Education is the key to success and many parents opt for private schools to make sure that their children have the best start in life. From less crowding to modern equipment in the classroom, private schools offer various benefits, as well as a specific community spirit. The secret of success is developing an effective promotional strategy to showcase the advantages of your private school. And it is no secret at all – it is social media marketing.
Education and Social Media Go Hand in Hand
The young generations were practically born with a mobile phone in their hand. While the parents are the ones to foot the tuition fees, it is ultimately the students’ choice. They approve or veto a private school and the parents will generally abide by their choice. Who would send their children to a school they don’t like, right?
Thus, since young people do almost everything on their mobile phones and are very active on the social media, this is where you have the most chances to find them. Social media marketing is the most effective strategy for private schools that want to reach out to the ideal student profile and maintain a good rate of enrolments.
How Can Private Schools Manage Social Media Marketing?
First of all, you must make social media management someone’s job. You need to create and maintain a consistent brand voice across all channels, be quick to respond to messages and engage with followers. Thus, you need someone to be accountable for everything that is posted on the social media accounts of your private school.
With these thoughts in mind, here are a few actionable tips for creating an effective social media marketing strategy for private schools:
1. Develop a Brand Voice and Maintain It in All Communications
Consistency is everything in branding. And branding, as you well know, makes the difference between private schools, attracting the right type of students. The success of social media marketing greatly depends on your ability to use the same brand voice on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram.
First of all, your social media posts influence the way prospects (both students and their parents) perceive your school. Secondly, a uniform brand voice allows your followers to instantly recognise your posts and stop to read them.
2. Create a Social Media Community and Nurture It
Just like you have various talent and interests group in your private school, you should create active social media groups as part of your marketing strategy. For instance, you can have a Facebook group for current students, another for their parents, and yet another for alumni. These groups will help you connect with prospects at a more personal level, understand their needs and demands, as well as monitor their degree of satisfaction with your school.
Social media marketing is not just about selling enrolments, but growing the reputation of your private school. With an active and prompt social media team that answers questions and finds solutions for issues, your students and their parents will be more likely to recommend your school to their peers.
3. Give Your Followers a Tour of Your Campus
Video is king in any social media marketing strategy. And the best way of using this content format is by showing your prospects what it feels like to study at your school. Create videos of your classes, of extra-curricular activities like sports or reading clubs and interview your staff and your students’ parents.
This type of content does more in promoting your school than hundreds of leaflets, brochures and other written presentations.
4. Share Success Stories
Having a Facebook group for your alumni proves very useful for your marketing strategy. Look over their profiles, select the most successful ones (CEOs, owners of their own business, academics, etc.) and contact them to share their story.
Ask them to say how studying at your school helped them prepare for the career they have now and to share a few memories about being students there. In most of the cases, you will get lots of valuable testimonials, the best forms of promotion for any kind of business.
5. Grow Organic Traffic But Invest In Paid Promotions, As Well
An effective social media marketing strategy can no longer rely on organic reach. You have to invest in ads and boosted posts. All across the main social media platforms, paid content has a higher visibility – from Facebook to LinkedIn and to Instagram.
Also, with ads and other forms of paid promotions, you can reach more people – those who are not your followers yet or your followers’ friends. This is the only way of running a steady traffic funnel to your website and your enrolment pages.