Making social media a priority this school year — in five simple tips!

Looking back over the last eight months, a lot has changed.

But do you know what hasn’t changed? The commitment your school has to students. Your community needs to be reminded of that now more than ever, and social media is a free tool to help you reach thousands of people on a daily basis. 

If your schools are not already engaging on social media, here are five simple tips to help them get started. Let’s celebrate the amazing things happening with your students and staff this school year.

1.	Pick your platforms
Some schools try to do all the social platforms, and they end up being overwhelmed. Facebook is the place to be for your school. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, TikTok, LinkedIn — I love them, too. Yet Facebook remains number one.

That one piece of wisdom should help a LOT. Focus on Facebook and then move on to others only when you feel you have mastered it. Many awesome schools are still just using Facebook. And that’s OK.
You should be posting at least twice per day on Facebook when school is in session. Does this seem impossible? Well, keep reading! I have more tips to help. 
2.	Create a process to submit content
You can’t possibly be everywhere at your school to take photos. I recommend asking staff to email photos and school updates to a central, singular email address. 

Creating a general social media email address (like socialmedia@myschool.com) will help clear up any questions such as, “Who do I email this to?” Another option is to ask teachers to tag the school district in their posts if they are using social media for their classrooms already.

Get creative. The easier you make it, the more likely you will get photos. Enlist the help of your administrators to create an expectation of involvement from the staff. If they can help mandate that all staff members submit one to two items per month, you’ll be overflowing with great stories to share. And if they are stumped on what stories to tell, then head to tip number three!

3.	Give your staff ideas
Now that you have a system, make sure that your staff members know what you are looking for. Simple photos or videos of students at work in the classroom make great content. Of course, you’ll share photos from outside the school as well, including field trips, special speakers, community projects, business partnerships, scholarships, and more.

Use this helpful list of 100 ideas to get your staff started: 100 Inspiring Ideas for School Social Media Posts (https://bit.ly/3iynSIv). Feel free to email this link directly to staff. And if you’re still operating in a safer-at-home environment, this list of ideas will help: 50 Social Media Ideas for Temporarily Closed K-12 Schools (https://bit.ly/31Jra5T).

4.	Create a district hashtag
Simply put, a hashtag is an easy way for people to search for tweets or posts that have a common topic. In this case, that topic is your school.

Hashtags allow everyone to become a storyteller for your school. At any given moment, there are hundreds of things happening inside your district. If you want all of those things to shine, you need a hashtag that everyone uses on social media!

It’s fun to find and then share photos and videos that you locate by doing a hashtag search. If you repost photos on your own school page, you should always give a thank you to the originator of the content. Retweeting is another option to simply share the post on your Twitter feed.

Looking for ideas on great school district hashtags? Check out this helpful article: 15 Hip #Hashtags for Schools (https://bit.ly/2BFCJAk).
5.	Report metrics
You must share your social media wins with your staff. If you have a post that reaches 10,000 people, let them know about it! If you receive great comments, make sure to highlight them. Don’t assume your staff reads every post on social media. 

You should put together a report card to share metrics back with them. If they see the impact you are having, they will likely participate more in the future. Here is an example of a report card I send to my partner schools: https://bit.ly/38teFNb. You could easily create one similar to this.

There you go! I hope you enjoyed these five ideas to help make social media much easier this school year. If you have additional questions, don’t hesitate to check out the resources available at www.socialschool4edu.com. 

Contributed by Andrea Gribble. Andrea’s passion is helping schools recognize their daily awesomeness and sharing that story with the world. Visit her website at www.socialschool4edu.com to learn about her services. #SocialSchool4EDU provides full social media management, personally coaches social media teams and individuals, and offers a vibrant online community that provides ongoing professional development..