Week 9 Blogging for Business

It is a fine line when it comes to being personal, or too personal on a blog.  For the business I am representing I feel it is natural to be somewhat personal due to the target age of some of my audience. 

There are two factors I have to consider:  Prospective students vs. current students.

For our prospective students I would not want to be too personal on my blog because I want them to feel the school is professional.  I want to provide information about our school, our teachers, class content, the campus, life in Oceanside.  

Once the students choose our program, arrive and start to settle in then I feel I can be more personal on my blog by posting pictures of the students in class learning or out of class participating in fun activities with other students, or enjoying fun parties, events, etc.  

This may not be the best marketing idea for prospective students whose parents are helping them choose a school and want the student to be studying for most of the time.  Also, a large portion of the audience is from Asia and from my past 10 years of experience working with this population they tend to be a bit more reserved and conservative at first.  However, once they get comfortable in our program, they loosen up and enjoy the many activities we provide besides an excellent education.  I am confident if I wrote a blog addressing the students before they arrived telling them that every Friday for their English in Action class they would be doing the following activities: paintball, stand up paddle boarding, rock climbing, flag football and horseback riding, they might feel intimated to come or feel nervous if these types of activities were offered.  However, if I wrote this blog after they arrived and met a few friends then this type of blog information would not scare them.  Instead, they might feel excited to try a new experience.  

On our Face book page I tend to be more personal by posting lots of fun pictures of the students enjoying classes, activities, and local events.  I also post lots of campus information and fun facts at ELI and MiraCosta College.  On our school website we have a more professional feel with information about the classes, application processes, school information, visa requirements.  We do have a few personal aspects such as a fun You Tube video about our program and some recorded student testimonials.  If you dig deeper on the website, you will find some fun pictures of the students interacting in class and at fun events.

In general I feel customers do want some personal aspects on a blog.  They want to know your opinion, thoughts, and feelings. They want to learn more about your company and being a little personal gives the customer a better feel of the type of product you are selling or company you represent from a personal prospective.