We are often asked by school principals and executives what the most effective and accountable methods they should seek to employ when attempting to build and engage their communities on social media and other digital platforms.
Here are some strategies and tactics:
- Q & A Sessions.
- These are a great way to strengthen the connection between your school and your community. This opens up a direct line of communication. In an increasing incidence, holding social media sessions with the leadership of your school is seen as a more valuable connection to the community.
- Host Social Media Contests
- Increase engagement by encouraging your followers to participate in a contest that is related to your school. It can also help to increase followers by requiring them to join your community or like your page as a requirement of participation. You can hinge the outcome of your contest to the number of votes of your community.
- You can host are trivia questions, photo and video competitions.
- Have clear objectives on how you want to achieve audience participation.
- Let the community be the judge. By allowing your audience to cast votes, you are encouraging engagement and a broader reach.
- Polls & Surveys
- Use survey creation platforms to create easy polls to post to your social media site.
- Keep your polls short and simple. You’re more likely to gain a response in this way.
- A simple formula for a poll is to ask one question and allow your audience select from a multiple choice of answers
- Offering an incentive is one way to entice your audience to participate.
- Ask your community to engage
- When posting content on your platform, simply asking your community to share, like or give you their opinion will promote community engagement.
- Focus on what you want your audience to do. Focus on a single call to action. Don’t confuse your audience.
- On average, approximately 15 % of your audience will read your article to the end. Don’t waste your chance to ask them to share.
- Coloured visuals significantly increase people's willingness to read a piece of content.
- Content with relevant images dramatically increases engagement. When the images are relevant, audiences spend more time on the page than they do reading text.
- Visual content is more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content.
- Video and images are naturally engaging in an age of information overload, therefore it's paramount to offer content that is easy to digest.
Do you want to find out and learn more about winning strategies and tactics for your particular school? Click here to find out more.
Roberto Omozusi is director of Principal Creative Communications (Principal), a communications and brand consultancy. Principal has extensive experience working with Australian schools, to build their brand and bring their marketing and communications into the digital age.
Omozusi has shared his expertise in four previous articles – A compelling toolkit for the modern principal, How your school should engage 21st century parents, Why your school’s brand is important and Meet the gurus easing the strain for busy principals