How to create engaging social media content for schools
“Unlock the secrets of creating compelling and engaging social media content for the online visibility of your school. From storytelling to interaction to community building, hear from experts how to connect with your audience meaningfully and cut through the online bustle.”
Marketing is all about how to reach and sell your services and products to the right audience. It has always been. What has changed in the past few decades is WHERE you find your relevant audience and how well you connect with them. Let’s face it: we are now deep in the digital age, and online marketing is where most of the action is taking place.
In this digital era, schools are also no longer confined to four walls and textbooks. Your online presence is a key factor in determining how effectively you connect with your audience and find your potential customers.
If online visibility is a front door to invite your customers, social media may well be considered a doorbell. It is the opportunity you have to amplify your school’s voice, and hence, it need not be just another to-do task on your list. What matters most is how to build a strong online presence for your school and create engaging content that resonates with your audience, inspires them, and encourages them to engage further.
How to create engaging social media content.
One of the first steps to improve your school’s online presence is creating engaging and endearing social media content. This is one of the most important aspects of an effective digital strategy for educational institutes. Here are some effective online strategies for schools.
- Kickstart with a strong foundation – Content creation is a fluid process that can easily spill into different directions. Therefore, before you dive into the process of creating content, there are a few pertinent questions you must ask to create a strong online presence. They are- why are you creating the content? Do you want to showcase the achievements and the progress of your students? Do you want to highlight the events at school? Do you want to initiate a dialogue with the parents and create a community, or do you want to boost the number of admissions? Whatever your purpose, it is important to be clear about what you want and accordingly formulate your content strategy.
- Develop a focused school digital strategy – If your purpose is your foundation, then strategy is the blueprint for what you shall build on the foundation. A strategy is an amalgamation of your school’s unique tone and messaging to market your school online. To build an effective online strategy for your school, you need to determine who your audience is. Is it the students, the parents, the alumni, or the community at large? This will help you streamline the nature of your content and how you want to package it. The second vital component of your strategy is what are your goals based on your purpose. If it is achieving more admissions, then what is the growth curve you are looking at and in what time frame, etc? A clearly defined strategy will also help you decide which social media platforms you want to leverage for your content for a strong online presence. Instagram is primarily a platform for visual storytelling, while LinkedIn is for engaging the professional community and posting thought leadership content. Facebook is all about building and interacting with communities.
- Impactful content creation – Effective and impactful content creation stands on these pillars that make it increasingly consumable and build your school’s branding online.
- Authenticity – Like it or not, parents and students can sniff scripted, artificial, and overly polished content within a glance. For your audience to start engaging with you, focus on real stories like student achievements, behind-the-scenes and events at school, and build stories that inspire. Dave Willis, the American screenwriter, sums it up perfectly when he says, “Don’t use social media to impress people; use it to impact people.”
- Make it visual – The phrase- A picture may be worth a thousand words wasn’t coined out of nothing. Embrace the art of visual storytelling by creating videos that evoke emotions and establish a connection with the audience instead of dry facts for the online visibility of your school. Student testimonials, interviews, and showcasing teachers or students on what motivates them and keeps them going can make a huge impact. If you have to share information, use appealing images with the right copy that catches the attention of your audience. Remember, people always register stories and not statistics, so try to make it more human and, hence, more relatable. It is wise to invest in professional photography and videography to display your content. Visual content can be in the form of reels and stories that capture moments, carousels that tell a story using multiple images or videos.
- Interactive content vs broadcasting – it is a basic human tendency to disengage when they are only at the receiving end. If you use your social media account for broadcasting information (however important it may be), you may be at risk of an audience that is bored and losing interest in your content. For a solid digital presence of your school, avoid using the medium as a mic and turn it into a conversation instead. Shift the focus from your school to the parents and students by asking them questions in the comments, running polls and quizzes, offering rewards to encourage participation, celebrating and showcasing their achievements, and letting them be at the helm. User-generated content always invites excellent participation and strengthens the community.
- Beyond likes and shares – While it is easy to drown in vanity engagement metrics like the number of likes and shares for enhancing school visibility with a strong online presence, it is equally important to gradually build a brand and let the engagement increase from the relevant audience. Use the data intelligently to track what resonates with your audience with the help of analytics tools and focus more on adapting and refining your content style and packaging. The aim should be on enhancing reach, engagement, and click-through rate using platform insights and analytics tools.
- Leveraging trends – Ride the trending wave and get an edge over your competition to market your school online effectively. You can revolve your content around a trending video clip or piece of news and shape it according to your brand ethos. The inertia is toward AI-powered tools; hence, instead of resisting the change, it may be a better idea to use the emerging technology to your advantage for content ideas and carve a niche for yourself in a market saturated with redundant messaging.
- Powerful collaborations – Collaborating with influencers, bloggers, and other creators whose content is appreciated and applauded can give your content a boost and significantly expand your reach. Another effective way for online marketing is to rope in the alumni and let them be the torch bearers of what the school stands for and showcase the positive attributes for authenticity and trust.
- Professional assistance – Creating engaging social media content for proper online visibility can be a meticulous and exhaustive process. Especially including the various aspects that are discussed above. A smart way to build a strong online presence is to bring in an expert and ensure a strong social media presence while you take care of other core responsibilities. Social media pros understand the functioning of the platform, the ever-changing algorithms, and the nuances of marketing schools online well enough to produce consistent and high-quality content. During any crisis, they are better equipped to handle sensitive situations and convey the appropriate message quickly. They also continuously monitor comments, reviews, etc, and respond to any concerns before they escalate as a part of the school’s digital strategy.
Creating engaging social media content is an art as well as a science, which is imperative for your school’s online presence. It involves creativity, strategy, and agility. The benefits of a strong online presence for schools are many. When done correctly, it can become a powerful medium to amplify your school’s voice and enable you to build lasting connections that go a long way to convert potential leads to customers.
