Five tips to improve your school’s social media.
Are you proud of your social media? Does it look good? Are you happy with it being the first thing that people see of your school? Do people engage with it? Is it an accurate reflection of the quality of your school?
Is it just a tick box? Are you just covering your bases with ‘something’?
We say it all the time, but if your social media is not properly planned out and executed, if it’s not high quality and engaging - and if it’s just an afterthought, something that you remember to do last-minute - then it is more than likely damaging your reputation. If this is the case, then you need to do something about it yesterday. We’re here to help, and we help schools around the UK every day, to do social media better.
Lots of people will tell you that there is no ‘quick fix’ to get your social media to be ‘hot’, and it’s true. But there are some simple things that you can do right now, that will start to improve your social media. Things like formatting (make sure that your images are properly formatted and work), or links (is the link in your instagram bio current, and does it go to a relevant page?), or themes (is there an overall theme to your social media channel?) or a really simple one… is your school recognisable the moment someone sees your post? This is often forgotten, but including your logo on posts, or your school name, will help the user to immediately recognise your school amongst the many hundreds of other posts that they see each day.
If you’re struggling to get engagement on your social channels, for example no likes on your instagram pictures or that no-one re-tweets you, then your social media needs attention, and it needs nurturing. It needs to develop, and these things take time.
BUT, there are a few things that you can do right now that will start you on the path of improving your social media. Here’s a quick guide to how to start improving your social media as soon as you’ve finished reading this blog.
Be consistent.
Consistency is key. It’s important that your social media is current and up to date. That doesn't mean that you need to go back and edit a post from the past because the information is no longer correct, but it does mean that what you post needs to be current and relevant. Work out when your audience are most active and post then. Discipline yourself to post ‘every Tuesday afternoon about school events’ and ‘every Thursday morning about student-specific stories’. Cover current topics, celebrate recent achievements and inform about up-coming events. You’ll be surprised how doing this will help you come up with better quality posts. Do not worry about posting every day. You’ll soon run out of content and posting for the sake of posting is a BIG turn-off.
Extra tip: Understand the perspective of your audience. Do they want to see a new maths display board? Are they going to be interested in a newly painted staricase? Probably not. A good way to check is to ask yourself: ‘If I didn’t work at the school, would I be interested in this post?’
Step up the quality.
What are you currently posting? Cat pictures? Happy National hugging day? Step it up. Boring posts won’t cut it, and your audience will vote with their thumbs. They won’t like it, and they’ll begin to lose respect for you and your school. Your posts should either educate or entertain. As above, ask yourself - ‘Would I find this interesting?’ If the answer is yes, still check with someone else. ‘Is this interesting?’ ‘Am I posting for the sake of it?’ Make sure that what you do post is high quality. Your audience expect high-quality as standard. Remember that even the most ‘off the cuff’ content that we see in the media, is probably not. It’s likely that some planning has gone into it. Make sure that your post is an accurate reflection of your school. Think of social media posts as mini adverts, and present yourselves in the best possible way. Uniformed texts, colour palettes and pre-approved stock imagery and templates are a great way to instantly improve the quality of your content.
Side note: Don’t try and be funny. The chances are that you have a unique sense of humour, and being universally funny is almost impossible. Your audience don’t expect you to be amused by your posts, they’re following you because they want to know what’s happening at your school. An ill-timed or out of date joke can seriously damage your reputation - avoid at all costs!
Cater for your audience.
Who is going to see your posts? Who do you want to see your posts? Post for them, not for yourself. This is actually quite a deep point, because in order to post for your audience, you need to establish who they are, what they want, how they want to receive information and when/where etc. This is normally done over time, from experimenting and eventually finely tuning your audience, their needs and their consumption habits, so that you can create content that both serves their needs and yours. Think of your social media as an all-year-round open evening. Everything you post is an opportunity for your audience to be impressed by you and your school, or to be unimpressed. This is why quality is so important.
Are you a primary school that needs to ‘recruit’ pupils into year 1 in September? If so, then your audience is probably young parents with 5-7yo children within a particular catchment area. So, with that in mind, what do you think they want to see on your social media? Do you think they’re too bothered about a newly painted wall or hall? Or, do you think that they want to see how caring you are as a school? Do you think they want to be reminded about parking restrictions or school trip payments? Or would they prefer to see a story about a pupil that has overcome a fear of climbing ropes, or learned to start a conversation in French, or won a spelling competition. Again, you need to think; ‘who am I posting this for?’ and ‘what do they want to see?’
Take pride in your work.
I don’t just mean take pride in your social media posts, we’ve covered that with the ‘step up the quality’. I mean that you should take pride in what you’re doing in developing your pupils into young adults. You’ve got one heck of a job on your hands, and you achieve again and again, delivering education, nurturing pupils, and running a school every-single-day. Firstly, let me acknowledge what a great job teachers do. Secondly, you guys need to recognise it! Recognise your own achievements, as well as your school’s and your pupils’. It’s okay to self-promote sometimes, particularly if it is (as above) an accurate reflection of your school. If one of your teachers wins a teaching award, don’t just say ‘well done Miss Smith’ on your twitter. Shout about it, tell people, celebrate it. Not only does this make much better content than a ‘happy national cat day’, it reassures your audience. It fills them with confidence, and they develop trust in your school. It’s obvious when we say it, and a lot of schools kick themselves with how obvious it is, but try it, and you’ll notice a huge difference.
Plan.
Plan, plan, plan. Proper planning enables you to consider more options, create better content, better media, discover alternative angles and avoid scheduling clashes. You’re also able to theme your posts better, to be in line with a current push (student recruitment, or a sports month etc). You don’t need me to tell you the benefits of proper planning, you’re teachers! You know about planning. But, make sure that you do plan your social media posts. It’s really obvious when a post isn’t planned. If, instead, it’s pulled together last minute, and the quality is low. Again, this can be really damaging. So, plan your social media posts, put some thought into who you’re posting for, what the purpose is, and when/where to post it. And don’t forget, when you post, that’s just the beginning, you need to interact with your audience, engage with them, talk to them, listen to them.
These are just a few quick tips about how to improve your school’s social media right now. Seriously, right now. You’ve read this, and so you’ll already be thinking slightly differently about your posts. So go, enjoy discovering the things in your school that need to be celebrated, enjoy interacting with your audience and building relationships with them. After all, it’s called social media for a reason.
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Company Ten helps schools all across the United Kingdom do digital marketing better. From video production and photography to social media management and training, and a lot of things in-between - we are specialists in helping schools use ‘digital’ to their advantage. We’re not just flogging our services either, we actually want to help! So that’s why we offer free monthly training in digital marketing - to help you and your school improve and do better. We want you to be able to utilise everything that the world of digital marketing in education has to offer.