The Finalsite Blog

You thought you told your website contributors not to use PDFs. And not to forget add alt tags. And so many other things they seem to have forgotten. Here are some tips on communicating best practices to the teachers and staff members who add content to your site. We want your redesign looking it's best!

Over the past few decades, the education space has become increasingly more competitive with more paid and free education options available to parents. Get ahead of the competition with these tips to kickstart your charter school's digital marketing strategy!

Here are the 47 finalists for Finalsite’s inaugural Double Diamond Awards ceremony to be held at this year’s Finalsite University in Chicago on June 20-21.

In this episode of Apply Yourself, Tim talks with Jennie Winton, Co-Founder of Mission Minded, to discuss how schools can increase applications and their online presence with clearly defined marketing and branding messaging.

The British School of Milan, a Top 10 British School, shares their smooth and successful transition story from Fluency to Composer.

Website accessibility laws in California take effect in less than six weeks! Read up on the importance of website accessibility certifications and how your district can secure one. 

Mobile devices dominate the way people experience the web, making responsive design more important than ever. Here are five things your school needs to consider for your next (or first!) responsive web project with Finalsite. 

Here are eight steps to building a solid crisis communications plan that focuses on student safety and protecting constituent information to ensure that your school is prepared for any crisis at any time.

Looking to invest time and resources into email automation but not sure where to start? Here are eight best practices your school can use when building your first automated email campaigns.

Are you not completely satisfied with your school’s email marketing campaigns? You may be making on (or more) of these seven email marketing mistakes.

Here are six tell-tale signs that your school or district’s website needs a redesign to stay up-to-date with the latest changes in responsive design, accessibility, and visitors expectations to make a strong first impression.

Looking to improve your school’s performance in search? Here are three new trends and three SEO best practices you should be aware of in 2019.

Looking to improve your school’s performance in search? These two small changes can improve the search and user experience!

Finalsite is hosting the inaugural Double Diamonds Awards during this year’s Finalsite University to recognize the creative work of all the schools and districts we partner with.

What content and design elements make a high school website one of the best of 2019? It’s all about finding the perfect balance between marketing and communications.

Schools and districts ask if they should focus their mobile efforts on apps or responsive websites. Our answer is both! Learn how to combine the unique benefits of each to communicate with current and prospective families without doubling your workload.

When it comes to school marketing videos, there's a delicate balance that’s often difficult to find between disseminating information and creating a fun video that people actually want to watch. We’ve identified five schools who have managed to find this delicate balance.

Check out these six international school and association websites that recently launched for inspiration on how your school can share its story and engage your community.

Follow this five-step guide for creating a school social media calendar that increase engagement and brand awareness.

How can your private school compete with the "free" options in the area? Learn how Episcopal School of Dallas meets their goals with a powerful digital marketing strategy.

Can schools rely on voice search to help them fill seats and hire the right employees? Maybe not yet, but the day is coming.

Courtney Joyner, Webmaster at Parish Episcopal School in Dallas, Texas, joins Lorrie Jackson for this special episode of Apply Yourself to discuss Parish Episcopal's website redesign and rebranding to deliver content more efficiently with a larger focus on mobile visitors, Blackbaud integration, and their school's entrepreneurial spirit and unique campus.

Finalsite veterans and those brand new to Composer will quickly come to love and rely on these 10 incredibly helpful ways that our content management system (CMS) saves your school time.

Want more engagement on your district's Facebook page? Follow these 10 simple tips for more likes, comments, and clicks!

Engaging alumni-and measuring how you do it-is nuanced, but your website, email campaign, and event attendance all play large roles. Learn more, and get inspired by Baruch College Alumni! 

Finalsite Workflows is an add-on for Messages designed to save you time and energy by establishing a series of emails that are automatically sent to current constituents or prospective families over a set period of time. 

Will Gay, Director of Communications and Marketing at Riverside Presbyterian School in Jacksonville, Florida, joins Tim on Episode 24 of Apply Yourself to discuss mobile web design and how Riverside improved applications and admissions through SEO and PPC advertising.

Building brand awareness about your charter school is the first step to recruiting and enrolling more right-fit students.

Looking to get more families in your funnel earlier in the process? A whitepaper is the perfect solution.

Max Eisl, International Education Consultant, shares social media best practices and real stories from school marketing professionals around the world in this Social Media for International Schools in 2019 webinar recap.

To improve their fundraising efforts in 2019, schools need to focus on: engaging their youngest donors; using inbound marketing tools; improving the donation experience and making it mobile-friendly; and incorporating Instagram video into their fundraising strategy to capitalize on FOMO (fear of missing out) for Days of Giving to be successful.

There are a lot of unique and important factors to consider when designing a mobile-first website. Here are five examples of schools with fantastic mobile websites created by our experienced designers who keep these considerations in mind when designing all of our websites. 

Producing great school marketing videos can be a daunting task. But it doesn't have to be! We’ve prepared some important considerations and video marketing tips to help you meet the growing demand for video marketing.

International schools communicate with a global audience. Having your school website in multiple languages can be critical. Take a look at how these schools created bilingual and multilingual websites.

New data from more than 270 independent schools reveals how school professionals use and prioritize inbound, content, and email marketing.

Learn how Wilton Public Schools in CT sets the bar in school-to-home communications.

Learn four tips for staying sane during yield season from admissions pros at Thayer Academy and St. Paul's School for Girls. 

How can your website convert these prospective donors into actual (and potentially recurring) donors? Here are six best practices for earning more online donations this year.

We surveyed schools and districts about their biggest web accessibility concerns. Here are the results!

The overseas franchising of schools is not new to UK independent schools. Schools such as Harrow, Shrewsbury, Dulwich and Marlborough have all successfully exported for many years their educational strengths, leadership and brand by establishing sister schools abroad. Finalsite and ISC can help schools looking to expand.

Here are three simple things the Finalsite consulting team has learned about being effective with your PPC marketing efforts, and how to be smart with your budget, too.

Google has created an entire generation of Internet users that expect a great search experience on your school website that's powerful, responsive, and efficient. Fortunately, we created Advanced Search to provide an ad-free, high-performing search experience to match your website visitor's expectations. 

Want to start a school blog but have no idea how to actually start? A good blog starts with good content — and here's how to produce content your community cares about.

Resources has morphed and evolved into a powerful asset management system with numerous ways to upload, organize, and display multimedia content. We’ve highlighted ten features, tools, and options found within Resources that will undoubtedly save you time managing your school’s multimedia content.

In this third installment of our blog series “Competing with Free,” (view parts one and two) we spoke with Spartanburg Day School in Spartanburg, South Carolina to learn how they can be successful when public schools are a main competitor.  

Looking to lower the bounce rate of your school's tuition page? Keep these important best practices in mind.

We met with our team of award-winning designers to find out the secret sauce behind all those incredible awards.

What makes an award-winning website? We get asked that question more times than you can count. We've rounded up three of our award-winning districts websites to help answer that question while providing you with inspiration to design your "new standard" district website.

Schools love Posts because it’s easy to learn, simple to use, and incredibly flexible. With so many options and ways to use Posts, we've highlighted some of the more creative and useful ways Finalsite schools have used Posts to spruce up their website.