Do you know your retweets from your lists? Your pins from your moments? Make sure you’ve brought your lightsaber because this 5-step guide will take you from a #SocialPadawan to a #DigitalJedi.
Let’s continue your training with stage 4.
You’ve made it this far and are tempted by THE DARK SIDE of Twitter… Put your Twitter in dark mode for Stage 4 of your training, as this is your biggest test yet!
Do you know your retweets from your lists? Your pins from your moments? Make sure you’ve brought your lightsaber because this 5-step guide will take you from a #SocialPadawan to a #DigitalJedi.
Let’s continue your training with stage 3.
At Stage 3, you are at one with the #SchoolStories and the #SchoolStories are at one with you. However, you’re not quite ready yet to take down the Death Star!
As your school's marketer, knowing how to monitor Tweets from other departments is essential. Yes, when it comes to Twitter, you are handing the reins over to your teaching colleagues - but you need to keep them on track, and on brand!
There are plenty of tools to help you with this. Having to watch over 30+ Twitter accounts can understandably be something of a task! This is why you need something to make this as simple as possible.
Enter TweetDeck - our absolute favourite tool for Twitter monitoring. With a small amount of investment and knowledge, you can have TweetDeck set up to monitor and control all of those accounts at your school. It is invaluable!
Create a list on your main Twitter account and add all of your sub accounts to this list.
Open up TweetDeck and add this list as one of your columns.
Tweetdeck also allows you to schedule tweets in for next week so you can get out on time every Friday evening, knowing your #SchoolStories will still flow smoothly across the weekend.
It’s as easy as that! If you’d like to learn more, read our comprehensive guide on managing your Twitter accounts using TweetDeck.
Do you know your retweets from your lists? Your pins from your moments? Make sure you’ve brought your lightsaber because this 5-step guide will take you from a #SocialPadawan to a #DigitalJedi.
Missed stage 1? Catch up here.
Let’s continue your training with stage 2.
So, you’ve completed Stage 1 of your training and you’re getting to grips with the basics of Twitter. Now, let’s step it up a notch as we battle on in the fight against bad #hashtags.
You’ve sent out your first tweet, now let’s drive engagement even further with these tips:
Reply to a thread: Try jumping on a current trend/hashtag and adding your thoughts on the topic. How about adding in your hashtag to the conversation?
Step up your retweets: It’s great to share content from other accounts on your own feed so your followers can see your likes/interests. Now, let’s try adding a retweet with comment. Click the retweet button, and add in your own thoughts and relevant hashtags.
Share a video: We’ve all scrolled through our phones and landed on a video. Although we may be enjoying the video, we have a tendency to move on as soon as we get bored. The average human attention span is around 8 seconds these days so try to share short, engaging videos directly through Twitter. Twitter has the option to share videos of up to 140 seconds. If this isn’t enough for you, the site allows you to share out video links directly from YouTube on your feed. This is great for longer events such as alumni interviews, student achievements, head’s messages, etc.
Share a GIF: First day back at school? Last day before the Christmas holidays? Send out a moving image to make the post a little more exciting. Did you know? Tweets with a GIF get 55% more engagement than those without!
Create a poll: Polls are a great way to drive engagement and see the interests of your followers. For example, we recently shared one on what future topics followers would like to learn about in our future blogs.
Pin a Tweet: Got an open day coming up or a school event? Has the head just shared a new blog, or has there been a great achievement in the school? Use Twitter’s Pin feature to make sure this tweet always appears at the top of your feed.
Having a successful marketing strategy largely starts and ends with content. If your content is good, then you are far more likely to get the engagement and reach you desire. If your content is bad, it will inevitably end up being a waste of time. With good content, the question simply becomes when/where should it be posted.
Of course, “good content” is a relatively vague term:
“Good content” can differ massively from school to school; community to community.
“Good content” can become bad content very quickly, as trends shift.
“Good content” can be on Facebook; or Twitter; or Instagram; or Snapchat; or YouTube; or Pinterest; or any other platform, meaning the medium and type of content is not defined.
“Good content” can be measured in different ways, meaning that knowing what works better is not always so black and white.
With this in mind, it makes sense to be open to as many different forms of content as possible. It does not necessitate using each and every one, that would be close to impossible and almost certainly ineffective, but instead being experimental and ambitious. Trial and error will win out.
So how about this for an exciting and most likely to be engaging endeavour...a radio station for the school?
A school radio station can have lots of useful benefits, especially for pupils:
Inclusion: Radio is a tool for communication. Having a radio run by pupils, for pupils and a wider community, can help build an air of inclusion around the school.
Confidence: Not everyone is great at being in front of the camera. While video content has its place in school marketing (very much so in fact) it is always beneficial to have #SchoolStories involving all types of pupils from across your school. A radio can be far less intimidating, some kids are natural talkers but can feel stifled by the camera. Even if they are not natural talkers many pupils will still have a view they can express on radio, which can help build their confidence speaking in a more public forum.
Speaking & Listening: Radio can be a fantastic tool for developing these skills. Working on a radio does require good speaking and listening skills after all!
Student Voice: The Student Voice is often a very important aspect of a school; having that forum where pupils can have opinions and a say on their education. The school radio can be a perfect place to facilitate this.
Teamwork: Running a school radio will require dedication and teamwork - valuable traits for pupils to learn at school!
It goes without saying that everyone and their aunt has the ability to start taking good quality pictures, thanks to smartphones. The vast majority of recent smartphone models (for example: Apple iPhone Xs; Samsung Galaxy S9; Huawei Mate 20 Pro; Google Pixel 3 and many more) have fantastic, high quality cameras. Older models still have good cameras too!
This makes it very possible to capture great snaps on the go. Anyone can try their luck as an amateur photographer without the need to lug around an expensive digital camera and an array of lenses.
For schools this means great #SchoolStories can be recorded; to be shared with communities on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, or on websites and parent comms.
But it takes a little knowhow and practice to turn the average pic into a great, highly engaging pic. Here are a few tips to take the perfect photo on your smartphone.
We have already spoken about the impact of podcasts and their continual rise in popularity as highly consumable content. In a previous blog we even looked at education podcasts that would be perfect for school staff to begin listening to and the Top 8 education podcasts around.
But what about schools starting their own podcasts? A school podcast:
Is relatively easy to do, requiring minimal equipment and a little editing experience.
Is proven to be a leading form of content, with more people tuning in then ever before.
Can lead to desirable skills being learnt by pupils at the school, such as project management, confidence, working in a team, and media skills.
Can help lead CPD experiences for staff at the school.
Aligns neatly with the fact that more people are tuning into podcasts as a format for learning.
With Instagram’s continual (and considerable) growth, influencer marketing is a current hot topic. In short, influencer marketing is where focus is placed on an influencer or influential people who have an influence over a certain demographic, instead of targeting the demographic itself.
For example, a small fashion chain might look to the likes of Kim Kardashian or Justin Bieber to promote their clothing on Instagram (or other social channels), which will generate incredible traction versus tailored marketing campaigns that simply target a specific demographic. Knowing that a large part of the fashion chain’s core demographic may be fans of Kim or Justin makes this a sensible and effective undertaking.
I’m old enough to remember when hashtags were called pound signs, and we played tic-tac-toe on top of them. ~ Anon
We love #SocialMedia! It is a wonderful representation of the ebbs and flows of the tech-led world in which we live. Right now, it does not feel like there could be any limitations to where it can go and how it can further connect us all.
It has been fascinating to watch how social media has developed in a particularly short period of time, and what trends have stuck since the early days. One such trend that most, if not all, readers here will recognise is the #hashtag.
For years we have witnessed hashtags appearing all across our feeds on our favourite social media platforms, even becoming an accepted part of language today.
With more and more data available to marketers, and the continued refinement of how this data is analysed and sorted (especially with AI), it is becoming easier to understand audiences.
Who they are.
What they like.
Where they live.
What they do.
But what should schools do with this data? It deserves to be used for marketing and admissions, so how best can we achieve this? We found an interesting article around personalised marketing, and identified key takeaways which form an interesting topic for school marketers to explore.
