CE Blogs
Some of my responsibilities at InReach require me to do things I did not do as a continuing education director. I plan to write a few blogs and some newsletter articles on things I currently do that I should have done in my prior position. Ironically, as I was trying to think of a blog topic for this month, this topic came to me. CE professionals, like many professionals, need to use blogs.
Promote Programming with CE Blogs
The most common use of blogs in continuing education is promoting programming. Tag your expert or speaker to draft a short blog.
The blog should address content featured in an upcoming program. Keep the blog personal and brief. Deliver one clear insight related to the upcoming topic. Include links to helpful resources when possible. Add links to on-demand programs that build basic skills. This helps registrants prepare before attending the program. Use images and video to strengthen your blog. Sometimes a single image tells the entire story. If you lack time or resources, contact InReach. We are always ready to help you.
Providing Information
Also, and on a larger scale, posts providing relevant information on a regular basis, can assist in meeting your overall business goals. If your family law section is providing relevant information through their discussion page or by using social media, your learner will learn to trust the section as a source and become loyal to that group. That means later, the learner will trust the value delivered in a program down the road.
Grabbing Learning Attention
Of course, drafting the blog is not enough. The blog needs to be disseminated where likely attendees will see it and then consider attending the program. Getting this information into a potential registrant’s view means using a lot of different channels: your website, Facebook, Twitter, and emails. Request that your speakers post the blog to their own social media to promote the program they are in, and further, ask them to please tag other groups they belong to that might be interested in the content of the blog or program. If allowed, reference the blog and provide a link in your organization’s regular communications like monthly e-newsletters.
Social Media Buzz
The blog, and resulting comments on social media, can also add to the value of the program. A blog post can be a digital conversation starter, helping online learners prepare for the program or in general, master a task or improve their practice. Others can share comments and in no time, it is possible to have many tips and how-to comments generated from the promotion of your blog through social media.
Content Marketing with CE Blogs
Many of you have recognized that what I am describing is content marketing. In a nutshell, you give something away (a tidbit of knowledge) in return for receiving something (a registration). In using blogs as a content marketing tool, you are working to meet your business objectives, whether it be to spread professional knowledge, sell programming or both.
A Measure of Success
In addition to creating and distributing the content, it is important to measure the success of content-driven marketing. Use data and analytics to determine if you did contribute to the success of the identified objective, in this case the number of registrants attending a program compared to the number of “hits” or views you received on the blog.
