3 Ways Your School Can Immediately Improve Its Social Media Presence

In this modern digital age, it is imperative that schools maintain an active social media presence. Accounts on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter give schools the opportunity to communicate with parents and stakeholders, as well as promoting their good work and enhancing their reputation.

However, many schools find that developing an impactful social media presence is difficult, resulting in a dormant account that exists but rarely interacts. In this blog, we examine three ways your school can enhance its social media activity.

#1 — Post at Strategically Beneficial Times

It is a common trend for schools to post on social media during their opening hours, usually between 8:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., Monday to Friday Limiting online activity to these hours can have a restrictive impact on the reach of your posts, as well as the level of engagement they receive.

The opening times of a school coincide with the working hours of many businesses, and employees will find their access to social media limited while they are at work. Parents and stakeholders alike may miss out on your good news or important information if it is posted during their working hours.

By changing your posting habits and broadening your hours of activity, you can reach an audience that may not have been exposed to your messages posted during the working week. You can find more guidance on strategic social media posting on our blog ‘The Best (and Worst) Times for Your School to Post on Social Media’.

It’s important to note that posting outside of your school’s opening hours doesn’t necessarily mean working during your downtime. By using social media management tools such as Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and Buffer, you can write posts and schedule them for future release at a time of your choosing.

#2 — Enhance Your Posts with images and Videos

Posting on social media is not just about words; after all, “a picture is worth a thousand words”. In our time-poor world, social media users simply won’t take the time to read long, text-based posts Instead, they need something that makes a post stand out; something that is easy on the eye; something that can be consumed quickly.

The inclusion of images and videos in your social media posts is a great way to increase engagement and capture the attention and imagination of your audience. Research shows posts that include images produce 650% higher engagement than text-only posts, while posts with videos attract 3x more inbound links than plain text posts.

The subject of images and videos can be tricky for schools, with stringent rules in place governing the use of visual content depicting children. Before sharing images of pupils on social media, you must ensure permission has been provided by their parents. Alternatively, consider using images of pupils’ work or video interviews with staff to avoid safeguarding issues.

#3 — Share Content from Other Users

Maintaining an active social media presence may seem like a time-consuming task, and the effort required to produce a continual stream of posts is daunting. However, social media activity takes many different forms.

While a stream of unique content is highly beneficial, making use of posts by others and reusing your own content are both great ways to keep your profile active without needing to plan and write new content. Sharing the latest education news and spreading the word about community events and achievements will make you a valuable source of information for users and prevent your profile from being inactive. Additionally, utilising trends such as ‘Throwback Thursday’ and ‘Flashback Friday’ to reshare your old content is an easy way to maintain audience engagement.

Putting it into Practise

To sustain the improvement and efficacy of your social media activity, you should always monitor the results to be fully aware of how the alterations affect your account’s reach and engagement. By doing this, you can determine what does and doesn’t work for your account and hone your practises and tendencies over time.

Need Assistance with Your School’s Social Media?

If you understand the importance of your school’s social media presence and would like a hand in making improvements, send us a message and we’d be happy to help.