I read somewhere that 72% of parents are on social media. As an educator, I find that to be an incredible statistic and one that I want to use as I build trust, highlight our staff and students, and reinforce our school values and beliefs.
Social media platforms are a terrific way to tell our schools' stories as we share the wonderful things that are happening in our four walls each day.
I recently updated my downloadable workbook, How to Tell Your School's Story on Twitter, so I wanted to share a few tips in this post and provide a FREE post planner below for you to use as you start or continue your adventure in creating a positive brand for your school.
Where to start?
With so many social media platforms, it can be hard to decide where to start. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter... with so many platforms, it can be tempting to try to tell your school's story across all of them. Choose one and run with it. If you choose twitter, I encourage you to check out my workbook because it has step-by-step plans for how to get started, what and when to tweet, and how to create the necessary school hashtag.
How often should I post?
At our school, I have two students who help me with social media posts. Our weekly goal is at least 7-10 non-athletic posts. (We do share posts about athletics each week, and we re-post the athletic posts from our athletic director each week.)
The FREE Post Planner has two parts. The first page helps you with the "big picture." On it, you can note events, holidays, and other happenings in your school during a specific month. On the second page, you can make a note of the tweet for each school day during the month.
You can share the pages with your administrative team, office staff, social media team, or other staff members and get input on what's happening across the school. If you have a central location for your staff such as a professional learning room, mail room, or teachers' lounge where you could duplicate the pages as whiteboards or bulletin boards, you could ask staff members to post to the boards as something comes up.
A scheduling tool like Tweetdeck can be a huge help in celebrating and highlighting events and people throughout the month.
Video as a storytelling tool
While you're planning your month of social media posts, plan for some of the posts to be videos.
Got a guest speaker coming? How about a behind-the-scenes video as the parent-teacher organization sets up a fall carnival? What about the pep rally against your school's biggest rival?
You can give voice to students and teachers, and showcase innovative practices in your building.
**If you take a few short clips, you can choose which ones to use.
As you share the awesome work of your staff and students in your school, you can find more ideas and tips in my digital workbook. It's an instant download, and it's got reproducible worksheets for you to share with your teams.
I would love for you to tag me in a post about your school so I, too, can celebrate the work that's happening in your school! You can find me on twitter at @Jennifer_Hogan.
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