A Guide to Social Media Marketing for Schools

here are tons of strategies you can adopt to boost your school’s presence online, but not all of them are as effective as they might seem. To help you out, we have compiled a list of techniques that can be used for social media marketing for schools. 

Photo by Buro Millennial from Pexels

Social media is available to anyone willing to give it a try. Be it small businesses or music artists, anyone can use social media to boost their brand image.

However, social media marketing for schools might be a relatively new concept that can be quite difficult to grasp. 

If you’re one of them, fret not because we have a very detailed guide ready for you today explaining what social media marketing is and how it works for schools. We will also go over some of the strategies you can use.

Let’s dive in!

What is Social Media Marketing for Schools? 

For educational institutes, social media marketing strategies might be a little different from what other businesses implement. 

However, the key point stays the same: social media marketing lets you post about what’s new at your school. The options are limitless when it comes to showcasing what you have to offer. 

Through your posts, you can reach new students as well as existing ones much more effectively. It helps you gain more recognition globally and increases the number of applicants you get each year by building your school’s image. 

Strategies for Social Media Marketing for Schools

Social Media Marketing for Schools #1 - Conduct Demo Classes on Social Media

Approximately 81% of the student body in 2020 firmly believes that videos help them catch on to a topic faster. Keeping this in mind, we can see how effective live streaming a few of your lectures will be when it comes to showcasing what your school has to offer. 

You do not have to host these classes or discussions every week since that might even discourage students from attending your school in person. Just film a lecture taking place or ask some of your best students to make a presentation with what they’ve learned so far. 

Asking your students to help you out will make your online lectures more interactive since those younger than them will feel more at ease while asking questions. 

You can even ask your followers to drop questions or present a questionnaire to specify which topic they’re most interested in learning about. Based on the highest number of votes, you can proceed to make a video for that. 

Do keep in mind that live interactions are better than pre-recorded ones since they enable students to get their doubts cleared on the spot instead of making them wait in uncertainty. 

This is how Simon Fraser University posted regarding an upcoming quiz on their Facebook page:

Source: Facebook

Social Media Marketing for Schools #2 - Make Sure Your Posts are Attractive

After the content itself, the aesthetics of your post is the most important aspect. Design your posts according to the age group you’re targeting. You don’t have to do anything extreme - just make sure you use vibrant colors for your content as it catches more viewers’ attention. 

You can post the same thing on every social media platform you’re logged in to, or you can make different posts for each. We would suggest you go for the latter since it makes your school look more versatile and ‘hip’. 

Another thing to keep in mind is to make sure your posts are interactive. The prospective student or their parents should be able to get some sort of information out of your content that will prompt them to know more about your institution. 

For this, you may choose to add a call-to-action at the end of the post, or you can link to a blog post on your website that provides further details into the topic. 

Make sure the information you provide is legit. You can’t bluff when you’re on the internet. 

See how the University of British Columbia posted their new world ranking on their Instagram page to let students know just how good they are. 

Source: Instagram

Social Media Marketing for Schools #3 - Know Where Your Competition is and Choose Wisely

As a school, you’re bound to have another institution you’re up against, and we get that. You have to let the audience know why and how you’re better than your peers if you want to get them hooked.

Before you embark on your social media marketing strategy, do some research. Find out which social media platforms your competitors are on and what kinds of posts they usually share. 

However, do not copy their ideas as that won’t get you anywhere. Instead, you should try to find the points they may have missed on their posts and then include those in your content. 

Also, don’t take to too many social media platforms if you can’t handle all of them daily. For most busy institutions, maintaining even one social media account gets difficult, and this is where filtering comes in. 

If your main goal is to attract the parents of future students, create a page for your school on Facebook. On the flip side, you can open pages on Instagram and Twitter if you want to communicate directly with the students. 

Regardless of how many social media platforms you’re on, you should always post daily so that people don’t deem your page dead. 

Lastly, make sure you link to your website on the bio of every social media platform you’re on so that your students can apply from there if they want to. This is what Harvard Law School did for their Twitter bio -

Source: Twitter

Social Media Marketing for Schools #4 - Invest in Ads

Simply posting diligently on your social media account won’t be as effective if you do not have anything to promote that content. Right after you create your page and upload a couple of relevant posts, you should purchase adverts. 

You can design them the way you like and even choose which demographic you want to reach. If applications are open for the new semester at your school, you can create an ad based on that, too. 

Add a clickable link on your ad that will redirect the students to your landing page. For your adverts, you can also ask current students to use their pictures and list their achievements.

This will work as a great marketing strategy for your school since your student’s achievements are directly linked back to the institute they are currently attending. 

On the same note, you can even voice out a few concerns new students might have, such as getting a dorm room or landing a good scholarship. Once you’ve done this, you can then urge the student to follow your school on social media platforms.

You might even ask them to check your website out to know more about the scholarships you’re offering. Not only will this generate more traffic to your social media page and website, but it will also bring in more students with similar interests. 

Social Media Marketing for Schools #5 - Maintain a Constant Personality

At times, you might be tempted to take on different notes while posting on social media. While this might be effective to some extent, you should still be wary of when the difference becomes too much. 

You want to tell your student that your school isn’t just a party school, neither is it too serious for their liking. However, if you want to focus mainly on one of the two sides of the spectrum, you should divide your posts accordingly. 

For instance, if you want to portray your students as more studious than the rest, you should post their academic contributions to the school. Alternatively, you could post a snippet of an article written on this topic. 

As a quick example, MIT recently created a post boasting about how an instrument made by their students was able to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen on Mars.

Source: Instagram

Make up your mind about what you want your audience to perceive. Maintaining a constant persona on the internet requires a lot of planning. You can list a couple of questions that you think are the key points behind deciding your school’s persona. 

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is social media marketing for schools so important? 

Social media marketing for schools is important because it lets the school promote itself to a wider range of people. What you say about your school in these posts is exclusive to you.

As long as you keep it real, your social media page will act as your strongest weapon against schools you’re competing with. Social media marketing also helps you and your students (both current and prospective) adapt to the new trend of online learning. 

Due to the newfound necessity of using online platforms for teaching and interacting with students, it has been difficult for students to adjust to this sudden change. And this is where social media platforms come in. 

You can create pages and/or groups to share materials from lectures with your students. You can also ask them to promote the videos you post if they find them useful. 

2. What other ways can I adapt to use social media marketing for my school’s benefit? 

Besides following everything we have compiled above for you in the list of strategies, you can also share useful posts on your page or as your story.

This enhances the bond within your school’s community, and it also gives prospective students a chance to meet your faculty or staff members before they’ve even enrolled. However, this sort of promotion should always be a two-way thing. 

Source: Twitter

If you share something your staff posted, make sure they post and promote your school, too, so that their followers visit your website. 

Another way is to keep your posts interesting. Don’t reveal the punchline at the very beginning, but don’t drag your post on for too long, either. The trick is to find the middle ground and stick to it.

If you are targeting high school students, you might want to post some funny content or share videos or informative memes on your social media pages.

Conversely, if you want to reach out to the parents, you should post more about the academic stuff your school is participating in, such as olympiads and webinars. This will give them the idea that your school is competitive and encourage them to enroll their children at your institution. 

3. How should my school get started on the marketing plan? 

The first thing you should do is form a group with a marketing team and other authoritative figures of your school. Next up, brainstorm and state all the ideas you have and decide whether or not it is worth implementing. 

At the same time, you should also do more research on what’s currently trending on the Internet and how your competing schools are dealing with it. List out a maximum of three realistic goals to get started with and plan your content according to that. 

When planning the content, put yourself in the viewer’s shoes to see how they’d react to it. Improvise if needed. You can even ask for a student’s help here since they ought to better understand what freshers might want to see in your content.  

Once you are done with the planning part, start scheduling your posts at suitable times of the day. You can always sign up for our free 30-day trial to get the best out of your social media pages. Simply schedule all your posts to the date and time you want them to be published on, and trust Postfity to take care of the rest!