The Keys to Making Your School’s a Success on Social Media

By now, you are probably tired of hearing how your school must have an online presence and be active on social media. There is no disputing the importance of social media for schools. But, it is as important to understand how to get the most out of your school’s social media accounts.

In this blog, we highlight three key considerations for school’s looking to establish a strong social media presence.

Write and Follow a School Social Media Policy

Social media is a superb tool for schools, but it can go wrong. When it does, it can cause a lot of damage. As with any powerful program or tool, it is important to have rules.

The implementation of a school social media policy is essential. It instills set-in-stone rules and comprehensive social media guidance for teachers. By following the regulations set out in a thorough policy, contributors should not fall foul of the dangers of social media.

When writing a social media policy for teachers and contributors, you should provide guidance on many areas. This includes:

• Account Sharing
• Content
• Style and Tone
• Posting Comments
• Perspective
• Safeguarding
• Staff Responsibilities
• Policy Enforcement
• Unauthorised Activity

School social media policies are not short documents. They should cover every aspect of your school’s social media usage and put clear rules in place. If your school’s policy fails to, you could face a social media disaster.

If you would like a free school social media policy template to work from, contact Eduprise today.

Develop a Well-researched Social Media Strategy

Unkempt and dormant social media accounts reflect badly on schools. Posting regularly will keep your school in your audience’s mind. But don’t be fooled; an active social media account isn’t always a good one.

c An understanding of their audience, what they want to know, and when to reach them is invaluable. This information helps to guide social media strategies for schools. You should also consult these details before launching any school social media campaign.

Part of understanding your audience is listening to them. Knowing what your audience is saying adds an extra dimension to your school’s social media plan. Mention is a fantastic tool that allows you to track online conversation about your school and local area. The program monitors more than 1 billion online sources daily, including social media. With this understanding, you can create a plan that directs the narrative about your school.

Putting together your school’s first social media plan is challenging. If you would like a free school social media strategy template, get in touch with the Eduprise team.

Use Analytics for Quality Assurance

There is always room for improvement. Not all your school’s social media campaigns will be outright successes. Not all your school’s social media strategies will be flawless. But how do you monitor their performance?

Modern social media analytics tools offer an extensive insight into the performance of your posts. Most social media channels offer their own form of analytics. For example, Twitter displays how many likes, retweets, and comments a post attracts. These basic social media metrics provide a low-level understanding of performance. But, more in-depth analysis is available.

A great tool for monitoring your school’s social media accounts is Hootsuite. This social media management tool allows you to compose and schedule posts. But, its value for analysis comes from its social media reports. At the click of a button, you can create a report on the performance of your school’s social media over a period of time. The analysis provided includes:

• Number of Posts
• Number of Followers or Likes
• Post Engagements
• Traffic
• Sentiment of Inbound Messages

The final social media metric analyses the messages your school receives. It categorises them as positive, neutral, or negative. This affords you an immediate insight into the recent sentiment toward your school.

Using the statistics offered by social media analysis, you can refine your school’s social media strategy. In doing so, you can increase engagement with and maximise the reach of your posts.

If you want to start receiving reports on the performance of your social media accounts, contact Eduprise today.

Prepare, Produce, Monitor, Refine

Taking the time to prepare — whether in the form of a policy or a school social media strategy — will help you avoid future issues. Once you have produced content, it should be monitored and analysed to assess its success. Using the findings, refine your social media strategy to improve results.

Establishing an effective social media presence takes time and effort that schools don’t always have. The Eduprise team are vastly experienced in setting up and managing social media accounts for schools. If you want an envied social media presence, contact Eduprise team.