Every business is slowly but surely inching their way to social media platforms. In order to capture the booming digital space, Facebook is the one platform that is most widely used. Therefore,, it’s high time that schools and districts should establish their business pages on Facebook. A lot of schools believe that Facebook is dead but, it’s still alive.
Facebook permits schools to reach a certain level of potential. Lately, Facebook has updated algorithms have developed a position where schools can have sensible discussions with the followers.
The school benefits hugely if the school has a social media page of its own. Digital marketing is an ever booming trend and therefore, Social Marketing for an education industry is a must and the best platform to start with it is Facebook.
The top universal Facebook practices that can help online marketing in the education industry are listed below:
- Facebook Business Page:
The most important step when you using Facebook is that you should know the difference between personal profiles and business pages. However, it is mandatory to make first a personal profile before setting up a business page.
Here are the steps to set up your Facebook business page after a personal profile has been made:
- Select business or brand
- Your name of the page should be the school name
- Your category should be ‘Education’ so that your page optimizes automatically
- Upload your school’s profile photo (logo), cover photo or video (campus/campus life), and include extra information. It is really important to make sure your profile picture is your school’s logo so it is recognizable in users’ news feeds.
Pro tip: By including the appropriate images, you can build a suitable ‘Branded Facebook Page’.
- Facebook Groups:
Schools usually conduct a lot of events and notices like PTMs, sports days, annual days, festival celebrations etc. Facebook has the best solution for spreading awareness of such occasions. Facebook offers a Facebook Group feature wherein the school can make groups that includes the parents and students. This platform can be used to make announcements and also used by parents to interact with each other. These sort of groups now come with features that give the people the chance to interconnect with each other. Some of the features include:
- Watch Parties: Members of the group can now have a glimpse of the videos live at the actual time even if they are not in the same room space! They also have the chance to have a look at the video and react to it the video like a live broadcast.
- Polls: The best way to interact with your members is by creating poll. It can be about anything! Like whether or not students should wear a uniform to school or not.
This can be one of the best social media strategy for a school in order to streamline announcement processes as well as gain feedback and opinion.
- Facebook Messenger:
Facebook is now making its interface easier for all. It is said that Facebook has the communication features,the most optimised feature being:
– Facebook messenger: If you’re planning to or want to connect with people through Facebook don’t forget to include Facebook messenger in your plan.
A lot of schools are taking this one step further and including Messenger on their website. In case, an individual wants to chat directly with the school management, Facebook permits the user to message the school, even though it may be via the website.
- Use Finalsite Feeds:
Don’t let your efforts on social media go to waste! By including Finalsite on your school website, you have the power to filter in the information from your Facebook page right onto your website. With feeds you have the ability to track the content being pulled in and permit your website visitors to view engaging, authentic content without having to leave your website.
- Build a Social Content Marketing Strategy:
It is said that every social media strategy should include a content marketing strategy, which involves building out the box kind of content that can be posted in the future. You should always be prepared with your future content marketing strategy so that you don’t face problems on the given day of posting.
- Incorporate Visual Content:
If you think that your engagement is lower than it should be, it might be because the content is not visually appealing. There are two ways to include visual content in a fun way on Facebook. Firstly you can, incorporate the Facebook live feature. This type of video is great for capturing school events. Secondly, Facebook also makes it easy to upload images and albums on the school’s business profile.
- Actively Promote and Share Before, During and After Content of the Event:
Facebook also allows you to post content for before, during and after events.
Facebook has an events feature in business profiles that allow you to add a photo for the event, give it a name, date/time, and description. You can let the world know about what event is going on in the school by uploading the video on Facebook live stories. Through this the people can know what kind of activities you conduct and it also increase your engagement. After the event, you can post images or videos of the happenings and let people know the outcome of the event.
- Facebook stories:
Facebook story is a type of content that is available only for 24 hours. Facebook stories are now found in a section at the top of a user’s news feed. Facebook makes it easier to this by giving users the option to share to their news feed, story, or both.
Facebook is a highly versatile platform, especially for educational institutes. Not only does Facebook also help in interacting with the parents and for building brand awareness, but it also is a medium via which schools can keep an eye out for competition.