Great things happen when parents get involved in their child’s education. Not only does the school benefit from the support, but research shows [1] that it even helps academic achievement.
Unfortunately, traditional forms of parental engagement (e.g. Parent-Teacher conferences or sending a note home) don’t make much of an impact these days.
And yes, you can blame the Internet for this disruption.
These traditional methods still add some value. But that number is waning as more of the population becomes dependent on digital communication. Things like Facebook and Twitter aren’t restricted to the younger generation anymore.
Getting active on social media platforms gives your school unparalleled access to parental engagement. It’s time to embrace this powerful technology. Are you ready?
1. Reach Out to Parents
First things first, make sure to let the parents know about your social media plans. Send a letter home or shoot off an email blast with an announcement of this new engagement strategy.
It’s about getting them involved. Your efforts won’t go very far if you don’t let parents know your intentions. Getting them informed from the beginning helps ensure the success of your social media efforts for the school.
How schools are ALREADY doing this:
Haberdashers’ Aske’s School for Girls uses beautifully designed HTML email newsletters to send parents updates with what is happening - their latest news, photos, videos, tweets.
These dynamically pull through from their content/social channels. You mean to say they don’t spend hours putting this all together? That’s right. 10 mins. Max.
Facebook’s call-to-action button helps drive traffic to your school website. But not many people know about it or how it can drive people to contact you, to download your app, to watch your video.
The button sits at the top of your Facebook Page and offers visitors an action to take.
Page admins can select from a group of CTA buttons — like Shop Now or Sign Up — to add to the top of their Page.
The seven calls to action available are:
Book Now
Contact Us
Use App
Play Game
Shop Now
Sign Up
Watch Video
A few are not relevant for schools - Play Game, Shop Now. And the clearest CTA that works for schools is ‘Contact Us’.
Book Now - book an open morning, or visit to the school
Contact Us - contact the school
Use App - download the school app (if there is one!?)
Sign Up - sign up to an open morning, or a newsletter
Watch Video - watch a marketing video
There are many uses for most of the available CTAs. However, with any CTAs, it has to attract the end person.
Book Now, Use App, Sign Up may not be clear to people. They may not understand what will happen if they click on the link. What am I booking? What app will I be using? Signing up for what?
The following examples will use Contact Us as the chosen CTA.
Step 1: When you’ve logged into your Page, as an admin, you will notice the ‘Create Call-to-action’ button. Click this to start.
Short form video has exploded recently. With faster 4G speeds, better cameras, and more storage on smartphones, videos have become popular on social media.
A modern parent expects visual storytelling from their school.
Visuals started to be included in posts to make them stand out. But now, everybody does it. Short video has almost become the new photo. Want to stand out? Try posting short videos.
As you can see, there are a lot of places you can distribute your short video. So look at the benefits of uploading video to each channel and use this mini-guide to help inform your decision.
YouTube
Second largest search engine in the world. Biggest reach when it comes to video. Short-form video is not native to YouTube - it was designed, and is being used, for longer form.
Share to YouTube if your video is over 1 minute.
Vine
Vine is designed for creating 6-second videos on mobile. So it is native for distributing short video.
The restrictive nature of Vine forces you to be creative with your posts. Which has led Vine to be popular with people who want quick entertainment.
Posts can easily be embedded into tweets, and websites to increase your reach.
Instagram
Instagram has a huge audience of over 300 million people. It is a mobile-first platform, meaning it is designed to capture events through your smartphone.
There is a 15 second limit on videos.
Share artsy and indie photos to engage the Instagram crowd. Don’t put adverts, or text based content up.
A video posted by bablakeofficial (@bablakeofficial) on
Facebook
Facebook has the largest audience, second only to YouTube. But, it is not a video specific channel.
Facebook autoplays videos in a person’s feed. Though this is great for grabbing attention, it also inflates the number of views a video has had in Facebook Insights.
Facebook videos are for short-medium form video. No real purpose for Facebook videos - other than to be more of a competitor to YouTube.
Sharing videos on Facebook, from YouTube, creates a link post. This pulls through meta data from YouTube, and isn’t as effective or attention-grabbing as native Facebook video. Also means it requires more clicks to play the video.
Videos can be uploaded once they have already been taken. This allows you to capture moments and share them at the end of the day.
If you have time to upload videos to Facebook, then go for it. If not, share it to YouTube.
Mobile video is native to Snapchat. It allows you to capture a moment, as it is happening, and share it to your ‘story’. Your story is a collection of photos and videos capture with Snapchat in the past 24 hours.
There is a 10 second limit for each video but you can piece them together in your story.
Snapchat is more like the front of a postcard, where Twitter is the back.
Meerkat (NEW)
Meerkat is a live broadcasting platform that allows you to stream video through Twitter. It literally went live 6 days ago (that’s how quickly we react for you guys!).
The platform is all about sharing live stories. How can you get more real-time than that?!
Take a look at it and explore it. What do you think?
There are clear pros and cons for distributing short videos on particular channels. You can repurpose videos to work for each channel - but only if they work with the style of each channel.
QUESTION OF THE DAY: If you could only upload your latest video to ONE channel, which would you choose and why? TWEET US: @intSchools
Social Media Training Day #SMTD15
We’re offering a social media day for school marketers to learn more about social media marketing. Come and join us on 28th April 2015 at Whittlebury Hall, Northamptonshire.
Learn about reach, social influence and the importance of your digital brand.
Twitter and Facebook are often seen as the same type of channel, of which only one is relevant - ‘you should be on either Twitter or Facebook’. This is simply not true. In short, you should be on both.
Appearance-wise, they may look similar. Both have a profile picture, header image, description, links, timeline etc. But they each offer their own set of benefits and type of communication and language.
We’ve split this blog post up into two parts. [Part One] will explore the basics of the channels, and what differentiates them. [Part Two] will be a more advanced look into Twitter and Facebook - types of content, ways to advertise, psychology of users, demographics etc.
Twitter
Twitter is a microblogging service that allows users to share bursts of information, known as tweets, in 140 characters or less. It has developed into a great platform to engage with prospects and current communities. Schools can use the service to show all of things happening at the school, in real-time.
That’s the key here. Twitter is all about real-time communications - what is currently happening at the school.
Twitter has becoming much more visual in its appearance. Photos and videos are being integrated into tweets much more frequently. And we are seeing more engagement with tweets that contain photos. Twitter now allows you to upload up to four photos into a single tweet.
With over 271 million active users, it is still a small but effective community for schools to use.
Facebook
Facebook is the worlds largest social network, with over 1.3 billion users. The ability to develop a community on the platform is incredibly powerful. Schools should be using the platform to enhance brand, voice and community.
Facebook’s Timeline is designed to visual show photos, videos, links and other media.
The purpose of the channel is to develop a community that will advocate your school’s brand to increase awareness and publicity. This can be achieved by sharing content that resonates with the current community.
Your Facebook Page will also offer a place for prospects to discover what life at the school is like, through statuses, photos, videos and comments.
It should be used to showcase all of the great things that happen at the school.
Real-time vs Archive
What’s happening?
Twitter is your what’s happening channel. This is what is currently going on at the school, with posts and activity from the diverse range of interests and activities at the school - sports, drama, music, art, science etc.
People in Twitter mode are fast-paced and what information now.
This is your place to tell every story that is currently developing at the school.
Facebook is your what’s happened channel. This is where you showcase the best things that have happened recently. Not all stories will be told on Facebook, but the most exciting ones will be.
People on Facebook are in down-time and likely to be in consumption mode at the end of the day.
This is your place to tell the best stories that have happened today.
In December, we explored the differences between Twitter and Facebook, and how this affects your school’s marketing. We’re now going to look deeper into who uses them, and how people use these two channels.
Demographics
Facebook
71% of adult internet users // 58% of entire adult population.
Facebook is still, by far, the most popular social network. However, growth has slowed (kinda inevitable when you have so many users already!) over the past year. Other platforms have seen large growth.
The only group to be growing fast on Facebook? The ‘over 65s’.
A list of who people ‘friend’ on Facebook:
93% of Facebook users say they are Facebook friends with family members other than parents or children
91% say they are Facebook friends with current friends
87% say they are connected to friends from the past, such as high school or college classmates
58% say they are connected to work colleagues
45% say they are Facebook friends with their parents
43% say they are friends with their children on Facebook
39% say they are connected to people they have never met in person
36% say they are Facebook friends with their neighbours
Facebook is surprisingly the most popular sharing platform for ‘personally created videos’. These are videos that people have taken on their smartphones, cameras etc.
Facebook has been built to be a timeline of your life. From the moment you are born, they want people to be sharing your story.
It has always been about closed connections, whereby friendship and an acceptance of request is needed. Tagging, liking, commenting, sharing… The life of Facebook is about sharing the lives of you, your friends, and your family.
Who do you connect with on Facebook?
Friends
Family
Can you like brands, companies, organisations? Yes, of course. But would you say it is a connection? Probably not. People only Like brands for the discounts. Am I right?! Well, kinda. Here’s the real deal about why people become a fan of brands on Facebook:
Celebrities and public figures were introduced to Facebook - and yes, people Like or subscribe to them. But do they really ‘connect’? No, not really. It is more one-way communication.
Interactions with other accounts are much more likely on Twitter. Take a look at some of the most popular UK accounts below, and notice how popular accounts are interacting.
Harry Styles
Twitter seems to have much more open-interactions. And this is clearly due to its open nature.
Want to see how schools (or anyone!) are interacting on Twitter? Hit the 'Tweets & replies’ button to see.
A great article about how each social channel was used to cover a breaking local new story in American via Gigaom.
Our #SocialScore has become the go-to metric for schools to understand how well their tweets resonate with people. We want to show how you can use your score to help improve the content that you share.
Here are four ways that you can better your content using #SocialScore:
1. You are communicating to people
It sounds simple, but it is often overlooked. There are people at the end of a screen looking consuming your content. By remembering this, you tailor your content for real people to share.
#SocialScore is designed to show how people share your tweets.
2. Amplify your content
By not limiting yourself to a single social media channel, but also others, will help Increase visibility.
We’re also seeing schools using sub-accounts that are more focussed on specific sides of the school. If your school does have multiple Twitter accounts, then make full use of it.
We find that sub-accounts often have more engagement. This is because the content is tailored, and specific to an interest. If somebody is following the school’s sports account, then they are interested in sports and much more likely to retweet and share the content.
The other school’s accounts should be used to amplify your content and increase the reach. The key is to ensure relevancy - only retweet content that is relevant to the specific account’s audience.
3. Quality over quantity
If you only have time to share good quality content once a week, then tweet once a week. Don’t tweet because you have to; tweet because you have exciting stories to tell.
By tweeting ‘average’ content, you will dilute the experience and lower expectations. Most of the content you share will be hidden behind a link, and so you want your followers to feel confident that the content behind the link will interest them.
4. Tell stories
People relate to stories, and there are so many stories happening at your school. Share these stories because people emotionally connect to stories. And when there is an emotional connection to a piece of content, people are much more likely to share it.
If you want to find out your current #SocialScore, tweet us @intSchools using the hashtag and we will give you your latest score!
WhatsApp is a free (for the first year, $0.99 per year after that) messaging service. It is a mobile only service, that replaces the need for SMS. So really, WhatsApp doesn’t make much money, if any at all. Why then would Facebook pay $19 billion for it? That’s $42 for each of the app’s 450 million users. And the cost of running this service isn’t cheap.
The reason Facebook has bought it is primarily for two reasons:
It has a huge number of young users
It is mobile only
With Facebook’s recent pursue of Snapchat for $3 billion, it is clear that they are trying to own young people’s smartphone usage.
Facebook know that can’t be the number one social utility on people’s smartphones, without the help from other startups. It isn’t like Facebook cannot develop WhatsApp, or Snapchat, or Instagram - they can (and have tried!).
The problem Facebook has is that people, and in particular young people, will always be on the look out for new, cooler ways to socialise with their friends.
Another problem Facebook has is that adults tend to follow young people. Often, teens are often the early adopters, and adults are the late adopters.
This means that there is almost a cycle with social media usage:
Young people adopt
Adults adopt
Young people find something new
Adult usage plateaus
Overall usage declines
What does this all mean for schools and their marketing?
Simply put, schools need to think similar to Facebook when it comes to their marketing. This means being alert to new social channels, and reacting quickly to trends.
It also means to always look to the future. Facebook has a huge number of users - bigger than any other social media platform, by far. But that doesn’t mean it will always be the case.
Kids move rapidly when it comes to social utilities. That will never change. And we also know that adults will often follow teens when it comes to social channels.
What kids use today, adults will use tomorrow.
Are you using it as part of your schools’ communication strategy? Let us know in the comments. Or tweet us @intSchools.
Mark Zuckerburg announced Graph Search at the Facebook HQ earlier this year. It has the potential to revolutionise the industry of search and social discovery.
What is Graph Search?
Graph Search replaces Facebook’s currently limited search feature to allow people to search using rich connections between people, places, photos and interests - all tied to real identities. This will create searches such as “restaurants in London that my friends have been to” and “films that teachers in my city watch”.
Is it available now?
No. Zuckerburg has said that Graph Search is in “very early beta” and will begin to roll out to U.S. users first. Long term, it will be available globally and eventually on mobile. You can join the waiting list to get a chance at using it as soon as possible.
What makes Graph Search so different?
All major search engines currently index the whole internet to enable you to find websites, articles, videos and other types of content that is related to specific keywords.
Graph Search is different in that it indexes over 1 billion people across the world and connects them to places, photos and interests. Facebook is essentially bringing social into search.
Google understand the importance that social will play in search which is why they launched Google+ and Search Plus Your World. Unfortunately for Google, they do not have anywhere near the level of social data that Facebook has.
I want to explore two reasons why Graph Search will disrupt schools marketing:
Discovery
Research
1. Discovery
If your school is not already on Facebook then you need to develop a long-term strategy, and quick. Facebook is investing billions into search and it is likely that it will succeed with their goals. It is already a powerful tool for schools using the network effect and social sharing. However, this relies on advocacy and visibility. What Graph Search will change is the ability to find your school when the user wants to - just like typical search engines.
Facebook will almost certainly take a chunk of Google’s share of search. People will be able to use their social network of friends to make informed decisions about which school to send their child. If your school has a passionate community of pupils, parents and even the general public then you will increase your chances of discovery on Graph Search. The more likes you acquire, the more social votes you gain.
2. Research
It is not just products or services that will benefit from Graph Search, it is also us as marketers. It allows us to search for people like never before. The capabilities that it will enable can potentially reinvent market research.
You can use Graph Search to find correlations of what people like. For example, you could find out that people who like sports generally like BMW - great information for buyer personas. This gives your market research much more power and allows you to target demographics much more effectively.
There are endless possibilities to how your school can use the research capabilities on offer.
Three examples of how you could use Graph Search for your school’s research:
A look into correlations between subjects - “How many people like History and Geography”
Researching next year’s trips to London - “Which museums in London do my friends like”
Who likes girls’ education and certain subjects - “People that like girls education and art”
Fan Research
How often do you send out questionnaires to parents? How successful are they? If you have a strong parent community on Facebook then you can find out a huge amount of information about them - for free. And, they have already provided this information. You do not need to send them any forms to fill out. Segmentation will be huge for marketers and it is something I’m sure Facebook will be further developing.
Competitive Analysis
Not only do you have access to your own fans but also your competitors. Are there similarities? Do their fans have different behaviour? What can you learn? Analysing your competitors is vital to succeed online.
Reconnect with Alumnae
One of the main refining features on Graph Search is the ability to filter people by their school. Most people on Facebook share their previous schools as it helps them reconnect with old friends. This will also now allow you to reconnect with your Alumnae. Not only that but you can actually perform research on them.
It is very early days for Graph Search but the signs are promising. This is the future for Facebook and they will continue to innovate their search capabilities. It will be exciting to see it unfold and witness what Google have up their sleeves (they won’t want to lose anybody to Facebook).
How do you feel about Graph Search? Will you sign up to the waiting list? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Have you thought about running promotions to increase your fanbase on Facebook. Facebook promotions are hugely popular right now and they are a great way to acquire new fans. We outline some of the most popular techniques below.
1. Pull a name out of the hat. (Sweepstakes)
Sweepstakes is a random draw in which anybody can easily sign up and have an equal chance of winning. Typically, a user can enter the contest by providing basic information - often just an email address. The winner will then be chosen at a nearby date.
Many promotional apps are available (the most popular being Wildfire) that require a visitor to Like your Page in order to enter the contest.
To increase familiarity with your Page you can allow for people to re-enter the contest on a daily basis. For the visitor, this would increase their chances. But for your Page, it drives potential interaction because they are regularly coming back to you.
Pros
Requires very little from the visitor
Successful across many industries
People have offline familiarity
Can obtain useful information for marketing purposes
Cons
Unreliable targeting - anybody can enter the contest to win
People can often enter multiple times using different email addresses
Incentivised Likes are often of low value
2. Cutest baby contest. (Contests)
A contest whereby a winner is chosen through a public or private vote. The audience must provide the best content whether that be the funniest caption to an image, a great drawing or the cutest baby. This type of content presents a challenge to your audience and if they believe they can win, they will enter it.
There does not always have to be a prize at the end as often personal gratification and public recognition is a reasonable reward. However, a reward model does encourage people to enter.
To get people to return to your Page you should regularly post entertaining entries and encourage commentary. Ask for people’s opinions and thoughts - this will create conversation and sharing.
Pros
Creates conversation
Very entertaining
Makes your audience feel part of something
Gives personality to your brand
Cons
Requires a minimum number of fans to spark participation
This giveaway approach gives a monetary reason for a person to Like your brand and they will usually continue to watch your feed in order to discover new deals.
However, paying for a potential customer’s attention is not nearly as valuable as obtaining it organically. This is because people just want the deal and have no emotional attachment to your brand.
Pros
Often creates conversation with close friends as they want to share the deal
Can work in virtually any industry
Cons
Low barrier to entry - anybody can enter just for the deal so may not be your target audience
Can enter multiple email addresses
Usually very little engagement once the deal is redeemed
General Tips
Grab attention, quickly
Make sure people can understand exactly what the promotion is and how they can participate almost instantly. People are busy and you usually only have a few seconds to grab attention. Facebook is designed to give people content immediately and in an easy to digest way. This inherently makes Facebook users less attentive to posts.
Ensure that the return is worth the entry
You will inevitably want to gain something more than just a Like out of the promotion - an email address, survey completion, higher engagement. If the return doesn’t reward the effort in participating then people will be less likely to take part. Also, make sure that the return is relevant - if its a giveaway then make sure the prize fits your audience.
At least get an email address
Although you want to gain more more fans, these promotional tactics are a great way to acquire contact information. Of course, you have the ability to market via a persons Facebook feed but an email address allows you market via another powerful medium. Attempt to get more information out of the person so that you can segment them - but ensure the return on promotion is worth the entry (see above). Remember, to comply with Facebook Promotion Guidelines, you cannot use Facebook to notify ‘winners’. This means you cannot announce winners via a message, chat or Timeline post - almost rendering an email address as vital.
If you ask for too much then less people will enter. Try to obtain just simple bits of information - think “do we really need to know this?” Sometimes just an email address and Like is enough.
Build it and they will come
You may have just created the world’s greatest ever promotion but don’t presume that people will just enter. If nobody knows about it then it will not be a success. Use your digital channels (Twitter, Facebook (of course), website, email etc.) to try and gather attention and stimulate sharing. If you can, try and get influential bloggers and tweeters in your sector to help in the promotion. This will require coordination pre-launch of the promotion.
When developed and implemented correctly, promotions on Facebook can be an incredibly powerful tool to not only acquire new Fans but drive awareness and engagement.
We would love to hear about any promotions you have created in that past or will do in the future. Share your experiences in the comments.
Keeping up-to-date with social media trends is difficult enough without worrying about future trends! Fortunately, the guys at TwinEngine have this covered for us all. Twitter is expected to position itself as the global newsroom and we are still waiting for Facebook to enter the world of search.
This infographic explores different social media marketing trends and how they will take flight in 2013.
Do you agree with these predictions? Do you have any of your own? Let us know in the comments below.
Schools are really starting to embrace social media and it is really exciting to watch them expand their networks. It has led to other schools to follow suit and quickly sign up to Facebook but before you do this there are a few things you need to consider.
Plan and Strategise
It is very tempting to just jump into Facebook and start engaging with your audience but unfortunately we all need a plan of action. So before you jump in ask yourself a few important questions:
What are your goals and objectives?
Who are you trying to reach?
Who is your target audience?
Where are they and how do you get them to ‘like’ you?
How much time can realistically be invested?
How will you handle negative comments?
Use these questions to help form a plan and remember that they are not the only ones you should ask. There are many more so sit down and brainstorm.
Be Available
Facebook is a direct channel of communication between you and an individual. You need to be available for communication just like you are available to handle telephone calls.
Be sure to check your wall often and respond to all posts. You want to show how engaged you are with your pupils, parents, alumni, community etc.
Interact
Most of your parents and pupils spend most of their time within Facebook. They consume and share content with their friends within this platform. By interacting with your audience you create an environment of engagement that feels comfortable by both parties. This ultimately creates advocacy because your parent’s friends will see that their friend (the parent) is engaging with your school.
Analyse and Action
Just like planning and strategising, you need to analyse and action on your findings. You need to find out what people are saying about your school – are they positive or negative? If they are positive then how can you utilise this? If they are negative then how can you address the problem?
Treat Facebook as a fantastic free research tool that your school can use. Imagine the cost of hiring a company to find out what the public thinks about your school – pupils, parents, alumni, community etc. The costs would be extortionate. Facebook is free and has those capabilities.
How is your school using Facebook? Let us know in the comments below.
