We've compiled social media tips for educational institutions and schools based on our experience and the latest trends.
As an educational institution,
- Where to start?
- Which of the social media channels makes more sense to focus on,
- How to create a creative line and corporate world,
- What types of content can you share?
- How should promotions be in early registration periods?
- How should promotional budgets be determined and managed?
- Data collection and management process through social media
1. Content Strategy Tips for Education Sector and Education Institutions
Social media strategy In which channels of social media and how often will you be involved? How will you send messages? To whom will you give these messages and for what purpose? How much will you budget? It is a planning process that emerges by answering questions such as
1.a Target audience identification
There are 4 or 5 target audiences on the basis of the communication of every educational institution . These masses
- Parents,
- Students,
- school staff,
- Sector
Parents, this audience is often thought of as the only important audience that comes to mind for all of us. In addition, people working on marketing communications need to name these basic target audiences with their sub-features and create a clearer schema. Like “Parents 1: middle school parents living around district X…”
Although parents are the most important audience for the sustainability of registration communication, that is, the school, other audiences are just as important.
As the target audience, students can turn into a representative of your school who is a content producer. Students' experiences, achievements, celebrations, trophies… each a source of content
Note: Let's also share the information that you need to get consent from parents for students to use photos and videos.
School personnel want to work with the most successful personnel in each branch of education institution. Being a center of attraction for your educational institution is also related to being a good employer brand.
It is important for the industry to show where you are among your competitors with indirect messages and to reinforce your position in marketing.
1.b Social Media in Education: Marketing Positioning
Every educational institution that manages the marketing process professionally needs to have a positioning strategy. One pillar of this strategy is social media.
What is the claim of your school, the story that no one else has? Success, confidence, creative students, students with advanced social skills, students learning in touch with nature… and more
Modern marketing suggests moving forward by choosing one or more of the propositions that best describe you. All your message and content titles will be knitted around a positioning phrase that will be found here.
1. c. Your seasons and contact management
When are the most important seasons of your educational institution during the year? It will be useful to prepare for this season in a way that will maintain communication one month in advance to get the best results.
Agency briefing process, contents, promotional campaigns, joint publication collaborations, media and all other work to be done must be planned according to this calendar.
You can start the season one month before the pre-communication period by evaluating it in three parts as preliminary communication, communication and final communication process . The last communication process will be the planning period where you will direct your strategy according to the registration density.
Let's come to the "who will take care of social media affairs at school" part of the job.
Let's be honest if you have a serious expectation from social media as an educational institution. This job is definitely not the job of computer instructors, guidance counselors or administrators who love to spend time on social media.
Because the user side of the social media world and the marketing side are completely different. It is an area that requires proficiency in many subjects such as marketing experience, media planning experience, creative experience, moderation experience, reporting experience.
You should either create a competent person or team that can manage this business inhouse. Or you should manage the entire social media communication process of your educational institution with a social media agency .
Working on your own or with an agency has its own advantages and disadvantages. However, if you are going to work with the agency, you should appoint only one representative at the school to follow up with the agency.
1 d. Which social media channels will you open an account on?
While searching for an answer to this question, let's remember the words of Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan.
The medium is the message itself.
So the message of the word you will say is where you actually said it. Therefore, it is important to define on which social media channel, why and how the target audiences you define spend their time .
Instagram , Tiktok, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn , YouTube etc. Trying to be everywhere can tire you out as effort. On the other hand, it may cause the power to be divided into channels that you need to focus on.
Opening an account on all channels makes sense to get naming rights. However, it would be logical to proceed with the most necessary channels in order to use your resources correctly.
2. Educational Institutions Content Tips
Heading the types of content planned to be shared in advance will make things easier for you throughout the year. Some of these topics may be:
2.a Lessons, teaching styles
2.b Life-environment contents at school
2.c Content related to your values
2.d Inspirational posts
2.e Your Achievements
2.f Experiences
2.h Experiences of school staff
2.g Special occasions, commemorations and celebrations
However, it is useful to produce your content with the right hashtag strategy . The reason is to be able to meet people on social media channels at a lower cost. Being able to take part in the Discover screens.
3. Social Media for Education Institutions: Early Registration Promotion Tips
When we think about social media advertising dynamics, the time to attract attention is too short. You have too many arguments to tell. Your story, your values, your achievements, etc.
How Should Ads Be?
Instead of telling them all in one creative, you can make different creative applications under a single theme .
Within the same campaign, you can produce 5-6 creative alternatives that will share your total budget . In this way, you not only tell your arguments; at the same time, you will be informed about which of your suggestions parents are more interested in. In other words, your ad set with the most cost-per-result ad set has the most attention-grabbing message.
Competitor Rating
Another suggestion is to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. How you can see your competitors' Facebook-Instagram ads, in this article.
Advertising purposes and management
The purpose of your advertisements is to attract the attention of prospective parents, to leave their information to reach you and to ask you questions. For this reason, each ad you create defines the marketing processes.
The next step after acquiring this contact information is going into sales activities . After receiving this information, it will be necessary to evaluate the communication process in the best way, that is, to manage the communication follow-up well.
What are the Advertising Models You Can Use During the Early Registration Period?
1- Instagram Quick Form Ads
The quick form or Facebook lead form is a form used to get information from the users you reach . The form you redirect at the end of your ads will not direct visitors to your website. Redirects to a quick-opening and more practical form you created on Facebook.
Filled forms accumulate in your Facebook business account, you can open and check them. Or you can connect it to your CRM program.
Parents who encounter your ads may be more likely to fill out this form than other options. They may have seen an ad for a phone call during an out-of-hours time. Or your form on your website may seem too tiring. That's why quick forms are a useful option.
2- Ads leading to Instagram-Facebook messages
While creating your ad campaign, you can create your sets after selecting traffic and messages in the ad purposes section. Thus, prospective parents who see your ad will see the "Send message" button under your ad and will encounter the automatic messages you have prepared.
Detailed information about creating ads on Instagram is in this article.
3- Ads that lead to your website, form
It is used to redirect to a page with a form that you will create on your website. When creating an ad campaign, you need to select traffic and then website traffic in the objectives section.
The advantage of this advertising model is that your data comes directly to your website. So Facebook doesn't know your current data, only you know it. In fact, it is not a disadvantage that will harm you, but it has this aspect.
The downside is the user experience. If your website is not user-friendly enough, bounce rates will be very high. You may run the risk of collecting only one or two forms out of tens of thousands of web visits.
4-Ads that lead to phone calls
The advantage of promotions made by phone calls is that real people who want clear information can be contacted in the most concrete way. However, it is also a handicap that calls cannot be returned during the evening and night hours and on weekends.
Each of these advertising models is a different experience for each educational institution. It is not a situation that can be said "this is the best"; It would be helpful if you could measure the results for each.
4. Social Media Interaction Tips for Educational Institutions
Burnout in content production, feeling like there is nothing left to tell is a situation experienced by brands. But there are thousands of stories-contents to tell in schools. You can read our article on increasing engagement tips on Instagram here .
on Instagram stories
- question answers,
- Pop quizler,
- Polls and other tactile tags are materials that will highlight your interaction.
At the same time, these areas are also good areas to take your school out of the school boundaries and bring it to the screens. Book recommendations, tests with small quizzes, clues from the information learned in the lesson are all subjects of interaction.
Asking questions to your followers in your post content can contribute to increasing the number of comments. On the other hand, saving is also a very important type of interaction. The save feature on Instagram was introduced to create an archive gallery that users can return to later.
So if your content contains information that is worth saving and looking back at later, it's a good source of engagement. For example, “How is it done? ” contents. Or content worth looking back at when the time comes, such as book recommendations, movie recommendations .
