Social Media and Your School

Social Media has been on the scene for well over a decade and no matter how strong a school’s reputation, it should not be ignored as a form of advertising. Whilst some remain skeptical that Social Media can cause more trouble than necessary, these incidences are few and far between and the positives that have come from Social Media in the past decade (crowdfunding, career launching, disaster support) speak for themselves. 

Why Use It? 

Alongside the obvious reasons of there being 2.22 billion users of Social Media, making it the most effective advertising platform for industries. Using Social Media is a clever way of increasing traffic to your website and therefore ranking higher on Search Engines such as Google (this is called Search Engine Optimisation). 

Using it Effectively

Many schools accept they need to be on Social Media in order to connect with parents, present and future but how do you set about doing that when there are so many platforms to choose from? Engaging a Social Media consultant should be the first step. Let them assess where they think you should be building your school’s online profile and advise you on how to achieve this. 

• What to do 

Build positive profiles across a range of platforms showing your school’s environment, innovation & learning. 

• What not to do

Use your Social Media pages purely as a news feed where parents cannot engage with the content. 

Building a Community

The success of Social Media comes down to its ability to build communities. Facebook has the option to build groups that range from fans of celebrities to school alumni and many local area discussion and selling community groups. 

Schools are communities, embracing not only the parents and staff, also grandparents, siblings, alumni, prospective parents, and others who are connected to the school. Therefore it makes sense, when engaging with social media, that it is used to build upon and extend a school community. 

How to Start

Users will be drawn to platforms that they feel engaged with. Considered the King of the Social Media platforms, Facebook has the highest number of users and continues to grow at a steady rate. Given the broad community that it supports, it is often the best place to start when building an online community for schools.   

Some like the speedy nature of Twitter, with the fast paced discussions and constant, topical content, if time is invested in Twitter, it can be a great place to build your reputation but will not give the community feel that Facebook offers. 

Pinterest, where pictures, recipes, articles etc are ‘pinned’ to personal and public boards. This platform works 2 ways: 1 – There are a plethora of ideas, recipes, articles, literally anything you can possibly think of, you will find pinned on Pinterest. This makes it a wonderful resource for staff and pupils, especially for engaging experiments and activities. 2 – It is a good way to get exposure for your school, whether you have pinned Early Years Messy Play Activities or Top Studying Tips, Pinterest can help draw an audience to your school.

Blogging

Blogging is the most effective form of Social Media marketing for schools. With an unrestricted topic base and word count, this is where schools can really get their voice heard. Multiple authors can blog so the ‘tone’ can be different across the topics and Students can also get involved.

The more a school blogs, the higher they will rank on search engines, which look for fresh content as part of the selection and order process.

The Social Network

Using Social Media should not only complement the institute using it, the content provided must work across the different platforms schools engage in. Blogging is great but to gain maximum potential from the time invested in writing the content, blogs should be promoted using Social Media platforms.

The general rule of Social Media is to not spread your time too thinly. Do one platform well, rather than two half-heartedly. With a whole school of staff (and in some cases, students) at your disposal, combining two or three Social Media platforms effectively can help raise a school’s profile as being at the frontline of innovative technology.

If you would like more information regarding Social Media strategy for your school. Please contact Claire.