Schools only operate smoothly when there are students coming in to learn and parents paying the fees. Social media plays an important role in promoting your school among the right target audience without paying hefty advertisement charges. Do you all know why to promote your school on social media?

So, you have the best teaching staff, an amazing school campus, an academic curriculum that any parent would pay any amount of fees for, a set of extra-curricular activities that any student will love to take part in, and a robust school management software that helps you manage all of that.

However, none of that will matter if people do not know about it.

Any school or educational institution can only work when there are sufficient numbers of students attending it. And while offering the best quality education is essential, you also need to promote your school for people to know and become aware of your school.

In a more traditional way, schools would give out their exam results and top scorers at the beginning of the new academic year to every newspaper and daily to reach the local people. But with changing times, schools cannot afford to keep doing that.

As with any business, educational institutions also need to constantly stay in touch with not just the prospective students and their parents but also with their current students, parents, and teachers.

Here, the main point is to engage with your audience while promoting your school. And social media is an amazing platform for your school to do so without spending tons of money on advertisements.

Why to Promote Schools on Social Media?

For a long time, schools and colleges are used to sending out advertisements on local newspapers and tv channels. However, with changing times, the way educational institutions promoted themselves also needs to change. No longer do the parents and children choose schools based on the number of toppers the school produces.

Parents and their children want to know how the campus looks, how credible the school or college is, what are the reviews from the students about the educational institution, what is campus life like, etc.

While you may offer all of these things to the tip if you do not promote them in the right way, there are chances that students or parents still may not choose your school.

This is where social media marketing can help your school. It is a platform that allows your school to connect with its current students, alumni, and prospective students from a single platform.

Social media platforms will help you to keep your students, parents, teachers, and other prospects updated with what is happening in your school, college, or university.

You can promote every single achievement (not just the toppers) of your school, college, or university. Moreover, it can become a platform for your potential students and their parents to reach out to you regarding any of their queries.

How can Your School Use Social Media for Promotion?

Social media platforms are a place to show your expertise and creativity. With these two elements along with a few digital marketing efforts, you can ensure a higher reach to the targeted audience which in this case are the students and their parents.

That being said, there are few things that you need to keep in mind while creating and maintaining a social media account of your school.

Choose the Platform of Your Choice

Depending on your target audience, you can choose either Facebook or Instagram, or both. Both these platforms have some of the highest numbers of users across the world and while most of the younger audience uses Instagram, Facebook is the first choice of many of their parents.

Make sure that you either hire a social media manager who can take care of all the social media accounts that you have created for your school or if you wish to manage it yourself, you can get a social management software that can help you manage all your social media accounts from a single platform.

Keep a Track of All the Happenings

Make social media your virtual school book where you can post about everything that is happening in and around your school. Yes, focusing not just on your school but also on the local area around your school can help students from far away get an understanding of the place.

Because school is not only the community of students, parents, and teachers, it also includes the cafe in the next block where most of the school students hang out after school, it includes the comics shop where the students would find their favorite superhero comic in.

All of this adds to the feeling of a warm community that your school, college, or university can offer to prospective students. So, make sure that you create a list of all the events, fairs, and interesting stories to post on social media for your followers to know your school, college, or other educational institution.

Keep a Goal in Mind

What do you expect to achieve from your social media posts? The answer to this question is your goal.

This goal could be anything ranging from increasing engagement with your school to attracting a higher number of admissions for the next semester. A defined goal helps you to create that kind of content for social media.

With a goal in mind, you will know what kind of social media posts to create to achieve that goal. Moreover, these goals may change according to your school’s needs. For example, during an ongoing academic year, your goal may be to engage more with your followers on social media or gain new followers but before the start of the next semester, your goal might be to attract new admissions.

As your goal changes, your content on social media should also change so that you can achieve those goals.

Remember, organic social media marketing takes time so you will need to start sooner to reach your goal.

Create Engaging Social Media Posts

When you want to share the picture and videos of your school event on social media, you need to make sure that you also add an engaging caption to it and other relevant elements like music for a video, filters to make your image more vibrant, etc.

Visuals are what engages your audience the most on social media but a relevant and engaging caption will push them to interact with you. Therefore, add captions and other engaging elements to your social media posts.

Ask your audience questions relevant to what you have posted, play an online quiz, or simply organize a fun poll. All these are ways to increase interaction with your audience on social media.

The higher your social media interaction will be, the more trust will your followers put in your institution. And when the trust increases, parents and students will be more inclined to register at your school when the admissions begin.

Here’s an article by Mention on the type of posts you can share on social media to get higher engagement and reach.

Use Hashtags

Hashtags are a way to reach out to people outside of your follower list.

Using 2-3 popular hashtags, 3-4 medium hashtags, and 4-5 niche-related hashtags will help your posts to reach people interested in your school and what it has to offer.

Make sure that the hashtags you use are related to your school, the post, and your industry (education, or subject major) so that you reach the right audience who will truly be interested in your content and posts.

If you are using social management software, you will get a list of trending hashtags related to your post and industry.

Be Consistent

Consistency is very important on social media. It is the tactic that keeps your followers engaged with you and helps you achieve new followers. So being consistent in your posting schedule will also help you in connecting with students and parents that follow your school’s social media account.

Create a posting schedule, which post is supposed to be shared when and at what time. Longer breaks in between posting can easily make your audience bored and that means you will be losing your followers too quickly.

Since marketing is an ongoing effort, you need to keep posting, engaging, and promoting your school on social media. That way you can improve your school’s reputation on social media which will eventually translate into you getting more admissions and higher profits.

Outsource Digital Marketers

Social media marketing is a job that constantly needs work and attention. Even with the best school management software, you may need external help to get things right and achieve your marketing goals faster.

That being said, some school management software providers offer you to manage your school’s social media accounts along with the school website. If you want your school to be active on social media then you can simply ask your school management software provider if they offer social media management services for the school or not.

Digital marketing professionals can also help you in running social media advertisements within your budget to reach your goal faster.

FAQs

How do Schools Market on Social Media?

Schools, similar to any other institution need to showcase the happenings on the campus and around it to engage with the followers on social media and attract parents and schools to become a part of their education system.

How do I Promote my School Club on Social Media?

The steps to promote your school club are more or less similar to how you would promote your school (read this blog and you’ll know). Students want to know what your school club has to offer them and a huge part of the promotion is the audience. If you are promoting your school club to the right audience, surely more students will want to join it and become a part of your club.

How can I Advertise my School?

All the popular social media platforms offer you a platform to advertise your school at a minimal cost. With the right targeting, content, and creatives you can advertise your school on different social media platforms.

Ask your social media manager or service provider to help you with running effective social media advertising campaigns for your school.

Over to you…

Social media marketing is the best way to spread the word about your educational institution and attract more students and parents to become a part of it. Unlike traditional flyers or newspaper advertisements, social media promotion has a wider reach.

It can help you reach newer students and help them to know your school better. All this information will help them and their parents to choose the school wisely.

Do you plan on creating a social media presence for your school? Tell us which platforms do you think are most suitable for that in the comments below. And if you find this blog helpful, consider sharing it on your social media by clicking on the sharing buttons at the bottom right corner.