Marketing and Technology

Some school administrators understand social media's power as part of their marketing strategy. Others think it is merely an adjunct to their other marketing tools. Still, others think they know how to use social media and have no clue how to use it effectively. This short article is aimed squarely at small to medium-sized private schools which cannot afford marketing staff and expensive marketing programs. My observations and suggestions are rooted in many years of observing how small to medium-sized private schools manage their marketing. Some do very well. Others don't seem to understand how to manage it.

Successful marketing at any level requires persistence and consistency. Professionals know that. Indeed that is what you are buying when you hire a professional marketing firm to design your website or handle your social media strategy. With this as our backdrop, let's explore a couple of low-cost yet effective ways in which we can make your YouTube Channel more effective.

Control it

My training and education as a classical musician and technology professional have taught me to be a control freak. I would never have dreamed of letting my choirs wander all over the place musically. I knew how I wanted a piece of music to sound. I controlled all aspects of my choristers' performance to produce the desired result. That is what you have to do with your school's YouTube channel. You will receive much free advice as you begin to post your videos. "We need a video for

In the first article in this series, Marketing the Small Private School: The First Steps, we looked at the resources available for marketing the small private school. The assumption which we made in that article was that your school probably couldn't afford a full-time marketing professional. Instead, you would assign an existing member of your staff the additional responsibility of handling your marketing. That assumption still stands for purposes of this article. Now we will look at how to use the various resources and tools at our disposal.

The best strategy for successful marketing is to control your message. That means that you have to know who you are speaking to and through what means you can best communicate with them. Let's use the proven journalist's approach to understanding our communications strategy.

• Who are we trying to reach?
• Why are we trying to reach them?
• What are we trying to communicate?
• How can we reach them most effectively?
• When should we communicate our message?

This structured approach ensures that your message will be unified and on message as it progresses from your keyboard to the recipients. Let's look at examples of how we can reach each segment of our school community. My suggestions are merely suggestions designed to get you thinking in a structured manner. Adapt my suggestions to suit your particular requirements.

Communicating with your community

Let's start at the top.

Who are we trying to reach? Everybody in our community as well as everybody outside it.

Why are we

I believe that accreditation is necessary for any educational institution. Simply put, accreditation is to a school or college what an academic diploma or degree is to an individual. That objective stamp of approval is earned by meeting a prescribed set of standards. The assessment of whether the school has met those standards is made by independent members of the accrediting organization.

Why is accreditation necessary for a school? Because it confirms that the school is committed to obtaining the best possible outcomes for its students. Parents want to know that they are making the right decision in choosing a private school for their children. Accreditation reassures parents that the school's programs have been evaluated and have met the standards required for accreditation.

Accreditation is typically administered by regional associations which have specific areas of the country under their purview.

Here is a list of the associations together with the states and areas which they cover:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA)

Covers: MSA: Washington DC, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Overseas

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU)

Covers: Utah, Idaho, Washington, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, Montana and Costa Rica

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (NCA)

Covers: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota,

I can remember when many school administrators raised their collective eyebrows at social media a few years ago. You could almost hear them saying under their breath, "Over my dead body!" That was probably because few people back then understood social media. The marketing people were suspicious of social media because it was not as familiar as the analog marketing methods to which they were accustomed.

The way we used to market schools

Decades ago, your beautiful school brochures and catalogs were how you got the word out about your school and its mission. Those printed materials were expensive and time-consuming to produce. But that's all we had. Then along came the Internet. Schools built websites—pretty basic ones at first. But as the technology advanced and professional graphic designers got their hands on those school websites, the result was a product just as elegant and compelling as any of those brochures and catalogs we used to have lithographed. While most schools still produce brochures and catalogs, most of these are done in-house.

It seemed that you had barely got your website tweaked to dazzling perfection, replete with online applications, inquiries, video tours, and all the bells and whistles 21st-century web designers could cram into them when along came Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Pinterest. Social media was suddenly socially acceptable. Not only was it good, but it was essential to include it in your marketing strategy.

Let's look at social media and see how best

A decade ago, you spent a fortune on a gorgeous catalog and a couple of recruiting trips. Then you waited. You would be in good shape if you had gotten your catalogs into the right hands and had a good turnout for your recruiting trips. The applications came in hopefully in a three-to-one ratio. All was well.

That approach doesn't work very well today. Your demographics have changed. More and more of your target parents are Generation Y. They get their information from social media.

The diversity goals your school has require different approaches, too. You need to extend the reach of your advertising campaigns by using social media, which is easily shared. Your market has become more segmented and much more competitive. As the economic outlook makes the future look more and more uncertain, parents are examining the educational foundations that their children will need to be successful in their adult lives.

The uncertain economy, which has dogged us since the 2008 recession, causes financial concerns for both you and your school and your current and prospective families.

That's where social media comes in. Done well, social media will improve your admissions yield. Done consistently, social media can cement value in place in the minds of your target audience.

But remember: social media is still marketing. It requires planning and execution of that marketing plan to work. It cannot be a hit-or-miss approach. Neither can you leave