Designing a Content Strategy for Your School, College or Uni — Part 2: Idea Generation & Content Development

Welcome to step two of my basic four-step guide for creating a content strategy for your higher education institution. If you find it useful, consider hiring me to design a more complex content strategy for your school, college, or university. And if you’re looking for part 1…

Step Two: Idea Generation and Development

Today we’ll be discussing the development and idea generation stage for your content strategy. What does this entail? We need to determine the categories that are appropriate for us to cover (in terms of your institution as well as your intended audience), as well as how we’ll be covering them.

Let’s begin with idea generation. The easiest way to start is by doing some competitor research; specifically, we’re looking for the content that works. A good way to get some quick info on this is by using Buzzsumo — here you can search for the most popular pieces of content on any given topic, or you can enter a URL and see which posts/pages are performing best. But beware, you’ll need to pay for Buzzsumo after a couple of uses.  

Check Your Audience Profile

Next, we’re going to look back to our audience profile from step one. You’ve already documented the content they share/like/comment on and given a brief summary of their perspective on that content (positive/negative reaction etc.). Now we should ask: does your institution have a relevant opinion on those shared topics? Is it appropriate for your institution to talk about it? Can you offer a unique angle on that particular topic? 

Google Analytics: A Treasure Trove of Data

Moving on, we can refer back to our Google Analytics account from Step One. I won’t break down everything possible here (there’s a lot), but know that you can segment your current website users down by age, interest, life events. Let’s say you segment users by age, then gender — now you should have some categories under the ‘Other’ column that suggest the audience is starting a new job soon, is actively looking for a new job, or is looking to start a business.

A side note — the ‘Affinity Category’ in Google Analytics describes people who are early in the conversion funnel; the ‘In-market Segment’, on the other hand, is more likely to take action. The ‘Other’ category is more granular and less specific to the conversion funnel. Clearly, we will need different types of content for these groups; keep that in mind, but don’t worry too much right now as we’re still in the idea generation stage. 

Similarly, in your acquisition data, you can see where people are coming from (organic search, ad) and what page they’re landing on when they arrive on your site. You might find that you’re ranking for keywords you didn't realise; you can then look at bounce rates to see if the content was relevant enough to keep users on site. You should spend some time in the console and look around; there’s a lot to learn.  

The Roundtable Discussion

By now, you should have some broad categories that your different audiences are interested in. With as many people as possible, write down as many ideas as you can; make it a competition if that gets you going. Bring in the rough content calendar topics you wrote down in step one too and start assessing the viability/appropriacy of everything on the table. Once you’ve all got something to bring to the table, keep in mind the following questions: 

1. Is the topic important to our intended audience? 

2. Is it appropriate for our institution to be talking about the topic? 

3. Will our perspective provide value to the reader? 

4. Can it help guide the reader through the conversion funnel?

You should have a relatively tight list now. Next we’re going to assess the most appropriate format for the topic; can we create an animation? Is it ideal for an ongoing podcast series with lecturers? Does it fit into a weekly blog post? 

Finding the Right Format

Content formats; there’s no right and wrong answer here. Your audience will have their preferences — you should’ve already have an idea about this from step one — but we’re all restricted by resources. Your educational institution might not have a recording studio, a 4k video camera, etc. And unless you have a team of people behind you, you also won’t have the time to script, record, edit, and upload those grand ideas. So the right format for you might simply be what you can do, but that’s OK because...   

You Can Keep the Wheels Spinning by Converting Your Content

Here’s a little trick that most people don’t know about: you can republish the same content in multiple formats. Recorded an interview? Create a transcript and video version! Starting with this in mind will save your team time and energy while keeping the content wheels spinning. Prioritise the content that answers ‘yes’ to our four questions above and can be converted into multiple formats. 

Now you’ve got a big pile of relevant ideas, we’ll need to produce the content and decide when and where to publish. Join me for part 3, where we’ll talk about actually producing the stuff and getting the right exposure. 

If you’ve found this useful, consider hiring me to create a content strategy for your school, college or university.