What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social network designed for the business and professional community. It has evolved over the years with many people calling it “The New Facebook”. It is a crucial part of School Marketing with more users and parents on the network than ever before. It is commonly overlooked that Schools should only use LinkedIn for recruitment purposes. Stories showcasing Alumni, student and staff achievements sit perfectly on LinkedIn.

How can my school use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn works similarly to Facebook with your School having a “Page” that can be managed by several users. We recommend that your Marketing team should manage LinkedIn. We have also seen some Schools' LinkedIn be managed by the head of school which is a great way of differentiating your content from your other channels.  

Examples of content your school could share:

What Is Flickr?

Flickr is an online photo and video hosting platform where users can upload, share, and organise their images and videos. Flickr's Key features include organising photos..You are able to add captions to your content, add relevant tags, join groups based on shared interests, participate in discussions and comment on each other's photos.

How Can My School Use Flickr?

We recommend that the Marketing department manage your school’s Flickr account to post high-quality photos from a photographer or school camera. Flickr can be used as a visual showcase of events happening in your school. 

Examples of content your school could share:

What is Issuu?

What is Pinterest?

Advocates of Storytelling are important members of the school community, they contribute to the creation and broadcasting of the school’s identity. Advocates are typically among the school’s teaching or coaching body, and are interested in, or would enjoy posting to school-owned social media accounts.

Why should schools utilise their advocates?

Empowering teachers to upload their own content to Social Media provides a great insight into the true nature of the people, place and purpose of a school. Marketers are unable to be in two places at once, let alone every classroom. Teachers are able to capture stories in an instant and provide the content that marketers may miss, in order to showcase the truly amazing everyday stories within a school.

Schools run the risk of lacking authenticity in their content and can be tempted to share polished and staged stories for the sole purpose of driving admissions, rather than sharing its own authentic heartbeat. That authentic heartbeat in itself may be the strongest marketing tool available to a school. Teachers share stories to showcase everyday life at the school, which in turn, paints a broader image of what the school stands for. By showcasing these stories, schools provide clear illustrations of pupil life at their school and provide opportunities for prospective families to find the right place for their children.

Who are your advocates?

There is likely at least one teacher at every school who regularly sends images of their lessons to the Marketing Department. There may even be members of staff who are eager to post their stories to Social Media themselves. If this is the case, then you’ve already identified your first advocates to storytelling.

How to empower your advocates’ storytelling.

In utilising storytelling advocates for Marketing, schools are able to roll out a meaningful content strategy as quickly or as gradually as suits their strategic plans. Some schools start small, with the most obviously visual subjects, like the Arts, Sciences or Sports taking to Social Media to share their stories. They, in turn, encourage their colleagues to identify the elements of their own departments that lend themselves well to social media. Soon enough, other subjects like History are sharing videos of their pupils’ historic reenactments and the Geography teacher is posting about their trip to Iceland!

Marketers are left with two choices: the first is to gradually empower the teaching body to share their own stories directly to social media while ensuring guidelines and best practices are in place. The second is to maintain the school’s storytelling in the Marketing office, and closely curate their own stories, with either limited or even non-existent contributions from the living heartbeat of the school.

Every School is unique; that much we can all be assured of, but what is it that achieves this uniqueness? Here at Interactive Schools, we believe the People, Place and Purpose of a school are the defining factors in who they are. In this blog, we’re focusing on the Purpose of schools, and how authentic demonstrations of a school’s values paint the most illuminating pictures of what a school really does. Perhaps more importantly, values help schools to demonstrate their ‘why’.

‘Values’ are words used by schools to describe the underpinning reasoning behind their culture and provision. Familiar ‘values’ include creativity, curiosity, responsibility, and so on. But without meaningful demonstrations of these values, they become meaningless buzzwords.

Students may come to begrudge the thought of being bold if, for instance, they do not see the reflection of boldness in their peers or teachers. To be creative in the Arts is a given, so to entrench the idea of ‘being creative’ to an already creative student, may just fall on deaf ears.

Regardless of what the individual words are that relate to a school’s values or purpose, the key is to provide poignant demonstrations of how those values play out in everyday life. The example above of demonstrating creativity in the Arts is, as we’ve mentioned, rather a given, so why not provide demonstrations of the Science Department’s creativity: how is the school instilling this value in the perhaps more logically-minded areas of the community?

School marketers are great at adopting the language and tone-of-voice that aligns with the values or brand guidelines of a school, and teachers often follow suit by telling stories in their own ways, with an enhanced level of authenticity. However, one group of budding storytellers that are often forgotten are the students themselves, the voice parents want to hear from the most.

As we wave goodbye to 2023, it's time to reflect on the notable shifts that have reshaped the digital landscape. From new emerging platforms such as Threads, to the rebranding of veteran platforms such as Twitter (now known as X), it’s safe to say that 2023 will be remembered as a landmark year in the world of Social Media. So buckle up as we explore the winds of change that have swept across the digital horizon, shaping the way schools communicate and connect as we embrace 2024.

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In this new digital age in which we live, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and apprehensive of new technological advances. Here at Interactive Schools, we firmly believe that instead of shying away from such developments, we should embrace them and learn how to use such advances to best assist with our day to day life.