My 2016 School Marketing Social Media Draft

In the spirit of this year's NFL draft, our district has put together our 2016 - 2017 Social Media Mock Draft.

Does your district have a ranking?  Are you ready for the new future of social media?

1. Facebook

This is our highest engaging social media platform.  Driven by parents (we don’t see students here much anymore), this social media powerhouse just reported record earnings fueled by advertising.  Our strongest demographic on the platform is women aged 35 – 44.

How Your District Can Benefit from Facebook Audience Optimization

You don’t get much bang for your buck with organic posts like you use to, but this veteran can score you some engagement wins with target and retargeted paid ads.  Ads can be very cheap compared to traditional media such as newspapers, radio and television.  Now with Facebook Live, you can broadcast live video straight to your timeline.  Game Changer!

2. Instagram

We get most of our student traction from social media on this Facebook owned platform (we are early into SnapChat with no official launch).  Students in middle school and high school don’t mind mentioning us on their feeds or interacting with our posts.

7 Awesome Ideas to Kick Your District Instagram Account into High Gear

Now that you are not limited to a square pic, and that you can post video, this is an awesome resource to reach your students.

3. Twitter

Unfortunately, this star has fallen quite bit in engagement and reach.  We do get some interaction from the parents and students, but we have noticed less and fewer students want to interact on Twitter.

We do think it still has some potential with the ability to post video and to conduct Twitter chats with parents and the community.  Twitter does work well with community and business partners, as they tend to retweet our content.  I think the company needs to overhaul some things to have a fourth quarter resurgence.

4. LinkedIn

This is on our list to great things for our district in the 2016 – 2017 season.  LinkedIn is not just a tool for HR.  It has become a content hub for professionals.

We feel this platform will be a superstar when it comes to engaging our community and business partners.  Now with “showcase pages”, we can provide strategic content to our different audiences.  We are looking to take our content marketing to the next level with this professional player.

5. YouTube

I do not really consider YouTube social media (it is more like a search engine for video content), but it still has some social aspects that allowed us to have it ranked number five in our mock draft.

Video is power in marketing.  With broadband internet pretty much the norm, you do not have to worry about the dreaded buffering pop-up like the past.  More and more marketing departments are investing in video.  It is time your district invests in the “number two” search engine in the world.

6. SnapChat

This will be a game changer in video marketing.  I am sure in next year’s draft; this young platform could reach number two. 

Millennials are now the largest demographic surpassing baby boomers… and they are all on SnapChat. Now with the Story Tool, this has become a powerful way to publicly communicate.

If you are scared to tip your toe into the SnapChat waters, there is still a way to be noticed on the platform.  I suggest Geo-Filters.  It is a great way to target SnapChatters in certain zip codes to interact with your brand or district.  Geo-Filters alone would make SnapChat a safe bet to draft this rookie at number five.

7. Periscope

This platform had a quick rise, but has lost much of its luster with Facebook introducing Facebook Live.

10 Periscope Ideas for Your School PR Department 

Periscope is still a great way to interact with your Twitter followers in a live setting.  I don’t mind picking it up in the third or fourth round.  Here are some suggestions on great ways to use the platform from an earlier post on my blog.

8. Pinterest

To be honest, our district needs more of a Pinterest presence.  It is still a powerful tool to interact with parents, especially moms.

The key is to be strategic with your posts and not go pin crazy.  We need a clean-up on aisle Pinterest in our district.  We do get some nice engagement using the Pin-It button on our blog visuals.  Try to find this WordPress plugin for your blog.

9. Vimeo

Not as widely accepted as YouTube, but it is a great for embedding clean video on your website and blog.  The best part is there are no ads or pre-roll to get in the way of your content.

10. “Mr. Irrelevant”

Google Plus

You would think Google would be able to get at least one hit in the social media landscape, however, this is not really a game-changer for our district.  We do use it to drive small traffic to our blogs, but other than that we rarely use this dying platform.

Students Hate Your Marketing… Here are 4 Ideas to Gain Their Trust

More than likely, your students don’t trust you.  Do you blame them?  Half of you have not been in the classroom in past 15 years.  But don’t worry; it’s probably not your fault.  It’s those crazy Millennials.

 

According to AdWeek’s article entitled “Marketing toMillennials and the Necessity of Social Brand Advocacy” Millenials don’t trust advertising.  In fact, the only people they do trust are the people they know.

Here are two statements from the article that really stand out:

…Millennials don’t trust anything except the people they know.

…if you aren’t getting Millennials past the ‘Moment of Trust’ using social brand advocacy and word-of-mouth, your marketing efforts are screwed.

So what do we do?  Is school public relations and marketing really screwed?

Here are four ideas that might gain the trust of your millennial students:

1. Create a Student Ambassador Program

This program has been a huge success in our district.  We currently have students from our five high schools helping us spread the good news about our district to the community.

This year they focused on the over 65 population by holding senior citizen proms at nursing homes and senior community centers inside the district boundaries.  It is a great way to interact with the demographic that is most likely to vote in local elections.

We could use this same group of student leaders to hold events for our other students in the district.  They could be mentors to our elementary school students, or they could hold dances or events with our middle and high school students. 

By taking adults out of the equation, you build trust and a comfort level with our content and our messages.  Students are more likely to trust their peers than some old guy in a suit.

2. Student Social Media Takeover

If students don’t trust us, why are we the ones sending out the messages?  This might be fine on Facebook, or maybe Twitter, but if we are trying to reach students on Instagram or SnapChat, are we really the best to do that? There’s gotta be a better way.

Why not hand over the keys to your social media to the experts… 15 year old kids?  I’m not saying let your students have full control over you content, but for special events like a big football game or a pep rally or a graduation, why not invite student guests to post content including pictures and video?  Of course you will need to train them a bit over the legalities of using social media in a school district, but I am sure they are going to train you on what works best on social media.

3. A Student Blog that Looks Like 17 Magazine

It’s no secret; I am a fan of Content Marketing.  I love our parent blog called School-A-Hoop, and I am also a big fan of our other useful content such as e-books and how to videos.   However, our students might not be all that into it because their adult teachers write most of our content.

Just like the above social media takeover, why not have a blog that is written for students by students with articles they want to read. For example, why not have a high school student write an article called, “How I Survived my Break-Up with my Boyfriend of Two Years” or maybe “How I Scored $1.3 Million in Scholarships my Senior Year”.

Students are more likely to read a post from a kid their age than a thirty something PR guy who is still way into Eighties Movies.  Goonies Never Say Die!

4. Testimonials from Students

This is probably the easiest idea to get started.  Take the time to find the students that are passionate about what they do and have them tell you their story.  You are going to find some awesome nuggets to share with other students trying to find their passion.  And since it’s coming from their peers, they are more likely to give you five seconds and listen to your content.

Hopefully some of these ideas will help you gain the trust of your students and help your content spread amongst your student population.

In conclusion, I give you a paragraph from the Adweek article that drives home my point:

Only 3 percent of Millennials look to traditional media – television, magazines, and newspapers. They look to blogs, what their friends say on social media about a brand, and other sources where they find an authentic look at a product or a brand. What others are saying about your brand defines it and is 8 to 10 times more powerful than your ads or content.

The four ideas above are only a handful of things you can do to more successfully reach your students.  What is your district doing to engage with your Millennials? Leave your ideas in the comment section below.

6 Things You're Scared to Do with Your School Marketing and Communications

I consider myself an outsider.  My career path is probably not the same as yours.   I spent my first 12 years in the classroom teaching history, and then film and television in high school.  I am a self-taught film director and have written screenplays that have had major actors attached to them.   I am also an avid reader… especially about marketing and business trends. I am not your typical school public relations guy.

What I have noticed in my first two years in School PR, is that many districts take the safe approach when it comes to marketing.  They might publish a newsletter or maybe occasionally post on social media, but they are not really making an impact.

Don't get me wrong, there are some districts that are doing some really great things.  There are some really creative people in our industry.  They are the ones taking risks and seeing high reward. They are not cookie cutter.  However, they are rare.

Here are six things that deep down most districts are terrified of doing.  And being scared means they will never see the high rewards some districts are seeing. 

1. Blowing-Up Your Cookie-Cutter Website

Remember when having a district website was considered to be ahead of the game?  Now you have to have one, and it better be good.  A recent article in Texas Lone Star, a publication of the Texas Association of School Boards, states that the top two activities involved in choosing a school for their child parents will drive by the school and visit the district and school website.  That is why your website needs to be visually appealing and easy to navigate, which is not always the case when it comes to the product pushed by big corporate educational communication companies.

I know cost is a major factor, but why would any school district want their website look like a thousand other district sites?  Companies outside education do not settle for that, why should School PR and marketing have to settle?  

That is why in CFBISD, we are currently going through the process of analyzing web trends to determine the best course of action to build a website that will differentiate ourselves from the competition.  We want to make it our own and give our community the website they have always wanted.  We are doing this first by looking at the analytics, and then focusing on design.

**And remember, make it mobile friendly!!!

6 Web Design Trends You Must Know for 2015 & 2016

11 Web Design Trends for 2016

  

2. Creating a District Snapchat

Once upon a time you swore on your first child that your district would never be on Facebook.   Look at you now, your district is probably seeing higher engagement on your Facebook page then your website.  However, now you have to deal with that crazy algorithm, and the fact that none of your students like your posts on Facebook.

The reason they’re not sharing your posts is that they are all on Instagram and Snapchat.  And that’s exactly where you should be.  Don’t be scared of Snapchat.  There are thousands of tutorials online to be successful on the platform.  You can also borrow from companies like ESPN and BuzzFeed who are both successful at snapchatting.

The Snap Generation: A Guide to Snapchat’s History

3. Utilizing Landing Pages to Build Your Email List

I am a huge fan of landing pages to boost my email database.  It is an easy way to create a microsite fast and collect community and parent information as well as email addresses to send niche newsletters and event invites to narrow target audiences.   

We use LeadPages, which we have found to be an excellent product.  We have created over 10 databases of niche audiences and send useful material to them each week.

4. Facebook Ads

This might sound like a Suzanne Somers infomercial, but did you know for as little as five dollars you could create Facebook ads reaching thousands of people on Facebook?  With those five dollars you can target zip codes, demographics, interests, and much, much more.

Facebook is a business, it wants you to buy these ads, which means they are giving high priority and more reach to their paying customers.  This is not to say you can’t strike lightening in a bottle and have a high performing post, but paying allows you to really define your target audience and guarantees you some success.

5. Using Content Marketing to Help Your Parents

If you have read my blog, you know I am really a big fan of Content Marketing.  I won’t go into much detail since I have several posts on the subject, but this is a great way to help your community and at the same time drive traffic to your website.  Don’t be scared.  Google Content Marketing and get started.

Tis the Season of Giving: Bring the Joy of Content Marketing to Your District

The Year of Useful Content: 3 Ideas to Spark a Content Marketing Revolution in Your District

4 Quick Examples of Content Marketing Ideas for School Districts

6. Embracing Video as the Next Big Thing

You must be doing video.  Buy a cheap HD camcorder and get started.  Not only do videos crush it on social media, they are highly engaging.  Stop making excuses… you must be on video.  Setup a YouTube account, get on Periscope, and always post your videos straight to Facebook.

Have a Plan Before You Go Viral

10 Periscope Ideas for Your School PR Department

 I will end this article with saying this... Stop Being Scared! Just because we work in education does not mean we can't be creative and different.  Embrace the current marketing culture.  Analyze the trends... and keep reading my blog.