A refreshing new website for Guildford Nursery School and Children’s Centre
Having Gill do all the writing required for our new website has ensured professional, coherent pages written for our audience. Not only do we have a website to be proud of, but Gill saved us an immeasurable amount of time. Working with Gill is easy, fun yet she is always very informative and professional. ‘So useful; really informative,’ and ‘I learnt so much,’ were some of the comments from team leaders after they had met with Gill during our marketing strategy day. Before, we were floundering, but Gill wrote our strategy and now we know where we are heading and what is needed to get there.
Sally Cave, Headteacher
Who is the client?
Guildford Nursery School and Children’s Centre (GNCC) is a maintained school with two sites in Guildford. It provides nursery education for children aged 2-5 and works with some of the area’s most deprived families. As a maintained school, it has a headteacher and fully-qualified staff. The school also operates a dedicated Children’s Centre – one of only five in Surrey – which offers a range of support to families in difficulty as well as being a community hub for vital resources such as midwives, health visitors and parenting resources. The school also hires out its meeting rooms and has a training and workshop offering.
What did they need?
GNCC came to me for help writing web content for their new website which was being designed by a specialist education web agency. Their existing copy was dry and unexciting and did not appeal to their target audience: parents, mainly Mums, between 20 and 35. In addition, there was no real separation between the information for the school, the children’s centre, the training business and the room hire.
What did I do?
I worked closely with key members of staff at the school to understand their various audiences and to produce a consistent tone of voice. I revised existing copy and wrote entirely new copy for the website, and edited and proof-read policies and other school documentation. I advised on structure and worked directly with the design agency where needed.
The website, which is now mobile-friendly, easy to read, regularly updated and has easy access to key information, is now being much more widely used by parents, governors and local stakeholders and, along with the school’s Facebook page, is a go-to source of information.
The follow-up
worked with GNCC team on wider communications, running a strategy day that covered each part of the organisation, and creating a report and communications plan to help the school, children’s centre, training business and room hire business to connect with the right customers in the best way.
I have delivered LinkedIn and Facebook training to a number of staff, and have helped write and edit letters, formal proposals, tenders and recruitment adverts. When they were ready to take control of their own communications, I also introduced them to a VA service to help them manage social media on a day-to-day basis.