What’s Trending in the Top 25 MBA/Business School Blogs?

Business school blogs offer as many flavors as an old-fashioned ice cream shop.  Recently, I had the opportunity to review the top 25 MBA programs and their blogs.

Here are my three takeaways and some blogging best practices:

1. User Experience – Topics and Tags
2. Navigation – Know and Identify Thy Audience
3. Brilliant Minds – Aggregating Faculty Blogs and Podcasts

User Experience- Topics and Tags

Stanford Graduate School of Business, ranked #1 by US News & World Report for business schools, has a topic-driven blog that’s clean and easy to navigate.  It’s my favorite, by far, in relation to the ease of finding what I want through visual posts with intriguing topics. “Insights” offers compelling points of view on a variety of topics, from accounting to social innovation.

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights

The images are large and appealing, and the tags clear and organized.

Navigation – Know and Identify Thy Audience

Harvard Business School has a blog for their MBA program called MBA Voices. The blog follows navigational best practices to a tee, identifying who authored posts and breaking those posts into categories. Readers can view posts from alumni, the HBS community, MBA admissions, and MBA students. This blog can also be sorted by topics, industries and audiences.

http://www.hbs.edu/mba/blog/Pages/default.aspx

The navigation follows you throughout the blog so you are always one click away from your next view. The grey arrow on the right side is a fantastic navigational tool to improve overall usability of the blog.

Show Off Your Faculty – And Their Brilliant Minds

Why do students choose a great MBA program? Sure, to advance their careers, learn valuable skills and get a graduate degree, but for some, the thought of being surrounded by brilliant ideas is invigorating.

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School does a fantastic job of aggregating faculty perspectives (even if they are independent and published on a unique URL) and blogs in one common place to provide the user/prospective student/alum with a variety of perspectives, thoughts and connections.

Here are just a few of the interesting blogs/topics audiences can explore from the main blog:

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/blogs/insight

From the blogs on the main page, I can link to a variety of faculty blogs. including a culmination of professors’ blogs on random musings…

http://cheaptalk.org/

To a blog related to all things in the world of branding, featuring Burger King, Air BnB and Porsche…

http://timcalkins.com/

And a blog focused on finance and research.

https://kelloggfinance.wordpress.com/

The blog even hosts a series of podcasts. The Kellogg School is the overall winner of aggregating great content through a variety of mediums and topics and creating an outstanding experience for the user.

http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/podcast

The business school world is rich with great content, from recruitment-focused posts to business help and insights. Blogs are one of the best ways to create new published content that Google rewards in SEO, tell stories and communicate points of view, and engage with audiences to keep them coming back.

For more information on creating an innovative blog strategy, connect with me @anncoleson or ann@convergeconsulting.org.