A Guide for K-12 Schools to Enhance Online Reputation
In our 21st century digital age, a school’s online reputation is paramount, but paradoxically, it’s often something that is put on the back burner or ignored altogether. Schools are stretched in many competing directions, but devoting some time and attention to cultivating positive online reviews not only helps your school today – it helps build your brand well into the future.
How does it work?
Just as people turn to reviews when purchasing a product online, prospective students and parents consult online platforms to gather information and make informed decisions about school choice. One such platform is Niche.com, a valuable resource for researching colleges, K-12 schools, and neighborhoods in general.
For K-12 schools, Niche.com presents an opportunity to actively manage and enhance your online presence.
Understanding Niche.com
A popular website that provides comprehensive profiles of K-12 schools, Niche.com showcases school reviews, rankings, and data on academics, teachers, diversity, and more. Niche offers a freemium model with basic features available for free, and paid options for enhanced visibility and analytics.
The freemium model means Niche provides free access for students and families to research schools, colleges, and universities. The site allows individuals to create profile accounts where they can browse school listings, save schools to a favorites list, and even apply directly to their school choices.
The platform offers in-depth school profiles, rankings, statistics, and student reviews, making it a comprehensive tool for prospective families to find and evaluate your school. They have a robust SEARCH feature which allows their site visitors to search for schools based on a number of criteria. Keeping your school’s information up to date with fresh reviews can help you to find more potential students.
Niche also allows students and parents to leave reviews for schools they currently attend, or have attended in the past.
The opportunity for K12 schools is that Niche offers both free and premium features for you to provide information about your school to prospective families.
How Schools Can Best Use Niche.com
- Register yourself using your school email address, validating your email.
- Claim and update your free school profile: Once logged in, claim your school’s free profile. Simply visit the site, search for your school, and if it has not yet been claimed, you’ll see a small question mark icon that says Work Here? Claim Your School!
3. Ensure all your school’s basic information is accurate and up-to-date. This includes contact details, location, website, and any key information about your school’s programs and offerings, like sports, clubs, and special education. Once you submit your information, Niche will update their site within 24 hours.
4. Consider a Premium Profile: Niche also offers a paid premium profile that can significantly enhance your school’s visibility. A premium profile can help your school stand out on results pages, allows for more detailed digital storytelling via additional photos and links to your school’s YouTube and social media channels, and can drive more traffic and engagement to your website. Paid profiles are NOT required, however, so if budget is an issue, you can simply work with a free profile.
5. Monitor Reviews and Engagement: In your Niche profile you can read the reviews and feedback posted about your school. Engage with the community by responding to reviews, both positive and negative. Addressing concerns and acknowledging positive feedback shows that your school values community input. If you spot a review that doesn’t pertain to your school, or is not correct, you can flag it for the Niche team to review and remove if necessary.
6. Showcase Your School’s Strengths: Use your Niche profile to highlight what makes your school unique. Emphasize your strengths, such as specific academic programs or themes, extracurricular activities and clubs, diversity, and teacher quality and experience. Utilize the platform’s features to tell your school’s story and attract the right families and students.
7. Understand the User Perspective: Remember that Niche is primarily used by prospective students and families. Ensuring that your profile speaks to their needs and provides the information they are looking for is a recipe for success. Stay away from overly professional language and keep your tone positive. A user-friendly and informative profile can significantly improve your school’s perception.
8. Actively encourage positive reviews. Once your school’s profile is complete, be sure to share the Niche.com link with your administrative team, staff, coaches, and families. Ask them to post a review of the school, telling a great story about a favorite program or successful experience. The more positive reviews you can garner, the better! And be sure to respond to any review that is posted with a like or thumbs up on the platform.
Why K12 Reputation Matters
In previous posts we’ve delved deeper into the topic of why online reputations matter for K12 schools, but it bears repeating. The reality in today’s digital-first world is that for charter and magnet schools, online perception significantly impacts a parent’s decision-making process when choosing a school for their child.
Taking some time to claim your school’s listing and actively work to keep information correct and up to date is a strong first step.
Share your school listing with families and students who are thriving, asking them for reviews in email messages, social posts, and SMS messages. The more opportunities you give people to share their positive stories, the better your online reputation becomes, and word of mouth grows.
Online reviews are a powerful tool for families making educational decisions.
Need help getting started? iMission Institute works with K12 schools and school districts to help them build brand and reputation, recruit, and retain new students. Contact us today to get the conversation started!
