Well, this post marks the fourth and final in this series on ‘Digital marketing for Schools’. As the last one was a ‘narrative of best practice’, then (as you’d expect!) this is a ‘narrative of worst practice’. So… let’s jump straight in!
As could be expected, there is, generally speaking, a spectrum. At the ‘worst case scenario’ end, there are the schools which have taken a ‘denial’ approach, and refuse to look at their digital footprint. This is ludicrous in my opinion, as no one is monitoring what is being said. I know of one school, with zero official digital presence, that had not one or two, but three ‘hate’ groups on Facebook, filled with the most negative opinions and expressed in the filthiest language that teenagers can provide. No one knew.
A slightly better, but not by much, scenario, is where the school has created official social networking accounts, but then let them lapse. These quickly fill with spam at best, and have the potential to generate negativity towards the school. Not good. Of equal slackness is the lapsed monitoring of generalized information such as Wikipedia pages. Even big schools fall prone to this, and would probably be embarrassed to learn what their wikipedia page has on it.
Finally, having a website which no one visits, or other accounts which have little to zero ROI, are rather a waste of time.
When it comes to digitally marketing your school, it’s no good to just ‘hope for the best’, or worse, sit on your hands. You need to be actively involved if you want digital marketing to be effective!
So where does your school fit? At the ‘best practice end’? Or sliding down the scale a little bit? If so, feel free to contact me – I can offer suggestions, help out, or even do some of the work for you, if you like?!
CC Image courtesy comedy_nose at http://www.flickr.com/photos/comedynose/3856524294/
Bloxham Marketing 