“The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” -Socrates

 

Are we immersed in the information age or the disinformation age? It is all a matter of perspective. The internet provides an open forum that allows users to contribute information that the rest of us are left to decipher for truth. Overall, as a rule, we tend to give the benefit of the doubt to online information and believe what we read. Statistics show that nearly 73% of consumers believe that information they read online is accurate and trustworthy.

 

Inaccurate information being perceived as truth presents a real challenge, and a career college is not immune to the need to engage in efforts of reputation refinement. If a career college were to follow the sage advice of Socrates, this means hitting the ground running to maintain and enhance their reputation. 

 

Create Your Best Impression

 

Online reputation management (ORM) is all about creating your best impression on the internet.  Whether you are trying to improve or maintain your current reputation, ORM is an undertaking that requires consistent monitoring and a constant push forward. Schools can do this by embracing the intersection of content marketing, SEO, and social media. Using these outlets not only helps to push down the false, old or deceitful messages out there, but gives career colleges the forum to address or highlight topics they feel are important.

 

You want the things that matter to show up in the top results of the search engines and be shared through social media or others means. For example, sharing information about your school, alumni stories, degree program features or positive student experiences can begin to boost the positive reputation you are looking to build.  In the world of career colleges, the best way to meet this end is ensuring that you are participating, probing and publishing.

 

Participate

 

Attending college is a critical decision point in one’s life and requires a level of trust to proceed. If your school is not participating in conversations online, you may be losing out on a big chance to build loyalty and trust. People are out there participating, asking questions and giving opinions on social media, blogs and forums. Does your school have a voice in the vast online arena?

 

Education is a long term investment. This means a prospective student needs to be able to envision the long term payoff for the work they are signing up to perform now. Here are a few things you can do to make prospective students feel comfortable investing in their future with your reputable school:

 

• Be active in social media and use it to build a community for students
• Participate in a wide variety of social media (Twitter, Facebook, Google+) as well as email communication with students. Your audience through each channel differs, so find the voice that works best for each medium.
• Highlight things going on around campus and urge people to attend. Show your school has things that offer and encourage students to take full advantage of them.

 

Overall, career colleges should strive to make it clear that they care about the student experience. This helps retain currently enrolled students and gives prospective ones the knowledge that they will be going to a school that listens, engages, and acts.

 

Probing

 

Once you have established a community that bolsters yourself and students as participants, it is time to gather information that will help you enhance your reputation down the line. Probing involves:

 

• Ask students to help you troubleshoot problems or needs. You want to be an authority but don’t come across like you are above it all. Students very well may have the answer. Even if they don’t, it allows them to feel like they are being heard.

 

• Ask students if they are Google+ users and urge them to participate, write reviews, give feedback. This will combat those Google+ user reviews that are negative and keep those pushed down in the search results.

 

• Respond to student questions in a timely manner. This is especially important when criticism comes down. Done correctly, addressing criticism affords you two positive outcomes: clear up a misconception by presenting facts that strike down the criticism OR allows you to admit a mistake, correct it, and show an appreciation for the fact that feedback enabled you to enhance your offerings.

 

Publishing Content

 

Career colleges that are working towards building their credibility and reputation among potential students and industry leaders must consider the value of publishing content on their site. Correlating with the degree programs offered schools should cater their content to those niches and at a level which their prospective students would find informative.

 

This not only builds up the schools site with authoritative content, but also begins to establish the university as a credibly resource. While students are searching for additional information on a degree program or career path, universities with information already on their site have a greater opportunity for those individuals to land on their website and consider them as a possible institution to pursue their education. Ultimately, career colleges looking to build their reputation should consider regularly publishing relevant and information rich content to broaden their reach and set an authoritative tone.

 

To establish authority it is important to position yourself as such with the search engines, chiefly Google. The way to do this is with Google AuthorRank. AuthorRank verifies authorship and provides Google the signals it needs to know your content is high quality and relevant, lending to the institution being labeled as a credible source. When it comes to online reputation management, this should be a major focus.

 

Get Started

If done correctly, effective ORM is not about manipulation but a long-term improvement. If you have designs on masking real problems with ORM, plan on a short term remedy.  Instead, ORM is about fighting with all of your might to ensure that positive information about your school is accessible to as large a sample size as possible. As a result, hopefully you will see your school’s image and enrollment greatly improve.

 

This is a guest post from Jonah Deaver

 

AUTHOR BIO:

Jonah Deaver Is an account manager at Vertical Measures who is always striving to help deserving businesses achieve success through search. He understands the importance and impact content marketing has on a business and loves seeing clients adopt this strategy. In addition, he analyzes link building campaigns, researching and acquiring legitimate, diverse, and credible links for clients. He is also responsible for ensuring the overall quality of client backlink portfolios, optimizing local search pages, and contributing to the company blog. In his free time, Jonah enjoys exploring the great outdoors and most sports related activities.