The School Website Homepage is essential for a successful School Marketing Plan.

The homepage is the most important page to get correct. It is the page the viewer normally reaches on their initial search. First impressions are critical.

Appearance

The appearance needs to be in-line with the school’s selected branding styles:

• colors
• photos (for ease of acquiring and using professional images, check out such sites as: istockphoto (http://www.istockphoto.com/index.php) and crestock.com (http://www.crestock.com/). These sites provide professional standard images at relatively inexpensive rates. You buy royalty-free images which you can then use on your website. You may, however, have good professional ones done for you. These photos need to be professionally presented. Don’t skimp on costs here.)
• logo
• motto or catchphrase
• selected key words and key phrases
• good graphics
• clear, directing toolbar/s and other links
• attention grabbing inclusions e.g.

• news updates
• upcoming events
• webpages on your website listed

This website is discussed through the school marketing manual by Bryan Foster.

The School Marketing Plan must include provision for a professional and inspiring school website homepage. This is where more and more students and parents will continually visit throughout their time in the school.

Target Audiences

School Marketing Managers and key school staff should use the website for interaction between the various stakeholders within the school e.g. their students, potential students, staff, families and other interested people including parishioners.

Regularly updated bulletin boards and newsletters, upcoming liturgical and social events, St Vincent de Paul and other charitable needs and requests, photo and video galleries of school activities, etc, are needed.

School Website Examples

To view good school websites, for ideas for your own school’s website, just go to your browser and type in such words as: ‘outstanding school websites’, ‘school websites’, ‘best school websites’, etc. There are so many good examples out there.

You may also visit various school websites, system-level office websites and diocesan websites for both ideas and for key personnel.

Three good examples which see the News as central to their homepage are:
 
St Joseph’s Hunters Hill at  http://www.joeys.org/index.cfm
Brisbane Catholic Education at http://www.bne.catholic.edu.au/
Loreto Toorak site at http://www.loretotoorak.vic.edu.au/home/

Another good example follows and is a more detailed homepage version http://www.riverview.nsw.edu.au/, yet quite effective!

The school community will continually deelop their appreciation of the school's website and expect to interact more with it.

The 'School Website Homepage Integral to School Marketing Plan' blog post was written by Bryan Foster, author of School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), (2011) - the paperback and ebook manual for school communications and marketing personnel - 340 pages of easy to read and implement summarized points - allowing for a considerably large number of quality strategies and examples to be detailed - with copyright remaining GDPL. Book available from Amazon.com and Createspace.com

An example School Marketing Plan is best considered primarily through an OVERVIEW and secondly through an ANALYSIS - each being a foundation for success in marketing your school. When each of these aspects is considered in detail, the effective planning may begin.


School Marketing Plan Overview

1. Define what you have to offer
2. Define your target group
3. Budget
4. Personnel and Talents available - including School Marketing Manager
5. Develop School Marketing Aims and Objectives – from previous information
6. Select Marketing Strategies
7. Evaluation

Analysis of the School Marketing Plan

•   The School Principal is ultimately responsible for the Plan.

The Plan:

1. is based on the School’s Vision and Mission Statement.
2. is used to market the school to the community. The community includes all people who know, or those who you want to know, about the school. These include the general public in your catchment region, parents, potential families, school staff, parish  staff, other schools’ staff especially from feeder schools, present and past students, parents, etc.
3. includes the strategies used within a defined budget.
4. is used to inform all stakeholders, and other targeted groups, of the benefits and successes of the school.
5. informs about aspects which may be of interest.
6. needs to plan for issues which may arise of a controversial nature.
7. should inform and emphasize the real nature of the school and the direction the school is planning or presently implementing.
8. should include a realistic budget.
9. can benefit from the combination of views of staff and others associated with the school community.

•   Marketing is relatively inexpensive when viewed in the terms of the potential gains made – reputation, new parents, supportive present parents, enrolments, etc.

•   In the initial stages of developing the school’s first real plan it is often best to include a variety of interest groups for gaining ideas and suggestions about how best to market your school. These thoughts may then be used as felt necessary.

•   The School Principal needs input and has the overall responsibility to implement the plan.

Other sections covered in the 'School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), 2010, by Bryan Foster are:

• SMP Evaluation
• SMP is Not ...
• Be Ethical
• Who Needs a SMP?

The 'How to Write a School Marketing Plan - Overview and Analysis' blog post was written by Bryan Foster, author of School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), (2011) - the paperback and ebook manual for school communications and marketing personnel - 340 pages of easy to read and implement summarized points - allowing for a considerably large number of quality strategies and examples to be detailed - with copyright remaining GDPL. Book available from Amazon.com and Createspace.com

All School Marketing Plans should now include the very popular blogs.

Blogs - Blogs are becoming a very popular form of interactive, digital communication by internet users and are now necessary for schools and their school marketing plans. Content may be brief or extensive.

Effective Blog Use Explained

Blogs are used to allow interaction between the website’s administrator/s and the website’s visitors.

Schools could benefit considerably through the effective use of Blogs. These are ideal avenues to promote your school and the various messages you wish to place in the public or private domain.

These days so many people wish to be valued through their involvement and feedback - blogs are one highly regarded avenue for them to achieve this.

Blog Posts Explained

The website’s / blog’s administrators write a Blog Post (comment, information, news, challenge, etc.) and publish this to their website’s blog page. Blog Posts may also include photos, videos, audios and other graphic presentations.

The visitor to your website’s blog page would then have the option to comment on your blog post’s content.

Blog Posts may be of any length and literary style depending on the target audience. However, in most cases, brevity is the norm in these days of mass communication overload. Think newspaper article lengths for most blog posts. As a general guide I work on 200-300 words per blog post. 300 words is often quoted for a good SEO.

You need to make sure that the administrator has the option to accept or reject all comments posted in response to the blog post. If the blog post is available to the public, you need to be prepared to receive all sorts of comments, including spam (mainly advertising links). Unsuitable comments would then be deleted.

Two Major Blog Uses for Schools

School Marketers could use blogs in two primary ways:

•   School Website Blog
•   External Blog sites, which you would point (link) back to your school website.

The 'School Marketing Plans Include Blogs' blog post was written by Bryan Foster, author of School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), (2011) - the paperback and ebook manual for school communications and marketing personnel - 340 pages of easy to read and implement summarized points - allowing for a considerably large number of quality strategies and examples to be detailed - with copyright remaining GDPL. Book available from Amazon.com and Createspace.com

Schools can benefit from the use of social networking sites being an integral part of their school marketing plan and its associated strategies.

It is best for this to be appropriate, and most times creative. Increasingly, this form of communication is becoming more obvious for schools. A special note is to be aware of all the privacy and legal issues!

The Challenge

We are challenged to meet our school community, and potential parents and students, where they are at, or might be, in the near future. The social networking tentacles are reaching further into the various demographics affecting our communities, often way beyond the awareness of school and systemic leaders. No longer is it just the teens and '20 something', it is now common for people in their 50s and 60s to have one or more social networking accounts.

The Misconception

The misconception is that this form of communication is just used for inane chat amongst 'dizzy lightweights'!

There is a considerably large and ever growing group of people who use this for much more than chat, even though legitimate chat does play an important part in many forms of communication.

These people are not only building and strengthening relationships amongst friends and newly formed acquaintances / friends through their engagement online with each other and often doing so simultaneously, they may also be adding depth to key aspects of their lives.

Assumptions Underlying Social Networking Websites?

There are a number of interesting assumptions an ever expanding group of people of the 21st century make, with representatives being in most age groups, :

• People like to build trusting relationships with others before doing 'business' (Schools need to be open to appreciating this belief and then adapting the way they communicate with such people.)
• The busyness of life often limits face-to-face opportunities
• The relationship does not need to be a face-to-face encounter, even though this is often preferred
• 'anonymity' allows for a less inhibited sharing of ideas and thoughts. (Easier for some people to make a comment when the contact person isn't actually in front of them. Similar for some people when using telephones or email.)
• The internet often provides the answers people are seeking (How often do you hear more and more, "Google / Yahoo / Bing / MSN it!")
• Digital communication is the easiest and quickest means of communication
• Digital communication allows for multiple conversations simultaneously
• People using these forms of communication eventually trust in the results due to their experiences of it.

Why Consider Social Networking Websites?

To reach this ever growing group of people in our communities we must meet them where they are at!

In many circumstances, this may not be your chosen form of communication. But you do have control over who sees and comments on your school / alumni social networking pages if you follow the security directions. You may limit membership to only the direct school community or past students and hence only these people will see what you say and show.

It is, however, a successful method of informing an ever growing group of your community of whatever it is you would like to inform them about.

Topics which could be included on a school social networking site:

• School and Contact Details
• News from the Principal, Parish Priest (if a religious school) and Responses from the school community
• News about and Responses
• Upcoming School Events
• School Photos telling of the recent events / successes / happenings, etc.
• Principal Recommended Websites for the school community

Social networking sites can be used effectively by schools. Once a number of challenges, misconceptions and assumptions underlying social networking sites are initially explored, each school will be able to make the decision whether to proceed with a social networking webpage.

The 'Schools Need Social Networking Websites' blog post was written by Bryan Foster, author of School Marketing Manual for the Digital Age (3rd ed), (2011) - the paperback and ebook manual for school communications and marketing personnel - 340 pages of easy to read and implement summarized points - allowing for a considerably large number of quality strategies and examples to be detailed - with copyright remaining GDPL. Book available from Amazon.com and Createspace.com