71% of online American adults use Facebook and there are over 1.25 billon mobile active users worldwide. 57% of people use their mobile phone to find out information about events and happenings in their community. While 67% of people use their phone to share photos, videos and comments about events and happenings in their community. It’s safe to say that the majority of your school’s parents and key stakeholders are on Facebook and most likely check it on a regular basis, making it a great place to engage with them.
How do you use Facebook to engage with key stakeholders?
Inform: Keep stakeholders up-to-date with school news, events, school closings, meetings and more. Facebook Events allows people to RSVP, but also makes it easy for them to share that they’re attending. This can potentially lead to increased attendance at school functions.
Display School Culture: What is the look, feel and attitude of your school? What is your school’s persona? Most schools take pride in establishing a unique culture that promotes both academics and social development of its students. Facebook provides an opportunity to share this unique culture with those outside of school walls.
Use Photos and Videos
- Celebrate student work and accomplishments
- Field trip experiences
- Assemblies and school-wide celebrations
- Recognition of excellence exhibited by students, teachers, parents and community supporters
- Community Engagement Initiatives- back to school events, parent meetings, PTA nights, outreach activities
- Learning videos- Work with your top teachers to create educational videos that parent and students can use to study with at home. Include a variety of subjects and lessons
- High caliber teaching and student engagement
- Key Stakeholders sharing what makes your school special
- Share songs, chants, or cheers that represent your school’s culture. (Alma Mater, School Rival Song, etc…)
- Sporting events recaps and highlights
- Plays, concerts and other performances
Visuals are sure to capture the attention of your school’s community and draw them in to engage with you and each
Get Feedback: Feedback is the one thing that most educators fear about social media. Don’t fear the increased participation, embrace it as feedback is key to increasing engagement and a positive school culture. Ask questions so you can get real answers!
Here are a few Facebook features to help.
Polls: Solicit feedback directly from your followers with Polls. This will allow you to create a poll and share it with all of your Facebook followers. It’s particularly good for quickly collecting data to help in forming decisions.
Use Facebook Questions: With questions schools have the option to enable followers to write in answer choices. Be sure to note that with questions your school community followers are also allowed to share the questions with their own network. If you are looking to limit the questions only to your school community this may not be the best option.
Facebook Discussions: Create a discussion about a specific topic and allow community members to share their thoughts within the thread. Page admin can moderate the thread and remove any posts that are inappropriate.
Lacking Followers? Drive Traffic to Your Facebook Page
Use other marketing channels to drive people to your Facebook page as well as other social media pages. For example, in your school’s newsletter, you can include a link to a story, video or photo album posted on your Facebook page. This will drive stakeholders that want information about your school to your Facebook page. Therefore increasing your followers and opportunity for engagement.
Use the tagging option. Be sure to tag any business and community partners as well as feeder schools that are involved in any of the Facebook content you post. This way you can leverage their followers as well. If nothing else, you will gain more exposure to the great things happening at your school.
Social media is a great way to engage with your school’s community and Facebook is one of the many tools that presents a great opportunity for your community to connect.
If you have any other ideas that you would like to share with readers, send them our way (email marketing@crescerance.com) and we would be happy to add them to this post!