Southwark Consulting
  • About Southwark
  • Services
    • School Branding
    • Prospect Marketing
    • Applicant Service
    • Candidate Assessment
    • Admissions Operations
  • Why Southwark?
  • Case Study
  • Blog
  • Contact

Web Marketing Wednesdays: B-School Branding, Four Great SEO Tips, Social Media Community Managers

Posted on February 26, 2014 by Graham Richmond in News 2 Comments

Welcome back to Web Marketing Wednesdays (WMW), Southwark Consulting’s weekly roundup of news and notes from the digital marketing world! This week we share lessons in b-school branding from the art world, a few key SEO tips, LinkedIn’s decision to allow members to block users, and some excellent email marketing advice.  As our regular readers know, the aim of this column is to provide a concise rundown of key news items and tech tips for business school admissions and marketing staff.  Read on for all the latest news…

We begin with a fascinating article from Ad Age which uses the art world to offer a valuable lesson about branding – and one that is highly relevant in the MBA arena.  In a nutshell, the article points to the fact that most successful artists have built their brand by essentially creating a new category rather than competing head to head within an existing category (Monet/Impressionism, Pollock/Drip Painting, etc.).  In a business school landscape that offers an incredible (and ever-increasing) amount of choice, this lesson resonates.  Applicants gravitate towards brands – or those schools who own a ‘category’ (be it finance, entrepreneurship, health care management, etc.) – and your program is likely better off owning/creating a new category than it is building a reputation as second or third best in an existing – and overcrowded – category.

Shifting gears from the art world and branding to social media, there were two articles this week that dovetail nicely with our last WMW post.  The first covers more news out of LinkedIn, which is now allowing users to block other members (perhaps those who are a bit overzealous in their efforts to network).  The second article of interest comes from the Harvard Business Review and explores Facebook’s decision to buy WhatsApp, making some compelling arguments as to why the $19 billion price tag may not be so outrageous – including Facebook’s need for younger users, the opportunity presented by a different business model, internationalization and more.  This is a good read for any admissions officer or marketing professional who is trying to anticipate where Facebook will take WhatsApp and how WhatsApp (or any SMS service) may emerge as a possible channel for reaching prospects.

We’ll close WMW with a focus on three articles that offer excellent practical advice for anyone seeking to market their b-school via the web.  The first comes from Susan Gilbert’s ‘Monday Memos’ and focuses on four tips and tools that can help with search engine optimization.  What’s nice about this piece is that it’s not run of the mill advice – rather it offers up some less common (and fairly simple) tips to help shore up a broader SEO strategy.  The second piece comes from a social media marketing site and stresses the importance of having a social media manager on your team – which really just means avoiding a fragmented approach and ensuring that someone is acting as the ‘editor-in-chief’ of all of your efforts.  And finally, we wanted to highlight a few great tidbits of advice on maximizing your email marketing efforts – e.g. your newsletter and email campaigns – with prospects and applicants alike.  As we’ve stressed in the past on this blog, your strategy with regards to email marketing should not be overlooked – despite all of the hype surrounding other channels like Instagram, Twitter, etc.

That’s the web marketing news for this week.  Thanks for reading and for turning your colleagues onto WMW!

Related articles
  • Web Marketing Wednesdays: Facebook Buys WhatsApp, LinkedIn Influencers, Social Media Newbie Tips
  • How to identify business school applicants that demonstrate empathy, judgment and communications skills.
  • Why You Should Care About Applicants You Reject
Enhanced by Zemanta

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • More
  • Email
  • Print
facebook, Harvard Business Review, LinkedIn, Search engine optimization, Southwark Consulting, Web Marketing Wednesdays, WhatsApp

2 comments on “Web Marketing Wednesdays: B-School Branding, Four Great SEO Tips, Social Media Community Managers”

  1. Web Marketing Wednesdays: Content Marketing Mistakes and Disasters | Southwark Consulting says:
    March 5, 2014 at 6:42 pm

    […] Web Marketing Wednesdays: B-School Branding, Four Great SEO Tips, Social Media Community Managers […]

    Reply
  2. Four Cornerstones of a Successful Content Marketing Plan - Southwark Consulting says:
    December 5, 2014 at 9:08 am

    […] Web Marketing Wednesdays: B-School Branding, Four Great SEO Tips, Social Media Community Managers […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • MBA applicants mobile OS by region

    Going Mobile : GMAC® and Southwark Release Survey of MBA Applicants’ Social and Mobile Habits

    June 17, 2015
  • How Connected Are You With Your Audience? (Part 2)

    February 26, 2015
  • How Connected Are You With Your Audience?

    February 12, 2015
  • The On-Demand Generation and MBA Admissions

    January 30, 2015

Follow us on Twitter

My Tweets

© 2014 Southwark Consulting - Design: HelloAri

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.