Dialogue Seminars: Meeting of the Minds, Social Media Marketing and SEO for Private Schools

Seminar Notes

	Social Media Marketing Just get started. Being present on social media sites is more important then ensuring you do it perfectly. Dedicate 1 person (communications or marketing), 1 hour per day to social media. Use a real person. Social media is 'social' and has works best if you can create an emotional connection. Don't only use your school crest or shield, let the person shine through. Start at Facebook, and create a Fan Page (not group). It has the potential to provide the largest bang for your investment. Use your skills and talent. People go online to 'learn', and you have a school full of teachers. Showcase your best teachers, coaches, and students. Users access social media sites at various times of the day (morning, lunch, afterwork). Post items when people are online, not when is most convenient for you. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine. Post videos that showcase the real school environment, not just the polished school head video. What do you post to Twitter? 33% of what you post should be information about what's happening at the school (marketing). 33% should be conversations with followers or similar organizations. 33% should be resources on education or your niche that general public can use. Be the expert! Hootsuite.com : A canadian online tool that allows you to schedule tweets for the day, week or month, track your statistics and allow for multiple accounts so various people can post to the twitter account and not just you. When you're online, make sure you monitor what people are saying about you. Use Google Alerts to set up feeds for the below. These can be posted to a Google Reader account for you to check when you have time. - Your name - Your school name - Your industry niche (IB, Boarding, Montessori...) - Your 3 closest competitors

	Search Engine Optimization List your school in the local "google places" listing. It will take 10 minutes and drive traffic to your website. Install Google Analytics on your website. You need to know where traffic is coming from, and what people are doing on your site to understand where to invest and what to improve. All it requires is adding one line of code to the bottom of every page on your website. To increase in SEO, add more content to your pages. Tell Google as much as you can. Where you are, city, province, streets; what your school is about, IB, AP, boarding, all girls; sports and academic programs that you offer. The more content you have, the more google can read. A useful tool is the Google SEO Starter Guide. Read it and implement as much of it as you can on your school website. Build your backlinks (or hyperlinks) that point to your school website. Get listed in as many free and paid directories. Ask students and parents to post links to your school website from their personal sites or blogs. If possible, use descriptive text as the hyperlink reather then just the website address. (Such as: A guide to leading private schools in Canada rather than www.ourkids.net) Try Google Adwords, but use it with caution. Broad terms such as boarding schools or private schools will be costly, up to $2 to $3 per click. If you can narrow your terms to location, you'll decrease the cost you're paying per click. If you're choosing between organic search optimization or google adwords, choose organic search. Long term you'll receive more traffic for your investment. Spyfu.com gives you a look at what competitor websites are bidding on in Google Adwords and what creative they are using. Google Keyword Tools allow you to narrow down on what words you should bid on.