Does Blogging Make Sense for Expat Language Schools?
Lately, we are getting a lot of questions about blogging and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for language schools. So, in this article, we are going to address this common question and show you whether creating and maintaining a blog is really worth it! 💻🧐
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Benefits of Blogging for Language Schools
A blog is a great way to set up your school's voice and build a stronger presence in the education sphere. But first things first! Let's get to know what SEO really is. 🤓
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complicated topic and there is a lot of information floating around it. But in general, we could say that it's all about getting people who search for language schools to see your website instead of the competitor’s, by making sure it appears high on the result list on search engine pages, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
There are three major things that matter for SEO to improve your visibility:
social media activity,
links to your website,
good content.
The search engines use these signals to rank websites for the specific keywords and phrases that people search for.
So, depending on what you post, people who are interested in enrolling in one of your courses will find your site, or they might even find some blog content before they go looking for a school like yours! Posting quality blogs can also help you to recruit teachers, staff, and other professionals.
Also, blogging not only helps in getting more visitors to your website, but it also helps to increase the conversion rate of your marketing campaigns: you ask people to give you their email addresses in between the paragraphs (just like we do 😉) in order to create a connection with them in a long run, and/or you invite them to buy your courses at the very end of the article.
But it is the content that you post that defines the tone. You can either establish yourself as an expert in the educational field or create a bond with your potential clients.
You can, for example, write an interesting and informative article for your prospective students to show them what it means to study abroad. Or create a more personal connection with your school, by giving them an insider’s view into your curriculums, events, or the latest updates.
Those are the main benefits that the marketers will tell you about blogging. We are aware that those are quite amazing advantages (heck! you are reading OUR BLOG right now, so we sure can appreciate the power of a good blog!).
However, is having a blog an optimal use of money for smaller language schools with a limited budget? Let's look at that together.
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The Financial Drawbacks of Having a Blog for Your School
The Orbit survey found that people take about three hours and sixteen minutes to write a blog post. That's a 26 percent increase over the same survey last year. However, the study also found that
"…twice as many bloggers are now spending 6+ hours on their average post." (Ragan.com)
Considering the fact, that we (usually) aren't native English speakers, it can take many more hours. For us, for example – professional marketers – researching, writing, editing, SEO optimizing, formatting, and publishing an article (together with creating accompanying graphics for the blog) takes around a whooping 12 hours 🤯
Yep, you heard that right. Multiply that by the hourly rate of your content creator. Or your own hourly rate. There we go. You have the initial number. Shocked much? Thought so.
You also need to add the time and/or cost of promoting the blog post to get some eyes on it – that is the social media posts and graphics, advertisements, emails, etc. It comes up to a lot of time and money.
So, you do the math and decide, whether it's financially viable for you to have a blog.
Can You Build Online Exposure Through Blogging (Improved SEO)?
Blogging is expensive and/or time-consuming, and most of the schools that we talk to that have a blog, are not seeing much traffic coming through this source.
Yes, it is good for SEO. But it is difficult to write highly searchable articles about language learning in a specific city.
You need to catch a very special set of keywords to bring your specific target audience onto your page. It is not impossible, but it is difficult and not worth the money unless you have money to spare.*
*in which case - hey hey! 😉
*
Otherwise, put your hard-earned cash into other and more efficient marketing tools, like email marketing, which doesn't require expensive production or distribution costs, and has a high readership: e-mails are more frequently read than blogs, even though they don’t appear in the searches.
After all – your message arrives directly in the inbox of a person who has allowed you to contact them, and who is interested in what you have to say. It is far easier to grab their attention if you ask us…
Get access to our library of free marketing guides, trackers, and templates for expat language schools:
Can You Establish Yourself as an Expert in Language Learning and Teaching With a Blog? (Brand Recognition)
If you want to use blogging as a tool to establish yourself as an expert rather than for SEO purposes, you'll need to be consistent and deliver good quality, well-researched articles on regular basis.
So, consider spending that 12+ hours that we've discussed earlier at least every two weeks to write an article. Frequency cultivates audience expectations, but it also requires a lot of discipline to follow publishing deadlines.
Also, the number of topics that you can cover as a local school is limited, and writing about learning your language, in general, will make you drawn in the sea of similar, often better-written pieces. Due to that, you will have to spend even more time, money, and creativity to stand out! ⌛💰🧠
Can You Increase Student Enrollment While Reducing Marketing Costs? (Increased Inbound Leads)
If you'll write an article on how to learn German in Hamburg you might get a shot at finding people who might actually be interested in learning at your school – possibly for months or even years.
But you also stand a strong chance of getting in front of language tourists who are searching for tips on how to practice while traveling. Therefore, it is doubtful that you'll get a good Return On Investment (ROI) with your blog.
So, it is better for you to create an article and post it on different platforms (even other blogs) with an established position and high readership targeted towards your students and possible students. This is called guest posting and it is a highly profitable and more sustainable tactic that marketers use to promote their products and services to large audiences.
Another strategy is to invest the influencer marketing. It requires inviting people who are relevant on social media platforms (like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube) and related to your potential student's interests, to endorse your courses. This method has been growing in popularity due to the fact that it is often cheaper than traditional advertising when it comes to reaching customers on social media.
Influencer marketing gets a lot of its power from the fact that we like buying from people we like, respect, or aspire to be like. It also gives your school immediate trust points.
Conclusion: Can a Blog Improve Your Language School's Marketing Efforts and Help You to Grow Your Business?
All in all, we can say that no, it does not make sense.
If you have a small marketing budget and/or don't have a marketing team at your disposal you are better off using your time and/or money investing in:
E-mail marketing
Guest posting (on other, bigger platforms that share your audience), and
Influencer marketing.
We hope that we have answered your question and please feel free to reach out in case you have any doubts! 🖐
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