Blue Apple Education Blog
New buildings or expansive grounds/outdoor spaces? Aerial footage can add value to your school film.
Filming from helicopters or planes is probably not in most schools’ budgets. Thankfully, drone technology has made aerial footage a viable option for school promo films. If you have new buildings, expansive grounds or beautiful outdoor spaces, it can add real value to...
Consider a 30-60 sec social media video to target families in your area
Are you making a school promo video this year? Then you’ll already have the footage to create short social media versions. Repurposing your video on social media will help you to get more ROI from your video project and make your social accounts easier to run. 66% of...
‘Less is more’ – Why shorter videos have a bigger impact
In 2000, a Microsoft study showed that the average person’s attention span was 12 seconds. By 2015, it had dropped to eight seconds. A 2019 study from the Technical University of Denmark found that our collective attention span is still narrowing. There is simply so...
Why it is important to create the right impression with your school film
Choosing a school for your child is a big decision. Parents often do a lot of research – and they start online. Promotional videos for schools give families a feel for what it might be like to attend. Creating the right impression is a key part of driving enrolment....
The secrets to creating an effective school video
The secret to creating an effective school video is focus. That doesn’t make it simple though. Read on for insights on which areas to concentrate and how to streamline the project. Schools often juggle competing priorities, so time is of the essence. Focus on...
How using professional film footage can improve your social media messaging
The UK has 45 million active social media users – that’s 66% of the population. That makes it a great platform for schools to reach new families. Students and parents (and teachers) are all already there. Professional film footage boosts your social media messaging....
How to win over parents with a school film
Telling is better than selling. Even the most successful schools want to encourage applications. Parents understand that schools want to put their best foot forward, but an overly ‘sales-y’ approach can be offputting and counter-productive. Effective school marketing...
How a school film can replace open days and tours
Social distancing, hand sanitisers, year-group bubbles. Where does the 2020 pandemic leave open days and tours? Government guidance recommends that schools consider alternatives to face-to-face open events. For many schools, that means getting creative with...
How a promotional film can make your website more effective
Let’s start at the beginning: what is an effective website for you? A showcase for your school, a way of attracting prospective students, an online learning portal… Gauging the effectiveness of your site depends on knowing what your goals are. Nevertheless, a school...
5 Tips To Help Make Your School Film Pop
If you’re making a school film this year, you’re not alone. Call them school promo videos or school virtual tours. This year, demand for footage is going through the roof. A high-quality school film means you’re covered if in-person open days are cancelled. With COVID...
5 things to remember when planning your school promotional film
People in the UK spend an average of 3.5 hours per day watching online videos. And that figure went up even further during lockdown. No wonder that video has become a popular format for marketing of all descriptions. Add in government guidance that recommends...
Why you should use quick links to navigate to important content on your school website
Your school website has to work hard. It has to attract prospective parents and help parents of current pupils. It has to host your teaching vacancies and store policies and procedures. People are busy, so it also has to do all this quickly and efficiently. This is...
Why doesn’t my school website appear in Google searches?
Congratulations on the launch of your school website. You’ve got wonderful pictures of your students, an engaging story and technical savvy. In short, you’ve got everything you need to attract prospective parents and teachers. But one question remains: why does my...
Website design quick wins
Looking to make some quick wins with your school website design? We understand that there isn’t always the time or budget for making a splash. There are lots of website design tips that are effective and quick to implement - for big results without a...
This might be the best way for your school to engage with parents
COVID-19 has had a huge effect on all aspects of education - including open days. Google is often a parent’s first port of call when researching new schools. But with the challenges of social distancing, it seems likely to be more important than ever. Your school...
The secret to updating your website
Term dates, exam results, policies and procedures. There’s no end of information schools need to publish online. This means figuring out how to manage your website can be a real headache. But developing an effective system to manage it will pay off fast. (And help you...
The secret to Unearthing the Remarkable in your school
Academic excellence. Supportive and nurturing. Tight-knit community. How many school websites do you think use words and phrases like this? Even if they’re true, they won’t help parents to remember you. At Blue Apple Education, we specialise in unearthing...
A beginner’s guide to optimising my school website for Search Engines
Do you often click on the Next button at the bottom of Google search results? Most people don’t. In fact, 55% of clicks come from the first three links alone (not counting paid ads). Getting your site to the top of the results page is what SEO for schools is all...
See how easily you can improve your school website with better photography
The earliest cave art is 44,000 years old. The oldest writing systems date back 5,000 years. No wonder that humans are hard-wired for visuals. In fact, there’s evidence that people can process images 60,000 times faster than text. Do you want to improve the...
See how easily you can delegate content creation
How many people in your school have written for publication? Probably not very many. And that’s why content creation can seem so daunting. The secret is to spread the load. With a bit of clever organisation, you’ll find you’ll have more content than you could have...
Little known ways to improve the parent user journey on your website
Having lots of website visitors is great. But one of the jobs of your school website is to attract prospective parents. If visitors aren’t taking the next steps to enrolling, then it’s time to pay attention. Visualise the parent user journey as starting from the...
How to take the headache out of editing your school website
The school website needs updating. Does your heart sink when you hear this phrase? If you’re not familiar with web technologies, even simple changes can feel daunting. And getting your head round the mechanics of making updates is frustrating when there’s so much else...
How to provide what parents actually want from your school website
Let’s face it. People are in a hurry. Parents coming to your school website want to find information fast. But how can you provide what they need when each family is so different? The answer is: journey mapping. Here’s a quick guide to working out what you need for...
Give me 10 minutes and I’ll improve the calls to action on your website
Discover. Learn more. Sign up. A call to action is a crucial part of any webpage. It helps your visitors to find the information they want. And it helps you to get the results you need. What is a call to action (CTA)? Quite simply, it’s an invitation to do something...