Today, brands can be built — and destroyed — quicker than at any other time in history. Anyone with a connection to the internet, including your parents, can broadcast the latest ‘news’ about your school. Until now, there has never been such a wide range of media that can be used to communicate about your school.
The days when prospective parents came directly to you as their first source of credible information are long gone. Today they go online. By the time you are aware of a prospective parent, they have already researched and formed their own opinion about your school.
Research indicates that only 10 percent of people trust advertising. This pales in comparison to the 46% trusting consumer reviews and 70% trusting brand recommendations from friends.
Did you know that people spend one out of every six minutes online, on social media? While it has its downfalls, there are several other benefits of communicating through social media. Its ability to create relationships, build communities and personify a brand is unequalled. Social media enables you to create dialog and be part of the conversation.
So how do you ensure the impressions of your school, made through online and social media, are working to benefit your brand? Through a proactive and focused digital communications strategy. Here are 7 school marketing tips on how to get the best social media results
1. Evaluate – identify which social media platforms to incorporate into your communications plan, informed by your parents’ preferences. The current top players are Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn & Twitter. Be deliberate – have a purpose for communicating via social media. Employ the right medium for the right message.
2. Facilitate – actively build an online community by attracting likes and followers with incentives. If you don’t ‘like’ people’s comments they won’t ‘like’ you.
3. Communicate – engage and interact with your audience regularly. Make people want to comment or share posts and, in doing so, advocate for your school’s products and services. Be interesting and alive with fresh content. Social media isn’t the place for self-promotion and sales pitches. Post comments that draw people into a conversation. Images also work well.
4. Mimic – build your brand through consistency of message and brand personality. Everything your school says and does sends a message, so use your social media communications to provide an authentic representation of ‘who’ your school is.
5. Integrate – sync your social media communications with other online communications you produce, such as newsletters, website and blog.
6. Regulate – your social media space must be monitored and administered vigilantly to effectively manage associated risks and protect your brand’s reputation. Being prepared with a social media communication policy and guidelines is also essential.
7. Evaluate – assess on a regular basis, the effectiveness of communicating with social media and the return on your investment. While social media provides largely intangible profiling returns, there are social media metrics and tools available to measure engagement.
Written by Rukevwe Toka @SwoopStudios
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