Social media has been around for a while now and is gaining momentum. It showing no signs of slowing down. More and more schools are using social media for marketing, interacting with their audience, improving parental engagement and much more!

The opportunity for educators is that you can share special events, celebrate student accomplishments and moments from the school day. For schools specifically, social media can be used to increase engagement with parents. It can also powerfully impact productivity. If you're a Schudio school website software client you are able to share news, events, and blogs neatly with ease using the social share icons within the software. This means you are able to write content once and share it across multiple platforms in just a couple of clicks!

For more information read this: https://support.schudio.com/article/127-social-sharing

Ideas to start using today

Here are some great ideas of what you could use and share on your social media accounts.

• Upcoming events and school news. Social media is a great platform to update parent or guardians of upcoming events such as a parents’ evening. It is also great to get the news out quickly if, for instance the school is closed due to weather conditions.
• Host blogs to share information about particular classes. This is a great way for parents to be informed of what their children are learning in class.
• Sharing pictures and videos of class trips/events/everyday school. This shows what the school offers and how versatile it is in educating their children through experiences as well as academic teaching.
• Students’ special accomplishments. Showing students’ special accomplishments shows that your school recognises a pupil's individual achievement. Parents will also love seeing their child being recognised on social media and this will allow them to share the post with their friends. This is a great way for people to engage with your social accounts.

These are just a few examples. You can use some or all of these ideas. Just think what is right for your school and what you want to communicate to your audience, and what you want to use the social platforms for.

Schools Using Social Media brilliantly!

Central Lancaster High

Central Lancaster High school social media is amazing! They receive a large amount of likes on each post with people engaging, sharing and commenting on their content. Their Facebook gets a lot of interaction. When you look at their feed it is highly visual using photos and videos, which generates engagement. Because of this, it means that posts are more likely to be picked up by the Facebook algorithms which favour photo and video content. A great example which I like and find interesting with their latest video post. It is a slideshow made up of a series of photos showing designs their students created for each of the school’s houses. That video alone generated 742 views with lots of engagement.

Archbishop Temple

Archbishop temple has both a Twitter and Facebook account. They consistently post about student accomplishments and give regular updates on upcoming events. They use hashtags within their posts to increase visibility. Using a trending hashtags such as #thisgirlcan means that their post is more likely to be seen by a wider audience that is linked to this tag. They also use links which drives traffic towards their website. This is especially great for parents who may potentially send their children to the school and are seeking out more information.

Carr Hill High

Carr Hill High uses 4 different social media accounts. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube! They are using them Brilliantly with a capital B!
Even though their highest following is on Facebook with a number of 2,095, they post consistently high-quality photos and videos across all their channels. The majority of their tweets are image based which increases their chance of interaction and the chance of a retweet with Twitter’s algorithm. Their Youtube channel is a great platform to get an insight of what the school life is like.

They have been very creative with highlight montages and have produced their very own Carr Hill TV show, updating their audience on current events and getting students involved presenting each episode. The videos are fantastic and a joy to watch, you can see the smiles on the students’ and teachers’ faces. They leave you with feel-good vibes and wanting to go to that school.

When looking across their channels use can see great communication with their audience and you get a real sense of community and what the school values are without even visiting their school. This is where when Social Media is used well it can make a massive impact on your school.

Why are algorithms important?

In the previous examples, I talked about algorithms. Algorithms are important as these are what social platforms run on. The algorithms allow the users (i.e parents) of each platform to receive relevant content they care about and want to see. However, bare in mind algorithms are constantly changing. That's especially true of Facebook, so it's always wise to try and keep up with the latest algorithms. Although it can be difficult to do this so don't kill yourself trying, just remember to create good content and naturally, people will engage with each post. That's the important thing!

Key Social Media for Schools Takeaway

It can be tempting to have several social media accounts, thinking the more platforms I have the more visibility my school will get. This is not true, especially if you cannot manage them properly. It can become overwhelming, very time consuming and difficult to keep on top of. The schools that have only chosen 1 or 2 platforms have mastered them and are posting regular content. They also keep their information up-to-date which engages with their audience. This is key to having a brilliant and successful social media account. However, Carr Hill High is a great example of a school using several accounts successfully because they manage each one excellently with regular monitoring and consistent posts.

Only take on what you can manage there is always room for growth for your social media accounts. Start small but think big!