Facebook’s Three-fold Purpose for your School and 10 Ideas to Try

Whether you like it or not, Facebook is a great place to connect your current and prospective parents to your school.

Facebook has a three-fold purpose in your school’s marketing strategy.

First, Facebook can be a great place to tell the story of your school. Marketing and Admissions Directors that only focus on highlighting events and sports or making announcements miss the boat on how Facebook can work. Instead, your page should bring your school to life with photos and corresponding stories. You never know who is looking at your page. Their interest may have peaked in your school because of the stories you tell through your posts.
Second, Facebook should be used to engage your audience in a conversation about your school. This conversation might include a simple “like,” comment or share. And, as your audience engages with your content, your posts will appear in more new’s feeds and will be likely seen by the people you are trying to reach.

Finally, the goal of Facebook, as well as all of your social media channels, is to direct your viewers back to your school’s website. Your goal is to capture the interest of a prospective parent so that they click on a link, go to your website and become a lead for your school. This is the goal of inbound marketing.

As you work on applying this three-fold purpose to your school’s Facebook page, the following are 10 strategies that you can try:

1.  Post a picture every day of a classroom, athletic, artistic or extracurricular activity that occurred at your school. Ask your parents to like the post.

2.  Post a fill in the blank statement: The thing I like best about (name of your school) is _____________________.  A blank can help to generate responses from your parents.

3.  Use your cover photo to engage your audience by communicating a contest or important message to your fans.

4.  Email your parents a post to share on their Facebook page. For example, send an email to your parents about your upcoming open house event with a post that they can copy and paste in their updates to advertise your open house.

5.  Launch a weekly Throwback Thursday or Flashback Friday post of an old yearbook photo featuring your school’s alumni. Ask your fans to identify and tag those who are in the picture.

6.  Post a picture of a teacher or staff member in action and ask parents to share comments of appreciation. You can ask them to like the post or to make comments.

7.  Post a picture and ask your fans to post a caption of what it means to them.

8.  Ask your fans to take pictures of their family wearing school spirit wear at various places in the community or while on vacation.

9.  Post your weekly blog article and ask your fans to comment.

10.  Pay to promote a post that you want to make sure is shared in the news feed of your fans and their friends.

How have you successfully used Facebook in your school’s marketing effort?

Do you have any examples of posts that have worked well on your school’s page?