Social Media Marketing Tips for Improved School-to-Home Communication
August 8th, 2017
By: Jeffrey Li
More than just sharing updates taken from the school newspaper or website, social media channels can be a completely independent avenue for reaching prospective families and more! Harnessing social media can be a huge asset as people increasingly take in information digitally, and it can help your school improve its school-to-home communication. It’s just a matter of how you go about taking advantage of the opportunity. Not only can you quickly send out information about events and alerts, but also increase awareness of the school’s mission and foster increased engagement within the community.
Mixed Content
Mixing up the kind of content in your social media strategy is crucial for its long-term success and optimal effectiveness. Visual posts should be mixed in with text posts to better engage your followers. According to New York Times bestselling author Dr. John Medina of brainrules, you remember 10% of a piece of information three days after hearing it compared to 65% if a picture is included. That’s a significant difference in the way you interact with your followers. As an example of the value mixed content provides, a company’s social media account I helped manage one summer was averaging engagement numbers in the low thousands through text posts, but once I created visual content, their engagement numbers soared to well over eighty thousand in reach and influence.
Testimonials
Generate content with testimonials - it’s a straightforward way of improving your school-to-home communication by addressing what your school can do for its constituents. Testimonials should be conveyed naturally and unscripted to have the most impact. The best part about this kind of content is its versatility, be it in the form of posting a quote or a video interview, there’s a lot of flexibility in how to present the information. You may find yourself wondering what the best part of their interview to include is, but trust me, you’ll know when you’ve come across the juiciest part of the testimonial. It’s usually something that is specific and unique to your school and not some kind of generic praise, and is often measurable quantitatively or qualitatively too!
The benefits of varied content type and testimonials can be seen right in front of your eyes when managing social media accounts. For example, a testimonial with a teacher, student, or parent could be directly shared by the subject of the post to their friends and followers, and your reach increases organically without spending a penny!
Strategy for Improving School-to-Home Communication with Social Media
In addition to varying the kind of content you post, it’s important to organically maximize your post’s reach when it’s published before spending any money advertising or promoting it. To maximize reach, you should consider scheduling your posts for certain times and days of the week, rather than just publishing it once it’s done. Studies show that you should select times when your target audience is most likely on social media - usually in the morning, the lunch hour, and the commute back home. These times vary depending on where you live but are generally going to be 8 or 9 a.m., noon, and 3 or 4 p.m. By posting during “peak” hours, your content is being seen at the top of people’s newsfeeds when they’re most active.
Additionally, you should consider the frequency of your posts. You don’t want to flood your audience with too much at once but also don’t want to post too little at the same time. Finding just the right amount to post and how often is truly up to you, but here are some tips from my experiences. Be consistent. Posting consistently at the same time every week and establishing a pattern could be a positive because your audience knows when to expect something from you and they may look forward to that next post. For some schools, posting two pieces of content every week might be more beneficial than for other schools that should post four or five times a month, every school is different.
Mixed Content
Mixing up the kind of content in your social media strategy is crucial for its long-term success and optimal effectiveness. Visual posts should be mixed in with text posts to better engage your followers. According to New York Times bestselling author Dr. John Medina of brainrules, you remember 10% of a piece of information three days after hearing it compared to 65% if a picture is included. That’s a significant difference in the way you interact with your followers. As an example of the value mixed content provides, a company’s social media account I helped manage one summer was averaging engagement numbers in the low thousands through text posts, but once I created visual content, their engagement numbers soared to well over eighty thousand in reach and influence.
Testimonials
Generate content with testimonials - it’s a straightforward way of improving your school-to-home communication by addressing what your school can do for its constituents. Testimonials should be conveyed naturally and unscripted to have the most impact. The best part about this kind of content is its versatility, be it in the form of posting a quote or a video interview, there’s a lot of flexibility in how to present the information. You may find yourself wondering what the best part of their interview to include is, but trust me, you’ll know when you’ve come across the juiciest part of the testimonial. It’s usually something that is specific and unique to your school and not some kind of generic praise, and is often measurable quantitatively or qualitatively too!
The benefits of varied content type and testimonials can be seen right in front of your eyes when managing social media accounts. For example, a testimonial with a teacher, student, or parent could be directly shared by the subject of the post to their friends and followers, and your reach increases organically without spending a penny!
Strategy for Improving School-to-Home Communication with Social Media
In addition to varying the kind of content you post, it’s important to organically maximize your post’s reach when it’s published before spending any money advertising or promoting it. To maximize reach, you should consider scheduling your posts for certain times and days of the week, rather than just publishing it once it’s done. Studies show that you should select times when your target audience is most likely on social media - usually in the morning, the lunch hour, and the commute back home. These times vary depending on where you live but are generally going to be 8 or 9 a.m., noon, and 3 or 4 p.m. By posting during “peak” hours, your content is being seen at the top of people’s newsfeeds when they’re most active.
Additionally, you should consider the frequency of your posts. You don’t want to flood your audience with too much at once but also don’t want to post too little at the same time. Finding just the right amount to post and how often is truly up to you, but here are some tips from my experiences. Be consistent. Posting consistently at the same time every week and establishing a pattern could be a positive because your audience knows when to expect something from you and they may look forward to that next post. For some schools, posting two pieces of content every week might be more beneficial than for other schools that should post four or five times a month, every school is different.
For more information on how to create your own video content, check out my other blog post here.
About Jeffrey
I’m a senior majoring in economics with a concentration in global development studies at Grinnell College, a small liberal arts college in Iowa. I’m excited to be spending my 3rd summer in the tech industry interning at Edlio and being able to leverage technology to make a positive impact in the education space. At Grinnell, I’m entering my 2nd year as the photo editor of the newspaper and 8th year doing photojournalism work as well as playing on the soccer team.