How schools can expand their brand presence and reach

In today’s world of social media and 24-hour news, everything and everyone has to have some kind of presence. Schools and educational institutions aren’t exempt from this – having a strong brand presence can help to promote your school, especially to parents of both current and potential students. Here are just four ways that can help you to define your brand and maximise it to its full potential.

• Consider the brand

First, of course, it’s important to consider what your school’s brand is, and what you hope to convey, whether it’s the latest student achievements, the quality of your teachers, or your range of extra-curricular activities. You need to decide what the most important things about the school, and what it’s main selling points are, before you can let people know about them. If you don’t know what the school’s best characteristics are, then it will be almost impossible to create a well-thought-out brand. It might even be useful to survey students and staff, and find out what they think the main selling points would be.

• Social media

Social media could be seen as the most important method of creating brand awareness. If your school doesn’t have any kind of online presence, people may start to think it’s behind the times. Images and videos are a surefire way of expanding your school’s reach, as people are more likely to notice the posts, and engaging with your audience is also something to consider. After all, many people nowadays like to research schools online – if they find a school with active social media pages, regularly interacting with students and parents, then that could well convince them to choose the school over any competitors. The school doesn’t need to be on every single kind of social media, though. There’s no need to go joining Snapchat, for example. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the main ones, and the easiest ones to use.

• Blogs

Blogs can be useful in giving people a genuine insight into what happens at your school on a day-to-day basis. While social media can show this too, blogs give you the chance to go into much more detail and tell your story. The blog doesn’t have to be the responsibility of just one person, too. Some schools share the responsibility, letting different members of staff have a go at writing posts. One week the blog could be showing off the science department, and the next it could be highlighting the new music classrooms, for example. This makes the blog stand out more, and showcases different aspects of the school that might not normally be highlighted. Letting students write guest posts on the blog is also a possibility.

• Community events

Going online isn’t the only way to expand your school’s reach. It’s important to consider the real world, too. Engaging with the surrounding community can help your school reach out to people who might have never considered it before. Organising a community event, such as a fair or a sports day, can help exhibit your school to a wider audience – this is especially true if the students and staff get involved in putting the event together and running it. Once you’ve attracted people to your event, then it’s time to start promoting the school, and letting people discover your brand.  And, of course, this can all go up on social media, too.

Got another clever idea to expose your school name this year? Visit SchoolVoice and sign up.