Have you ever stopped to think about the benefits of using social media to boost parent involvement? Social media for elementary schools is a great way to boost communication, share fun classroom activities, and involve parents!
Our parents are on social media. Our schools need to be there too!
As educators, we know the importance of a strong parent-teacher-school relationship. But, this is not always easy to achieve.
By utilizing facebook, instagram, and other social media platforms, schools can help parents stay in the loop with events happening at school. These sites help parents feel connected to the school. They also help create a school community.
School Marketing Campaigns
Several years ago my elementary school began to market ourselves on social media. We began by sharing the highlights of lesson and activities happening within our building. Then, we shared photos of the many clubs offered to students after school. We also shared photos of the way the community poured their support into our school.
The result that following spring was an explosive Kindergarten registration list. For the first time in ages, we needed to hire a Kindergarten teacher to keep up with the growing list of students.
How did we do this?
By creating elementary school social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook.
School Social Media Sites
Your school social media is the PR account for your school. PR= Public Relations. In this business world this means a method of communication that spreads a positive message about your organization.
Schools can benefit from PR and positive marketing too!
The goal of school social media sites is for parents to see your school page and think “WOW! I am so glad my child goes to school here.” Or, for prospective parents to see your page & think “Wow! I WANT my child to go to school here.”
Unfortunately Facebook has become a place where users come to frequently vent about the problems they encounter in their lives. Many times this involves complaining about problems their child is having a school. A post complaining about homework immediately turns into a field day for other parents to join in and bash public schools.
Homeschool & private school posts tend to be glorified on social media. Parents flock to these posts and often use them as another opportunity to list their complaints about schools.
When your school posts something positive, it spreads a GOOD message about the wonderful things happening there.
You can’t rely on the PTO/PTA to do this for you. If your school does not have active social media pages. Create. Them. NOW!
It’s 2020. Embrace the technology. We live in the age where most parents won’t answer a phone call (or listen to the voicemail you just left carefully explaining the School Book Fair) but they spend 6-8 hours per day scrolling social media.
Your school MUST be on social media.
Key Points for Elementary School Social Media Sites:
- Create a PR team. You should aim to have multiple staff members on this team. Seek people who understand this mission and WANT to join. Don’t just throw this job on the media/tech person. It’s 2020. Social Media gurus are everywhere. You have some in your building. Seek them out!
- Check and re-check your posts. Be sure anything you post contains zero grammatical or spelling errors. Don’t forget your school’s number 1 job is to educate today’s youth. All school posts must look like educated professionals wrote them.
- Pictures are golden. Eye-catching photos make people ‘stop the scroll’ and check out the message. Posts without images get lost and most social media users scroll right past them.
- Get parent permission to post student photos. This is KEY. Your school should have a publication release process anyway. Add language explaining to parents that their child may occasionally be featured on the school social media pages. Be sure you have permission before posting any student photos.
- Post pictures 2-3 times per week. You don’t want to post a picture every hour. Then it will seem that your school is doing little learning and too much social media. You also don’t want to be unfollowed because you are annoying your users (I admit- accounts that show up TOO much in my news feed are unfollowed immediately. I can’t stand clutter. There are many people like me!)
- Tag parents when you post photos of their child. This will ensure that they see the photo & then they’ll probably share it. Sharing = more positive PR and spotlight for your school.
You’ll be amazed with how much positivity is spread by just making an effort to post about the wonderful things happening at your school 2-3 times per week.
Ready to get started?
If you haven’t already, create a Facebook and Instagram account for your school.
Be sure to link the accounts so that posts from Instagram will be directly posted to Facebook. This makes posting on both platforms super easy. You can also set up you social media accounts to show up on your school’s website.
Create images that can be used to share important messages about your school. If you need help getting started with this, check out these School Social Media Resources.
Don’t miss these great classroom ideas!
