TAG - education pr

As the Dean of an institution, you hold considerable responsibility for cultivating relationships with both internal and external stakeholders, including donors, alumni, and the community. You are also responsible for protecting and building your school’s reputation and faculty. Success in these areas is vital and it often hinges on maintaining and preserving good relationships. View this post on Instagram A post shared by BlueSky Education (@bluesky_edu)

Research is important. Many universities and business schools describe themselves as ‘research-led’ or as institutions renowned for the calibre of research they put out.

Would you like to see your name in flashing lights?

In an increasingly globalised world, international study is considered by many to be more desirable and important than ever. With over six million students choosing to take up their studies in a new or different country, access and the ability to study and build invaluable relationships with people from all over the world is right at students’ fingertips.

If you want to be a good PR person then you need an effective strategy. Working in the media is competitive and PR is often more of an art form than a sales technique. If you know how to use PR correctly, you can make your message stand out and boost your institution’s success. Here are my top 5 tips for PR professionals working in higher education to help you achieve your goals.

For as long as public relations has existed, the industry has needed to demonstrate the value of press coverage. At the end of the day, it showcases the value of the work, maintains interest in comms expertise, helps to justify investments in PR, and helps to prove it’s worth.

According to HubSpot’s State of Marketing Report, 82% of marketers actively use content marketing to achieve their branding goals. Up 17% since 2020, content marketing is recognised by many professionals as an effective, tried and tested means of attracting, engaging and retaining new audiences and customers – and in the case of business schools, prospective applicants.

Public relations is no quick win. Though first impressions certainly do count, you might not change people’s minds, their behaviour or make them act differently on your first engagement with them. It’s often a lengthy process, which takes time and patience – at the end of the day people don’t generally jump into decisions lightly.

It is absolutely vital that academic research has impact, especially for the Research Excellence Framework, the system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions – and PR can help academics reach people who can use the insights to make real changes in society and companies.

Another month, another influx of pioneering research papers. But which ones are destined for the headlines? The first step to securing phenomenal press coverage for business schools and universities is to identify exactly which research, and which student or alumni success stories, are most likely to catch the media’s attention. It’s equally vital to know when material lends itself to a press release, to an opinion editorial or to interview articles.

Industry 4.0: it’s a term that’s become pretty commonplace in recent years.

Today, there is more competition than ever between business schools as more and more are offering top-class programmes, innovative learning tools, and an extremely high-caliber of teaching. As such, international higher education markets are growing rapidly every year, which has indeed made the task of attracting leading academics and students more difficult than ever.

The use of social media has grown rapidly over the last decade, and even more so in the past few years. For this reason, individuals and companies are really understanding the importance of social media as a promotion tool, we didn’t get the term ‘Instagram influencer’ out of thin air but recent years have proven that anyone can use social media to promote themselves, or in this scenario, their research.

Getting in on the conversation is a well-trodden means to gain media coverage. This piggy-back method by responding or talking about key issues on the news agenda can be highly productive. It can help to enhance reputation or credibility by showcasing a university or business school’s knowledge and expertise in fields at the centre of the news agenda.

For countless business schools and universities worldwide, the research that they produce defines them.

Some brands are simply just synonymous with what they want to be known for. Apple are synonymous with leading cutting-edge technology, Tesla with cutting-edge manufacturing innovation and BlueSky Education, with unrivalled education PR knowledge 😉

Today, master's degrees are surging in popularity, and the number of master's programmes on offer within business schools is growing every year, especially those taught in English.

It’s natural to expect that, over the course of time, the ways in which a university or business school operates will change. The past five years alone have been testament to just how much the world of education has evolved; the advancements in and preferences for online education over classroom-based learning for example, or the shift in curriculum focus to highlight increasingly important topics such as ethics and sustainability, all in the pursuit of providing a better, more valuable experience for students.

The competition to attract élite faculty has never been more intense.

In 1819, ESCP business school, as it’s now known today, was launched as a Ecole Spéciale de Commerce et d'Industrie, teaching students on key topics like entrepreneurship and business. This was the birth of graduate management education, and helped forge the pathways for other leading institutes in this area like Harvard, Wharton and Stanford – who have gone on to educate, hone and develop some of the world’s leading thinkers, politicians and CEOs.

(Here’s a hint: the answer is YES!) When choosing where to study my own degree I didn’t just stick to reading university prospectuses and the rankings, I also took the time to look at what other people were saying about the institution and its programmes outside of what the universities chose to share. I read the stories of alumni and I took note of students who’d shared their experiences in newspapers, magazines and blogs.

How can business schools use PR outreach to promote their Executive Education programmes? And how is it different to the promotion of other programmes?

How do you successfully improve your online reputation? Well, the key is to listen to what your potential students are talking about. To monitor where your competitors are appearing and to anticipate where your industry is heading. It’s about being and staying ahead of the curve.

As Valentine’s Day wraps up, and love is in the air, it seems everyone is thinking about partnering up…

Maximising the success of any institution or organisation often depends on having a winning PR strategy. Being able to impact the way in which your target audience – whether that’s stakeholders, prospective clients, and target consumers - perceive your organisation is vital to ensuring long-term success. And this doesn’t only apply to fashion brands, tech companies, or fast-food restaurants; this also applies to business schools and universities.

“Let’s do some PR for this”… A member of your faculty is hosting an event, or has published a book perhaps, or a new programme has been launched by your institution, and the request comes in… “Let’s do some PR on this.”

As with any other service you purchase; you want to be able to measure if it has been worth the cost. But with PR, this may not always be easy or obvious. PR works by attempting to influence and change the behaviour, thoughts, and decisions of others. This can be a hard thing to measure, but it’s a lot easier to see the results of a PR campaign if you first outline the impact you want your campaign to have.

Truly understanding and being able to measure the impact of PR is key for anyone working in or around the communications space.

How many bars are there in town? Is the accommodation close enough to stumble out of bed at 8:50 for a 9am lecture? Is there a Domino’s that stays open until 5am?

Are you wondering whether to engage in PR? Or, perhaps you’re considering reducing, or removing PR services from your institution altogether. If either of the above are true – particularly the latter – please do read on…

“You could say everything has changed.”

As the head of a business school or other higher education institution, a Dean is in a position of leadership with their profile inextricably linked to that of the institution – think of the Dean as the face of the school’s brand, possibly even their secret weapon.

Institutions can highlight their successful partnerships through PR activity – and attract new ones in the process Business schools are natural partners for many organisations, from big corporate companies to charities and non-profits. These partnerships work both ways – from the partner’s side of things, many organisations see partnering with business schools as an opportunity to give themselves an edge over the competition, as well as giving them access to some of the world’s best business talent of the future. From a business school perspective, big partnerships can bring successful internship opportunities for their students, international study trips, consulting projects as part of courses, and ultimately recruitment opportunities for their graduates. It is therefore essential that business schools highlight their successful partnerships through PR activity so they can not only showcase the fantastic work they are doing together, but to also attract further partners in the future, and potential students.

There are more elements to the PR function than many people first think. My colleagues and I have been talking about internal and external PR, explaining what it is why it is absolutely vital for many organisations.

Public Relations is an exceedingly broad area used by a whole host of varied clients, from politicians and actors to universities and businesses. The set of goals and needs can differ greatly from one client to another: an actor might want to boost their profile for a new film or fix their image after some bad publicity while a university might be launching a new programme or want to focus on boosting student applications. There are seemingly endless reasons for why a client has hired a PR agency or, if they haven’t already, why they should hire one.

One of the key aims of your institution is to attract students right? But how do you that successfully? Of course, there are lots of ways you can do this. But here at BlueSky Education we think using stories to do this, might be your secret weapon.

There are a vast number of reasons as to why business schools want, and need, to engage in PR. Whether it is to highlight some of the ground-breaking academic research from their professors, announce a new programme at the school or promote their faculty’s expertise – all of which are enhanced and have more impact through the use of PR.

The world is bursting with people from different cultures; identities formed from the environment we grew up in, our family, friends, and where we were born, among other things. It influences how we engage with the world, the perspectives we take, and the expectations we have. Culture can influence what we consider success in our careers, how we understand music, and even define how we see colours. Every single one of us has a culture, and most of us have identities built from multiple cultures; whether it’s our race, ethnicity, religion, or nationality.

As we enter a new decade, the political climate is arguably more turbulent than ever. The UK has officially left the European Union, which has left everyone in a “transition” period but not everyone really knows what it means, and in terms of education, it’s putting off some EU students from choosing the UK to study.

It’s no secret that the public relations industry has a challenge when it comes to communicating how it directly impacts the bottom-line. But what if you, the client, could maximise your return from the work your PR agency does for you?

Financial news outlets attract some of the biggest readerships and are amongst some of the most well respected in the world, with the Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Economist and Reuters amongst some of the most popular.

There’s an old saying: "Advertising is what you pay for, publicity is what you pray for” (Helen Woodward, 1938). I couldn’t agree more.

Our Prime Minister, (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Boris Johnson, has had a challenging few weeks to say the least. He’s currently engulfed in a PR nightmare for the ages, and every day the situation for poor Boris seems to get worse. However, I don’t really feel sorry for him, as he’s brought it all on himself. He has successfully become one of the most divisive political figures of the last 30 years, and he’s only been in office since the end of July.

Life is busy, and it’s very easy to come into work and go about your daily routine, Monday to Friday, sitting at the comfort of your desk. Drafting press releases, writing articles, and sifting through the vast amount of emails you may receive every day is time consuming, and it’s therefore understandable why you may ignore an invitation to a conference or networking event.

Producing innovative and influential academic research is one of the best ways a business school can make itself stand out in a crowded market. In fact, academic research is now so important to a business school’s brand that leading business education news site, Poets & Quants, recently created a new ranking selecting the top 100 business schools for academic research in the world. And it’s no surprise that globally known brands, such as Harvard, Wharton and NYU Stern, finished at the top for academic research too. It’s clear that both a strong brand and strong, impactful academic research go hand in hand in the business school world.

The UK has a vast media landscape With a population of over 66 million, and over 100 daily and 450 non-daily newspapers, the UK is a nation of avid media consumers. Dating back to the 1620’s, the UK press has extensive history, and continues to be one of the most respected, diverse, and widely read national press across the globe.

With a population of just over 329 million people, making it the third most populous country in the world, the USA is clearly going to be a key media target for any institution. But, more importantly, according to GMAC’s 2018 Applications Trends survey, 140,000 out of an overall 290,000 business school applications last year came from US-based applicants – over three times the size of applicants in Europe alone.

You’re looking for a PR firm to help out with your international PR efforts and come across a firm that states “we have offices based in New York, London, Hong Kong, Paris and Berlin, in order to penetrate our key markets in the most effective way possible”.

Why we tell MBA stories to increase applications for Business Schools Storytelling is often considered vital for human survival. It’s how we have communicated since we were sat in caves – I think it is just as important now as it was then. And in the world of PR there often needs to be an emphasis on storytelling over selling.

Business schools and universities are successful for a whole host of reasons – their longevity, their location, their contribution to the society around them, but their life blood is the quality of their teaching and research – and for this they need the best academics.