them want to click on your Ad – this includes being creative in your Ad copy , optimizing your landing page for the traffic that has come there, and having a compelling call to action (like enter your name and email and we’ll send you “The Top 21 Questions you Should be Asking Every School That Will Save you Time in Your Search”).
  2. Get more traffic from sites that already have large numbers of visitors. Upgrade your listing on BoardingSchoolReview.com, PrivateSchoolReview.com and other sites that rank highly for the keyword searches you think people would use to find your school: not only do you get more visibility throughout this strategy but getting links from these high traffic sites help to increase your own search engine rankings. Some of these directory sites are FREE and others you will need to pay for ($200/year or less than $0.60/day) – but check them out first and ask them for a free month trial to see if they work for you.
  3. Host at Virtual Event (A Teleseminar or a Webinar): Find a guest speaker (an alum, parent, staff) who is well-known (famous helps) or someone who has just written a book that your audience would love to hear about. You can hold the seminar for free or for a fee, the choice is yours. As the sponsors and hosts for the event you can unleash your 1-2 min infomercial about your school. You win, because you get to advertise to a captive audience, your guest speaker wins because they talk about what they are passionate about, and your audience wins because they get great content. A simple press release will help get people to know about the event. Remember to encourage everyone to refer their friends and family. GoTo Webinar is a great platform for virtual events ($3.33/day).
  4. Empower your current parents: start a word-of-mouth campaign. Your current parents have bought-in to your school. Why not ask for their help? Parents can be great ambassadors and word-of-mouth is the strongest form of marketing you have. You can even create a fun compelling contest around it (like your school will donate $100 towards the parent’s charity of choice for bringing you the most referrals). Everyone loves a contest and there’s something you’re giving back for the effort – so why not? And, always remember to acknowledge everyone, even those that tried.
  5. Stand Out and Change the World: Google is offering to bankroll (10M) an idea that can change the world. Is anyone in your community up for the challenge? While the odds of winning might appear low, think of how this could be spun to be attractive to the media. Create a school project and invite your entire constituency to participate in this momentous opportunity. Pitch it the local and national media and discover what the power of the pen can do for your school - Imagine the headline: “(Your School Name) Solves the World’s Top 5 Problems for Less Than $5/day”

The keys to competing in today’s marketplace are: to be creative; to stand out boldly; to leverage your constituents and get their help; and to showcase what you do differently from any other school.

It’s time not to be like every other school!

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | 5 Comments »

Is Facebook A Waste Of Time?

By admin | January 3, 2009

Social Media sites are becoming popular with a number of educational institutions. In today’s post, we look at how Columbia University has fully embraced Facebook and has been able to distribute its imprint in a forum that is widely accepted by its current and potential constituents.

BENEFITS
By placing itself in a vehicle that is user-focused, Columbia has able to distribute its marketing material and messages to users who have opted-in to be a part of their social space. Facebook offers the following functionality for all of its users;

Having the ability to push content to those constituents who have opted-in to receive your messages is invaluable. Not only will you have created a vehicle of interaction related to your school, but Facebook is also very viral; organically growing your community and empowering them to spread the word about the excellence of your school.

Start yours today!

Here is a step-by-step checklist to get you started;

  1. Create an account on Facebook;
  2. Add your school to your profile;
  3. Search based upon your school name;
  4. Create a Group on Facebook;
  5. Add content and links to your website;
  6. Invite students, alumni, faculty to join your Group;
  7. Consistently add content to your Facebook page.

Set a record attendance at your next reunion using the Facebook platform to spread the word! GO NOW

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | 5 Comments »

Is Your School on Wikipedia?

By admin | November 13, 2008

WikiIt better be!

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.

Do a search on Google and you will most likely find a Wikipedia listing on the first page of the search results. If your school is looking to leverage itself on search engines to get good rankings, then Wikipedia is a MUST and here’s why: because search engines (a.k.a Google) places an increased weight on links from “authority” websites and Wikipedia is definitely a top authority site from Google’s perspective.

So, here are 5 Tips to get Wikipedia working for you:

  1. Make sure your school is on Wikipedia: do a search on Wikipedia to see if your school is listed. If your school has not been added to Wikipedia, refer to the instructions below on how to get listed on Wikipedia.
  2. Update your Wikipedia page: be sure that your Wikipedia page is current and accurate but be careful about what you say and how you say it. Remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia where all content should display objectivity. Any promotion/sales/marketing/hype type content will be removed.
  3. Add Links: it is important that your Wikipedia listing is a robust resource; add links to articles, and other relevant information/references within Wikipedia. For example, if you include a term like “Catholic School”, you can place the term in double brackets [[Catholic School]] which will automatically create an intra-Wikipedia link. Also include links to notable alumni, faculty, events and news.
  4. Linking back to your site: Make sure you do this, but again remember to keep it objective and non promotional. A good strategy is to link to the “reference page” on your website where the information you are citing comes from. E.g. if you are talking about the history of the school – link to the page on your website that has this info, don’t link to your homepage.
  5. Make sure you track now many visits you get to your wiki page. At the top of your wiki page, you’ll see a “history” tab, click on this and then the link that says “page view statistics”. This gives you a count of the daily visits to your wiki page.

Final thoughts…

  1. Get started: Check out Wikipedia’s “Get Started” section to learn how your school can begin maintaining your listing:
  2. Be balanced: it is essential that your entries are not slanted. Wikipedia prides itself on displaying just the facts, no propaganda. Wikipedia’s editors may un-publish your entries if they seem biased in any way.
  3. Find some help from an objective Wikipedia pro: your time is limited. Find someone within your community who loves research and get them to write your content for you. This will save you time, and hopefully provide the objectivity you need.

Share your wiki success in the comments below…

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | 1 Comment »

Can Your Marketing Materials Pass This Grade-School Challenge?

By admin | October 22, 2008

Here’s a great article I came across from Tom Trush, a commercial copywriter for Write Way Solutions ….

____________________________________________________________________

As the son of two teachers (my mom taught 7th and 8th grade English, while my dad was a sociology and anthropology professor at a local community college), I lived in an educational environment for the first 19 years of my life.

In fact, I was literally born in a school setting. On May 19, 1975, my parents were at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan - on a field trip with my mom’s 8th grade class - when my twin brother and I entered the world two months early. With all this seemingly insider knowledge about teaching, you’d think I might have had an advantage in school, especially when it came to taking tests. But, like most people, tests made me nervous. I could study for days, but it still wouldn’t eliminate the sweaty palms and stomach aches I felt prior to putting my pencil to paper.

Today, however, tests take on a new meaning. Because of my curiosity, I am actually drawn to certain types of tests. And here’s a fact: Many of your prospects also enjoy taking tests. Presenting prospects with tests in the headlines of your marketing materials is a proven way to generate more responses. By reading this far, you’ve confirmed how well a test works on you. Go ahead and re-read the subject line of this e-mail to see what I mean. In a previous article, I mentioned a legendary advertisement headline created in the early 1900s by Maxwell Sackheim that read, “Do You Make These Mistakes in English?” This advertisement, which ran for 40 years without any changes, uses a headline that appeals to your curiosity. A perceived test that you can take yourself makes the advertisement difficult to ignore. Here are a few similar headlines you can adapt to fit your own industry:

When writing tests for use in your marketing materials, the key is to create “answers” that reinforce why it’s necessary to use your product or service. For example, a publisher might use the headline in the third bullet above to demonstrate how you receive exclusive information as a subscriber to their magazine. Or, a mortgage professional might use the second headline to highlight characteristics that set his services apart from the competition.Coming up with test ideas for marketing materials is often easier after reading samples. Here is a rare copy of Sackheim’s advertisement to help with your brainstorming.

Tom Trush is a commercial copywriter for Write Way Solutions (http://www.writewaysolutions.com) in Phoenix, Arizona. You can view more free copywriting and marketing articles on his blog at http://www.tomtrush.blogspot.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tom_Trush

____________________________________________________________________ 

The source article did not have the reference to “a rare copy of Sackheim’s advertisement to help with your brainstorming”, but here is a source I found that has Sackheim’s ads:

http://www.hardtofindads.com/home/browse/ad_search_string/Maxwell%20Sackheim/cat_key/0/file.html

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | No Comments »

Word-of-Mouth Marketing in 5 Simple Steps

By admin | October 15, 2008

JFK said it best, “Ask not what your country can do for, but what you can do for your country.” Your school provides an amazing value and experience for young people and families. So, why not enlist a select group of current constituents to become your “Admission Ambassadors” to spread the word about your school…kind of like multiplying your “marketing and sales force”.

But before you unleash them to the task; it is important that your new Ambassadors go through an orientation or training to prepare them for what you’d like them to do. Use these 5 steps to best prepare your Ambassadors for success.

5 Steps to converting constituents to Ambassadors;

  1. Recruit the Stars: More than likely, you will be asking those constituents that are actively involved in your school, and who have fully bought-in to your school’s offering. Be creative, but honest and transparent, with your inviting them to take on this new role. Make sure they understand clearly why you need their help, why they were asked, and how honored your school would be if they assume the position of Admission Ambassador.
  2. Educate: while some parents may be excited to get going right away, it is important to educate them on your unique selling point (i.e. the benefits that your school provides) as well as offering suggestions for conveying your key messages. Provide them with the knowledge and materials that will best-prepare them to have success, how to approach people they know, what to say and how to say it. Personal, real stories work best and there’s no one better than your ambassadors to talk about their own positive experiences.
  3. Be Specific: what do you want from your Ambassadors? Your newly appointed Ambassadors need to know exactly what your goal is of them and how to best achieve it. You are not asking parents or alumni to interview families…you’re simply asking them to cultivate interest in your school and leave behind a call-to-action for referred prospects to contact you.
  4. Support: have a support system in place to answer questions. You could even provide a secure area on your website where they could post frequently asked questions, comments, etc.
  5. Reward: what’s in it for them? Why should your Ambassadors want to get involved? How can you motivate them to really hustle and send qualified prospects to your school? Set up a collective and individual target (actual numbers) so that there is a goal to work towards. Incentive goes along way.

Just as parents get involved in volunteering to be part of your various committees, parents and alumni will also help you in your Word-of-Mouth marketing campaigns.

Imagine, if you had 25 Ambassadors involved and each one referred 10 qualified prospects - that’s 250 qualified leads generated! I’d take that anytime.

Good luck.

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | 3 Comments »

A Never Experienced Before Open House!

By admin | October 8, 2008

Welcome to our School!Like most schools, you are probably smack in the middle of Open House season and you’re expecting to impress prospective families who will trickle into your school.

But, what’s your plan to ensure that you stay TOP OF THEIR MINDS when they’ve been through all the Open Houses and its decision time to choose a school?

How will you stand out from the crowd of competing school choices?

Here are 5 simple, but powerful steps to impress and convert Open House visits to applications:

Step 1 - A Warm Welcome Desk: Have your “star students” welcome visitors (first impressions count) and get them to sign in immediately. Collect pertinent contact information; daytime phone, evening phone, primary email, and ask how they heard about your open house (this is important for measuring the success of your open house advertising efforts). Important – don’t give them anything to read right now (no flyers, no brochures, nothing to take their mind of the present – they can get this at the end, before they leave). This is the best and most appropriate time to collect this information.

Step 2 - Start with Did You Know?: Get “your star volunteer parent(s)” (someone your visitors will trust and relate to immediately, being parents) to set the stage by offering their personal story – how they began the school search for their own child years back, the challenges they had, what they were looking for that was important for them, and how your school has provided them and their family with the 5 most important BENEFITS. A parent volunteer would build a much stronger case for your school.

Step 3 - The Head of School: Now is the time, for the Head of School to greet the visitor, thank them for coming, and introduce the person who will guide them through the rest of the Open House. If the Head of School meets the visitor first (before any other staff member), it tells the visitor that they are important, and respected and this will continue if they become a parent.

Step 4 - Head of School special follow-up note: Within 24 hours (preferably that same evening, send the visitor a warm, personalized email from the Head of School thanking them for their visit and saying how nice it was to meet them personally. Include a special link and to an online video/audio recording (on your website) where the Head of School/Dir of Admissions reminds them of the uniqueness of your school and the benefits your school provides. This video should not be longer than 5 min. At the end of this video, make sure you end with a call-to-action asking the visitor to send in their application (this is asking for ”the sale”).

Step 5 - 1 Week Follow-Up: A week after their visit to your school, send a letter in the mail from the Director of Admissions thanking them for their visit and wishing them the best of luck in their decision process. As well, the Head of School can scribe a short personalized note in their own writing at the end of the letter. The personal touch will go a long way. If you can remember a specific interaction, include that as well.

If you take these 5 steps, your visitor will experience and remember your open house with far more enthusiasm and interest.

If you want to stand out from the crowd, it is imperative that you be innovative and creative in your efforts. If your open house format has not changed in the past few years, mix it up, get students involved, use multimedia, etc. Most of all ensure that your efforts are measureable so that you can have a concrete understanding of what efforts are generating the greatest return so that you can continue to leverage those efforts to fill seats in future years.

Bonus Step: In your follow-up email, invite parents to a tele-seminar where they can learn more about your school. Create a unique angle; it could be an open Q&A session, a creative program you have at your school, or a successful alum could lead the tele-seminar where he/she speaks to his/her experience at your school. Regardless, make it compelling and always end with a call-to-action!

Good luck.

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | 1 Comment »

How to get FREE publicity on CNN…

By admin | September 17, 2008

iReport.comImagine getting on CNN and having your website traffic explode!

Too far fetched? Not at all! In fact you can do this with the help of your students so you don’t have to do all the work yourself. Here’s how…

CNNs I-Report
CNN is riding the social media highway, offering news (video) that is user-generate from people like you and me. Not only that, CNN selects worthy videos to broadcast on their television station and on their website. What an opportunity?

Is your school involved with a fundraiser to help people displaced by hurricane Ike, or are your students debating the best way to save money in today’s turbulent economic times? If you do, you’ve got something the world wants to know about.

Here’s How to Get Started
Empower your students to acquire some great stories by giving them the tools to be the next Ted Koppel and helping them publish their reports to iReport.com. Here is a step-by-step to get your school closer to national media exposure;

  1. The Announcement: have a contest, create a stir in the community, get them excited.
  2. Tools: all you need is a video camera, a microphone, and a computer.
  3. Resources: iReport.com offers some great resources to help your students produce the best news possible, but there is nothing like reporting about present times, and if I am not mistaken, we have a historical presidential race currently in full swing.
  4. Incentive: check out what your students could be doing; iReport.com Contest
  5. Re-distribute: if nothing else and you do not get that national media hit, you do have some great quality of students impassioned in current events, and that is a recipe for great marketing.

SPECIAL TIP: always be thinking outside of the box. How can your school leverage itself against the competition? The Internet has the answer, you simply have to search for it, but the basic idea is finding those tools that can spread your school’s message to a massive audience. iReport.com might be yours, but if not, keep looking, it is only a matter of time until the right opportunity presents itself.

Share a comment if you’ve got an idea worth trying out.

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | 1 Comment »

Should you be using Twitter?

By admin | September 10, 2008

TwitterTwitter is a social media platform that enables people to send brief updates to friends, family, co-workers, or even perhaps, you school’s constituents.

The core of Twitter can be best described through their tagline, “What are you doing.” So, what is your school doing right now? Do you feel parents would be interested in knowing? Imagine this;

Your varsity football team is in the league championship, the first time in 20 years. Your school sent out an e-blast last week to notify parents and alumni. While a lot of parents and alumni did their best to attend, many could not make it. What if you could send them status updates during each game directly to their mobile phone via text message? Pretty cool, don’t you think?

Twitter equals hyper-connectivity to those who want what you have to say. And, the best thing about it is that the recipient has full control, giving them the ease-of-mind knowing they can turn the alerts on and off at any time, electing to receive messages through email or phone. It is this flexibility that makes Twitter an attractive communications tool.

So, how do you get started? Quite simple;

  1. Go to Twitter.com
  2. Click the green “Get Started” button
  3. Create a username and password
  4. Complete your profile
  5. Invite friends
  6. Twitter away

Once you have created an account Twitter offers a number of tools to help you find friends to send updates to, or for you to follow. To follow someone is exactly what you will be asking of your constituents. So, if we look back to when your school sent out an e-blast to all of your parents and alumni about the football game, you could have added a line “Can’t make it, follow the game through Twitter. Our username is ABC School.”

Sounds simply, right? It is, and Twitter is a great tool to stay connected with your constituents, not just for sports scores, but for all of the exciting (and sometimes important & serious) things that happen on campus.

If you’ve been using Twitter for a while, share your experience in the comments below.

Happy Twittering…

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | No Comments »

Back to school is hard to do!

By admin | August 27, 2008

StudentLet the scramble commence. Tens of thousands of students and faculty are back in the classroom. In the hustle to create a smooth transition for students, faculty, staff, and parents schools sometimes forget about the marketing opportunities that lie in front of them this fall.

Each milestone in the academic year is an opportunity for marketing, especially the fall. Below are 5 things your school can do this fall to help support your communication and advancement goals.

1. Call the Press: invite the local press over for a lunch on campus for a meet and greet with the fall athletes and coaches. The battle for space in the paper is ever-present, but what does your school do to foster relationships with the local media? Mark Murrell, formerly of Hyde School was on the phone each fall inviting the local sports writers to join the Hyde athletes and coaches for lunch. And, each year, Hyde would get a feature sports story. Establishing and maintaining relationships with the press is much like maintaining relationships with your alumni; you are building the right to ask. Note: be sure that the writers leave with a school hat or shirt.

2. Email the Parents, twice: first, send the parents an email on the first day of school outlining the exciting upcoming events and invite them to be a part of the school community. Second, send and email recapping the first day’s happenings, but be creative. This should not be looked at as a task, but should be considered much like a note you would write to your best friend if you were vacationing overseas for the first time. Create a unique postcard, use a font that looks like handwriting and most of all, have fun with it; the parents will surely appreciate the gesture. These simple acts help support the retention efforts of the school. A simple note goes a long way! Almost forgot, don’t leave out the call-to-action!

3. Alumni Contest: query your Alumni. Remember your first day? We do, but we want to hear it from you. Our top three selections will receive our new sideline jacket featuring our new mascot. Engaging your alumni is essential. Keep them involved by actively seeking their help. This effort has multiple benefits;

4. Capture First Week Videos: colorful backpacks, new hairstyles, growth spurts; new facilities; whatever it may be, capture and put it on the Web (your site and Youtube.com); a great story is waiting to be spread. Students love seeing themselves in videos and pictures, but they love sharing those pictures and videos even more; soon enough your video will be flying across the Internet. When editing the footage you capture try to be strategic, show your school’s personality through the actions of the school community. As well, be sure to brand your work so that the hundreds of potential students and parents know where to go to learn about he “cool school” that posted the video. If you want to embed video/audio on your own site (not from YouTube) try out Audio Acrobat.

5. Have a Theme: create a personality for this upcoming year. What do you want to achieve as a school community? Is this year more significant than past years? Regardless, make a theme out of this school year. Working towards a common goal connects community members and fosters school spirit. Maybe your school has a Green theme this year? Going Green is a hot trend this year, and happens to be an effective marketing attribute as well.

Most of all have fun this fall. It is a difficult transition from Hawaiian shirt to bow tie, but before you know it everything is humming right along and you remember why you do what you do; building the future leaders of world.

Topics: Wednesday Marketing Minute | No Comments »


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