How to Get Faculty to Create Content for Enrollment Marketing

From researching scholarships to job interview tips, there are plenty of topics you can cover in your graduate admissions blog. However, the best blogs and the most thorough premium content (eBooks and long-form guides) are those that are specific to your institution and provide subject-specific knowledge and insights. These resources attract the most qualified leads.

Writing about the particular subject areas in which your institution excels will help prospective students find you. These topics, of course, are more difficult to write about for enrollment managers, who don’t spend every day immersed in them. So where can you find the content for an in-depth blog article about physical therapy?

Your faculty members are a great resource for your inbound marketing content. Not only are they experts on the subjects they teach, but they are also knowledgeable about the industry they are preparing students to enter. It would be great if they could write the blog posts themselves (some might be willing to!), but more likely, they’re just as busy as you are.

If you want to get stellar content from your faculty, without having to hunt them down in their office or feel like you owe them the world for contributing — check out these three painless and easy strategies.

Ask for Content They’ve Already Written

Many faculty members are quite prolific. They’ve published papers and articles, and written books on their area of expertise. While an academic paper in its entirety is not appropriate for your admissions blog, you may be able to repurpose pieces of one for a blog article or eBook. Tell them your goals for the blog, and ask them if there’s anything they can think of that would fit your purposes.

You can also ask your faculty members if they have been published in any mainstream publications. If they have, you may be able to re-publish those articles on your blog. Many online publications allow other sites to pick up their articles, as long as it’s made clear where the article originally appeared.  

Conduct Interviews via Phone or Email

Before you approach a faculty member for help writing a blog article, do some homework yourself. Flesh out your idea as fully as you can with your knowledge of the topic and write interview questions that will draw out informative answers. It is a good idea to start with a few general questions (i.e. What classes do you teach? And tell us about your educational background?) before diving into more specifics (i.e. What research are you currently involved in? And what does the future of your discipline look like?)

Offering general questions at the beginning gives the reader context, while the more specific questions address the things they really want to know. Some professors may want to speak to you on the phone or in person, and others will prefer to answer these questions by email. To be as flexible as possible, offer them a few options and let them choose what works best for them.

Write an Outline and Ask Them to Fill in What You Don’t Know

Maybe you have an idea for an eBook and you’ve even done some research on it. Go ahead — develop an outline and fill out as much as you can.

When you’ve exhausted your research and resources, send it to a faculty member and ask them to fill in the gaps, highlighting the areas where you need some help or have specific questions for them. We recommend using a collaborative document like Google Docs so you can see changes in real time, instead of passing iterations of the same Word document back and forth via email.  

It’s important to keep in mind that you are NOT asking your faculty to write traditional marketing content that essentially “sells” your institution’s programs. Instead, you are looking for content that displays thought leadership such as the following:

• Information about their academic field
• Current research in the field
• Jobs available in the industry/career outlook
• Industry-specific reports or trends that relate to their field
• The future of their discipline — where they see new areas emerging in the field

As you solicit help for your blog and premium content, make sure your faculty members know that contributing will ultimately benefit their programs. As your inbound marketing strategy continues to attract more qualified prospects, their programs will also grow — a win for everyone!