What Your School District's Social Media Plan Can Learn From Oreo - Less is More

 

According to the Dallas Morning News, Mondelez International Inc. is launching a new line of Oreo Thins in the U.S. next week. The slimmed down cookie will be 140 calories for a package of four, compared to 160 calories for three cookies. The thinner cookie was created to appeal to adults who want a  “sophisticated cookie,” the company said.

Oreo’s thinner philosophy should be your school’s new social media strategy. Just because social media is all the rage these days, does not mean you have to dive into every platform that is out there. Your school district should be strategic on selecting your social media communication plan.

The best piece of advice I can give your district is to find out what platforms your core audience is using and conquer those before you move into emerging areas. Most school districts have a core audience of parents, students and community members including local business that they are targeting. My recommendation is to choose five platforms to reach those audience members. Those can be different depending on your district and its demographics, but there are some that are better than others when it comes to market saturation.

Here are our big five:

1. Facebook

Facebook is big for us. Even though students claim to hate Facebook, we find that when there is an engaging post they like, they are still there. Facebook has also become a hug communication tool to our parents. More and more of our parents have chosen Facebook as their social media platform of choice.

2. Twitter

We tend to be a little less serious when it comes to Twitter.  We find more of our students and young professionals are on this platform.  We use Twitter to post pictures of our students doing great things, and event follow-up notices after we have posted a more detailed description on Facebook.

3. Instagram

This is where we target our students. This platform is safe compared to Snapchat and Vine for us. Most of our content on this platform are pictures of students and the great things they are doing in our district. Anytime we post a picture of students, our engagement levels are through the roof. We do tend to see parents on Instagram, but our students engage more then our parent browsers.

4. YouTube

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the United States.  Video is a wonderful platform for engagement. The more visual you can get in your social media is for the better.  Not only is Youtube very popular, but also Facebook native video is doing wonderfully in the engagement rankings.

5. LinkedIn

We have started to revamp our LinkedIn strategy in our district.  We know the business community can be a great asset for financially strapped school districts.  LinkedIn is much more than a job search platform.  You can engage professionals with event posts and recycled blog articles that best represent your district and what it has to offer. We have a long way to go with this social media site, but we have a strategic plan to get better.

As of right now, the sites above are what we are focusing on. We do have a Pinterest, but we are not very active. We do dabble with Periscope, but once again it is not our main focus.  We are continuing to monitor the social media offerings and see what we need to do next.  However, there is no need to jump on everything. Find out what you are good at and conquer those worlds before you dominate the entire industry. Take it from Oreo, sometimes more is not better.