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What makes a good content marketing strategy? While every industry may have its own objectives and direction, there are certain key elements that can be found within just about every successful content plan. To find out whether your higher education institution has these 5 core characteristics, consider the following list.

Specific Goals – There’s an old saying, “a goal is a dream with a deadline,” and nothing could be more accurate when it comes to leveraging content for marketing your college or university. Without clearly defined goals and objectives, you can’t measure performance or gauge ROI. The first step in developing a successful content marketing strategy is to determine specifically what you want to accomplish with your efforts.

Accurate Audience Snapshot – If you’re going to succeed at content marketing, you’ve got to produce content that your audience wants and in order to do that, you must have a clear idea of who those people are. This can change based on campaign, but must be the core of each for optimum results. For instance, you may be targeting prospective students with one campaign and new faculty or alumni with another. Develop content that speaks to each individual group.

Value – While it’s certainly true that the content on your higher education website should always be optimized for search engines, keywords aren’t the be all and end all. In fact, Google recently changed its algorithm to give more weight to content that provides value to the reader, rather than that which is simply filled with the ideal amount of keywords. The trick is to strike a balance between the two.

Feedback and Optimization – The best way to know what type of content your audience wants and needs is to ask for feedback and analyze the results of previous campaigns. These two activities will give you a clear picture of how best to optimize your future content.

Ongoing Promotion – The greatest content in the world won’t do your higher education website an ounce of good if you don’t make the effort to get it in front of the right people. Take a look at some of the tips we recently shared for promoting your content and start strategizing to ensure that all your hard work pays off.

Making sure that these key components are present in your content marketing strategy can help boost your school’s website to the top of the search engines and propel your marketing efforts forward in a positive way.
If you need a program to pull it all together, our content management system is designed specifically for the higher education industry. We can help design the perfect platform for your needs. Contact us today to get started or request a free demo below.

TAGGED: Tags: CMS, content marketing, best practices, strategy