You, Your School and Facebook

Facebook has changed the landscape of the Web. With over 600 million users, Facebook is the leading social media site for personal and professional connections.

School leaders have a great opportunity to use this tool to reach their target audience and to effectively tell their story online.

Facebook must be a strategy that is part of your overall marketing effort. The following are several steps that you must take:

  • School Page – The starting point for your Facebook strategy is to establish a page for your school (sounds basic, but I had to begin here). You should upload your school’s logo and contact information to your page. In addition, you should consider having an alumni page to reach out to this group and keep them connected to your school.
  • Status Updates to Tell Your Story – Most schools make the mistake of using their status update to only advertise upcoming events and athletic results rather than telling stories of people whose lives have been positively changed or influenced because of their experience at the school. These stories should be linked back to your school’s unique selling propositions (USPs) to reinforce your key brand messages. Every time you give a status update you should consider it as an opportunity to tell your school’s story.
  • Daily Status Updates – Ideally, it should be your goal to provide a status update daily on your Facebook page (that’s right, I said “daily”). The main mistake that school leaders make is that their school’s status updates are infrequent and inconsistent.
  • Encourage Your Parents to “Like” your Page – It is important to build your fan base by reaching out to your current parents. You should encourage your parents to “like” your page. When this occurs, they will begin to see your status updates and it can be seen by their friends online (as well as anyone else looking at your school’s page). This is how you get your message out to your target audience!
  • Get Involved in the Conversation – It is important for your school’s leadership team to be involved in the conversation and to be active on Facebook. This involvement can be compared to a Head of School walking to the parking lot to talk to a group of parents; getting involved in Facebook is taking this same step to the “online parking lot” where  your current and prospective parents are talking today.

Your parents are on Facebook. Your prospective parents are on Facebook. Your Alumni are on Facebook.

You must be on Facebook too to be part of the conversation.

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