College Marketing Content That Grabs—and Holds!—Attention: Articles

Would you like some marketing assets that can give you returns year after year? In this age of speed, it’s great to have content that can anchor your efforts and build awareness by just sitting there on your website. Not only can you use the information in your articles to bring new eyes to your website, but you can repurpose it for your social feeds, answer questions for prospective students, and build authority and trust. Plus, it is a very affordable way to promote the value of your education—with informative and valuable articles!

Prospects looking at your website want to see what programs you offer, how much your school costs, and many other details about your school. But they may also want to know—for example—whether they should consider majoring in biology or chemistry to pursue a medical research career. You can have an article that helps them understand your programs, the fields of study, and allows them to consider why they might want to attend your school. Articles can give in-depth information that educates your potential students while building your authority.

What Can Articles Do For My Enrollment Marketing?

There are many benefits to using articles on your website. Here’s what content marketing with articles can do for you:

• Answer questions for prospective students

You’ve spoken to many prospective students, so you know some of their common questions. Whether you want to create articles around the application process, the orientation, specific programs, or other questions you get, go ahead and do it.

• Build trust

When you have good articles that provide helpful information for prospective students, they begin to trust you. You are not hoarding information but giving it freely and demonstrating that your institution is all about transmitting knowledge to students. Well-written and friendly content can build your brand while it builds relationships with prospects.

• Drive traffic to your website

If students have questions about college, they will ask Google. And when Google answers and your topical article comes up, you bring people to your website. SEO partly depends on your on-page depth of content, and if you can provide answers for students, you will see yourself coming up higher on search results for topics you write about.

• Nurture your audience of prospective students and families

If you start a blog or pepper your website with useful articles about different fields of interest, you not only get traffic from students interested in a particular major, but you keep their interest. Time and again, colleges find that if students spend longer on their website, their conversion to enrollment is much higher.

• Demonstrate authority

You know about college and can tell students exciting and practical information. Your faculty can write engaging content about current research or projects. You can write guides on enrolling, choosing a major, what to expect in your first week on campus or online, and more. Your institution contains oodles of expertise in various departments, but you want to edit what goes up to ensure it is readable and engaging.

• It’s cost-effective

Writing articles is a relatively inexpensive proposition. It doesn’t involve professional videographers or fancy technology. Yet it also gives you great content to use on social media channels, driving student interest in the expertise you share. You likely have some writing talent in your department and others on campus interested in sharing their knowledge. Or you can work with an agency to expand your resources and have experts in marketing turn your ideas into compelling articles.

•  Articles have staying power

Some articles can last for years as applicable pillar content on your website, bringing in traffic and informing students for years to come. Articles as part of a blog may date themselves more quickly. Still, if they are informative, they can remain a powerful driver of your SEO, bringing eyeballs onto your site that are interested in your articles’ subjects.

• The Upshot: Articles Can Anchor Your Enrollment Marketing Strategy

Give yourself some meaty content by creating articles that will dive deeper into topics of interest to prospective students. Engage the reader, teach them something new, and they may find you and stay with you to continue a conversation. As part of a strategy that includes social media, digital marketing, and personalization, articles can anchor content to point students toward your institution and your learning culture.

For ideas on marketing strategy, design, and content creation, feel free to reach out to us. We’re ready to discuss your needs and collaborate to help you create amazing content that catches the focused attention of your prospective students.