Ten post ideas to engage your school community on social media

Lesley Comeau, head of international marketing services at International Education Solutions, lists the 10 post types that should never be missing from your social media channels

When it comes to engaging your school’s audience, there’s always a fine line between trying to cater your content to your current community and trying to attract new families. If you want to truly tell your school’s story, try to focus on these 10 types of posts as they are more engaging.

Typically, school audiences comment, share, and engage more with social posts that recognize the good things and achievements happening at school. Highlight students', alumni's, teachers’, or other staff members’ accomplishments.

Events are a great way to bring the community to your school and can create the perfect opportunity for new registrations. If you have an event coming up that’s open to the public, post about it on your pages and in other Facebook groups. You can also ask your staff members to share it with their followers, and ‘boost’ the event on Facebook to reach a broader audience.

Don’t be afraid to repurpose videos or advertise your school using older material that you paid good money to have produced. Even small snippets from larger videos, podcasts, blogs, or interviews can be re-used to highlight your school’s facilities, events, and curriculum.

It’s important to link back to your school’s website through social media. Take a snippet from a recent (or even older) blog or news event that you published and post about it on your social media channels. Make sure to link to the full article and encourage your readers to ‘find out more’ or ‘read more’ through the link.

This is a really engaging tactic. You can have students come up with their own posts that you approve using a platform such as Class Intercom. Or, you can ask your school's teachers and coaches if they have any exciting news or student-related information to share that you could post.

Share photos, interviews, or fun facts about specific staff members or students to show off your awesome community! If you end up conducting quick interviews, publish them on your website and link to the full interview on your social media platform. This will drive more traffic to your website and increase engagement.

For schools with graduating classes, highlight a student who’s going off to college with an interview and photos on your accounts. Ask them what they will be studying, what they hope to accomplish, and aspire to become. This will show the possibilities to other parents and students and is a good example of social proof – showcasing what students can accomplish by attending your school.

You could even show what it’s like ‘behind the scenes’ to give people a glimpse into all of the hard work it takes to run a successful school.

These can be from around the school, at school-hosted events, or sports competitions. Candid photos usually do very well for social media engagement.

Reminding your community of important upcoming events, deadlines, or announcements is vital for your school’s social media.

Asking questions, or taking polls, is a great way to increase engagement. A lot of the time your school community wants to feel like their voices are being heard and that their opinion matters. Run a fun poll or ask questions about a topic for input.

Highlighting your school every now and then with a review or testimonial can be a great way of demonstrating social proof for prospective parents to see. As we know, word of mouth is very important, so using this strategy can be good for your school’s image and will help to build trust.

By focusing on the above types of posts for your school’s social media platforms, you can successfully increase your engagement, following, and interactions. This can help lead to more school inquiries and overall registrations.

The great thing about these types of social media posts is that you can most likely find an example pretty easily. Make sure you ask around and communicate with your staff to truly understand what’s going on in classrooms so you can showcase the great things taking place on your platforms!