The importance of planning your school's marketing content

When marketing your school, it is important to plan content that will be shared to prospective parents and pupils across your channels. Planning your content will produce a polished and considered marketing campaign that reaches targets and generates conversions.

In order to begin planning your content you must first establish your content strategy…

Content Strategy

Often the term for content strategy can become confusing since there are many different definitions and it is closely linked to content planning.

Your content strategy should include how and why content will be used to achieve marketing and business goals. The strategy will identify key short term and long-term goals for your campaign, the channels the marketing material will be posted on, and your targeted demographics for your content.

Think of your content strategy as your master plan for your marketing content. It is key to establish your content strategy before planning your material as this will help to organise what content is needed therefore informing your content planning. Once the strategy has been identified for your content you can begin with the creative part … planning exciting material.

Content Planning

Planning content before posting is essential to a successful campaign. It will ensure you create continuity across your campaigns and meet your set goals. In content planning you will decide what materials will be posted (such as video, images, blog posts, event information…) and when. It is key to look to your marketing calendar and identify areas where content can be placed, spreading out your posts evenly.

Another key tip is to make promises to your followers of posting information on a set date each month or day each week. This will create anticipation for your audience as well as allowing you to plan towards a set date.

In planning your content out, you will be able to tailor your material around your campaign and create a continued strong message to your target audience. A content plan will feed into your content strategy and vice versa, meaning that all materials call back to the same overarching message. In order to produce exciting content, you must create a balanced mix of your school branding, key messages and engaging material. As a way to ensure this you could produce smaller plans for each posting, guaranteeing that these areas are continually strong in your outputs.

Things to consider when planning your content

• Brainstorm with your team – It is important to discuss the themes and messages you want to explore with your team and ensure that your brand is cohesive across all content and campaigns
• Identify what materials your target audience responds to – complete thorough research into your target demographic and what materials parents in your school’s area respond to the most
• Research your competitors – Research is always important in planning content. Looking at what materials your competitors are making is a good way of seeing what works well and what content audiences are not responding to. Also use this research to see what your competitors aren’t doing, look for the window of opportunity and seize it!
• Possibility of a series – When planning your content to fall on particular dates each month think about how each post can naturally lead onto the next. Based on the information given in one post, what would prospective parents like to know next? This could then be marketed as a series of smaller online events to support a larger upcoming event.
• Have a backlog of ideas – Of course schools are busy places and planned marketing posts may not fall together quite as planned. In the event that a post cannot go ahead it is important to have a few extra post ideas prepared so that the promise of material is still fulfilled.

Ready to plan your content? Our free Content Planner will kickstart your campaigns, it includes:  Content Mapper - designed to help you consider SMART goals, themes, keywords and campaigns for every piece of content or event. Content Audit Template - a worksheet that will help you review and organise your existing content so that you can see what works well and can be repurposed. Event Audit Template - a worksheet that helps you to review past events and their success.