Share the load – writing killer content for your school website

It’s such a brilliant thing to be able to write about school websites! We love seeing the way schools celebrate what goes on in the life of the community. Your school website is one of, if not the most powerful tool you have to celebrate those successes with as wide an audience as possible. Writing school website content that really tells a true story of your school is so important.

The problem can sometimes be that getting content written well and in a timely manner can be tricky. So, with that in mind, here’s how to share the burden and write really great content as a team. It doesn’t take much effort. It just needs you to give it a go.

Don’t write school website content in a bubble

Often one person is responsible for all the content that goes on a school’s website. That means that one person’s voice is being heard. Even if lots of people, like class teachers, are sending content for that person to add to the website, it’s still that person who is collating and writing all the content.

It’s so important to make your content more real and truly come to life, so getting more people to contribute content is vital.

Does that instantly sound like a nightmare? What a horrendous thought to have any number of people writing content for your website! But in reality, if you have controls in place, giving the freedom to certain individuals to write content can give your website the lift it really needs.

Inviting school website content contributors

So, choosing who you’re going to involve in writing your school website content is important. How do you choose the right people? A great place to start is the infrastructure that is already in place. Primary schools often find that the best content writers are the teachers or teaching assistants. They’ve got so much to do but in fact, getting into the habit of writing just short bits of information to go straight onto the school website keep parents up to date. That in turn means that there’s less questions being asked because parents naturally feel more engaged.

(You need to make sure you’re sharing the content as well through social media and email, and that parents know it’s there. If you don’t, no-one will know where to find it!)

Another place to look is the groups that already exist in school. Lots of high schools have a group of students who are ‘Digital Leaders’. Most schools have Head Boy and Head Girl. Use them! Get them to write about the things that are important to them, give them a voice. Involve them in celebrating the successes within school and make them part of telling your story. After all, it’s their story!

Managing your school website content contributors

Then we get to the rub. It’s all very well, I hear you say, getting all these people involved! How on earth do you manage them? One option is to just let them loose and hope for the best. You could do that. You’re likely to regret it!

The best option is to provide limited access within your School Website Software to individuals or groups. That means they’ll only be able to write content for the sections you want them to. The best option when it comes to writing school website content is to have safeguards in place so that no content goes live until it’s been checked and approved.

Lots of schools now use a simple infrastructure to manage this idea. One or two people retain overall responsibility for making sure the website is up to date and that content is appropriate (and spell checked!). Then, any number of people have limited rights to add content to the website but, critically, it doesn’t go live until it’s be reviewed.

Over time, you’ll likely find that for the likes of class teachers, the content they add to their class pages doesn’t need that oversight.

The result is that you get the best of both worlds. More people contributing means a richer, more diverse range of content. That in turn makes for a more engaging website! A great school website design company will provide you with the tools you need to make this work.

What are you waiting for?! Writing school website content should be a joy and all about celebrating success and achievement. How can you transform how you write your school website content?