Social media is a must for private schools nowadays. Parents, especially if they are located internationally, want to see their children’s accomplishments. Children want to be acknowledged for their academic and extracurricular pursuits and online is now the way to do it. However, there is a fine line when posting photos and information about children online, and private schools have to make sure they adhere to certain guidelines. The first guideline is: Are the parents (and children) in your school comfortable with posting photos or information about them online, on social media? For example, if your school has many children of celebrities, both the parents and children may not feel comfortable with being displayed on social media.
To this regard, one option to give parents and students who are more private is to have a locked or private social media account. For example, the page or blog can only be seen by parents and children of the school, and a staff member oversees who receives access. A tightly controlled social media plan such as this can make everyone involved happy.
If your school is more open and public, you can consider using an open form of social media. For instance, Twitter is a great way to relay information quickly and effectively to parents and students. On Twitter, you can tweet anything from a school closing due to snow to announcing the school’s theater production on Saturday night. Instagram, Flickr, and Pinterest are good options for photo galleries—that is if parents and students are comfortable being shown online. If so, you can post photos of sporting events, theater productions, and daily activities in which the students are engaged. Facebook has a consistent schedule and is popular with adults, especially parents. Therefore, to be successful on Facebook, you must post several times a week or daily.
Tumblr or another form of blogging can be used in a social media way too. Blogging informs the world of what is going on in your school and what your school represents. For example, you can blog about fundraising events for charity and how the school is teaching students to be altruistic and give back to the community.
At QThinker, we are happy to discuss how to incorporate social media into your online marketing strategy for your private school, and the best part is, we will do it for you. We’ve had years of expertise in search engine optimization (SEO), social media, content creation, and management of websites, especially in regard to top search results in Google. If you’d like to make your website mobile friendly, please contact us at 617-816-2969 or use our contact form.