Having a disjointed strategy often leads to miscommunication and loss of potential admissions. By creating a content calendar you can plan your content months or weeks ahead and this will save you time in the long run.
Looking to have a cohesive content calendar for the upcoming school year? Look no further. We’ve rounded up our top tips on how you can build a winning social media calendar for schools that will nurture your prospects and increase your admissions so you won’t face further losses in the future.
Step 1: Decide the channels that you are going to use for your social media strategy
One common mistake is thinking that you should be active on all the channels. It’s better to be consistent on specific channels than stretching yourself too thin across many. Our key takeaway is to start simple. Start using channels like Facebook and Instagram instead of X or TikTok. These channels are ideal for targeting both prospective parents and students. You can post updates on school events or classroom activities.
Step 2: Choose a social media rule and stick to it
Once you have decided which channels you want to post on, it’s now time to decide the type of content/message you want to promote. To create a balanced social media presence, it’s important to follow a content rule. These rules will help you create a healthy mix of different types of content so you can keep your audience engaged.
The 4-1-1 Rule
The rule is simple. For every six social media posts, four should be fun and educational, one should be shared content and only one can be promotional. Here’s an example:
4 Educational/Fun Social Media Posts: Share photos from a school trip, a fun fact about your school’s history, a teacher Q&A video, a photo from students’ activity in the classroom.
1 Shared Post: You can repost an educational article about study tips from a trusted source or share a post about a local event that you think your students will benefit from like a museum exhibit.
1 Promotional Post: Announce an upcoming open day event or encourage parents to sign up to the school newsletter.
The 70-20-10 Rule
This rule focuses on the type of content you should share. 70% should be original, relevant and engaging. 20% should be shared content and only 10% should be promotional. If you’re adhering to the 70% rule, you should post weekly your school community’s highlights.
The Rule of Thirds
This rule suggests that you should divide your content into three equal parts: one-third of your posts should be promoting your school, one-third should be engaging with your audience with interactive content, and the other one-third should be sharing content from other sources.
By following these rules, you ensure that your promotional content doesn’t overwhelm your audience and it comes across as authentic and relatable to the needs of prospective parents and students.
And here comes the question, how many posts should I share per week?
Let’s say that you’re posting two social media on Facebook each day and on Instagram you post one post each day. That makes a total of 7 posts on Instagram and 14 posts on Facebook. If you follow the 4-1-1 or 70-20-10 rules, it means that 15 posts should be educational, 4 posts should be shared from other sources and only 2 posts should be promotional. Whilst, if you’re following the rule of thirds, 11 posts should be engaging and 10 posts should be promotional.
Step 3: Create your own social media rules
Sometimes sticking to the rules won’t help your strategy in the long run. You have to think flexibly. Aside from having a consistent content schedule, you need to think about increasing your school’s revenue by increasing your admissions.
Start planning how you can promote your open days. Key questions to think about when promoting an open day is how many weeks ahead of the event you should start promoting it on social media. Is it going to be three weeks, a week, or a few days ahead? Which are the channels that you have the most engagement on? It makes sense to use those.
Step 4: Think about using social media ads
As it takes time to build organic engagement, you should start thinking about using social media ads to promote your open days. It’s time to think about how you are going to allocate your budget and which content and open days you would like to promote. If you’re unsure where to start, we’ve put together a blog with our top tips for a good social media ad. It’s worth having a look at it!
After having determined all those steps, it’s time to start planning your strategy. You can use different free social media calendar templates and start filling in key information.
By planning your content calendar in advance you can ensure that your content is timely, relevant, and engaging. Remember to balance your posts with a mix of promotional, educational, and interactive content tailored to each platform and audience. As you implement these strategies, you’ll find that planning becomes smoother and will watch your social media impact grow.
If you need help with developing a social media strategy, our team can help. Digithrive For Schools has helped many schools increase their enrolments and open day sign-ups. Contact us here