8 Tips to Boost Your School Social Media Presence

You've heard it before.  "If we don't share our story, someone else will."  Using social media is a powerful and easy way to go to our audience and share our story rather than requiring them to find us.  For social media to be effective though, you need people to follow you to see what you're sharing.

Since most of us running these pages are educators and not PR reps, it takes some experience through trial and error to figure out what works for you.  As a former social media coordinator, I've had the chance at some of that trial and error.  Here are a few tips from my experiences:

1. Engage Your Audience
• Don't just share information and updates. Get the audience involved!  Have a caption contest.  Ask them to share or retweet a post.  We once had a door decorating contest and the winner was partially decided on by the number of retweets or likes their door got.  Traffic and followers on the pages went way up!  Facebook's settings also show followers more content from pages they engage in, so getting them involved will help your traffic.
2. Post Regularly, But Don't Bomb Their Feed
• I tried to post every day at the least.  Very often though, there were days with multiple posts to be shared.  It may be tempting to put everything up all at once, but this means much of your information could be missed, especially on Facebook.  Use a tool like TweetDeck or Facebook's post scheduler to spread out your content over time.  
3. Use Tags in Posts When Possible
• If students go on a field trip, work with a local organization on a project, participate in an event, etc., find their social media info and tag them in your posts! (hint: your Facebook page has to "like" theirs before you can link them in a post)  Many times, the venue or organization will share your post which, once again, will help spread your story to more people.
4. Mix It Up
• Share pictures, video clips, pertinent articles, flyers, and links.  Your audience follows for varying reasons, so content should be varied too.  Also, if you need to share a basic announcement, rather than leaving it just as plain text, use something like Canva or Smore to create more eye catching posts and flyers.
5. Hashtags
• Use them!  Create a school or district hashtag (hint: be sure to search a hashtag and make sure it's not already in use before advertising) and encourage others to use it.  Many teachers and school related organizations have their own social media accounts. Encourage them to use the hashtag to make your content easier to search and view.  
6. Advertise Your Social Media 
• Put reminders about your pages in newsletters.  Link to your pages from the school/district website.  Try putting up QR codes around your schools that link to the pages.  Use your chosen hashtag on school gear.  
7. Change Up Your Graphics
• Adjust your cover photos for things like upcoming events, seasons, congratulations/celebrations.  Canva has a great tool to easily create cover photos for Facebook and Twitter.  A contest could even be held for the best designs to get your audience involved!
8. Sometimes It Pays to Pay
• Organic reach through views and shares should be the goal, especially when we're all trying to save money, but sometimes the payoff for spending money to advertise your page or event is worth it.  A quick Google search will turn up a lot of helpful articles on sponsoring content.

Remember, there are people who take classes and do this as a full time job, so don't worry if you don't figure it out all at once.  The important thing is to reach out and make connections with your families.

This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but I hope it's a helpful one.  Did I miss something?  Have an amazing tip to add?  Please leave it in the comments!