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Social Media Accounts, Applications and Marketing Budgets--Less Can Be More!

By Brendan Schneider posted 11-06-2015 06:44 PM

  

 

The beginning of the school year is my favorite time of the year. The energy of the students is almost palpable – they are excited, anxious, nervous, and ambitious. The longer I’ve been at schools I realize that the adults at school are feeling many of the same emotions.

School marketers especially fall into the category of being ambitious. The start of the school year is an opportunity to launch new campaigns, iterate past initiatives to make them better, and simply try new marketing “things.” Unfortunately, some school marketers use the beginning of the school year to launch new social media accounts without having a plan, defining goals, or thinking about the long-term ramifications of their work. I’d like to share three things that school marketers should think about before opening a new social media account for school because with social media – less can me more.

1. Inbound Marketing vs. Social Media Marketing

When you launch a new social media account for your school you should have a clear purpose of what you hope to accomplish with that channel and I would start at the basics and choose an inbound marketing focus or a social media marketing focus. I define an inbound marketing focus as one which is trying to maximize inquiries because you are trying to “drive” prospective families back to your website, or blog, where they can be converted into an inquiry. On the other hand, I would describe a social media marketing focus as one which tries to keep the prospective, or current family, in the social media channel itself. The focus is to increase retention and not necessarily recruitment.

The results of social media activity aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive between inbound marketing and social media marketing but I believe that each channel should be focused one way over the other.

2. Limited Resources

There is nothing worse in my opinion, then to have a prospective or current family find one of your school social media accounts and have the last post be from 3 months ago.

It might be free to sign-up for a social media account but maintaining social media is not free. (Tweet this!)

So before you create another social media account for your school please, please, please come up with a plan for who is going to publish to that channel and are they going to be able to maintain the channel over the long-term.

3. Content

As I mentioned previously, maintaining social media is not free, so after you’ve determined who is going to maintain your new social media account make sure that you have some sort of plan for who is going to create content for that channel and how they are going to do it. Inbound marketing and social media marketing are both engines that need fuel and in this case fuel is content.

While I believe in both types of marketing I can tell you from experience that creating content takes time, a lot of time, and you better have a plan for how someone at your school is going to be able to create that content BEFORE launching your social media channel.
Here’s to a great year

Even though the initial excitement and energy of the new school year has subsided a bit and we begin to settle into our school routines, I hope you’ll take a few minutes and pause. During your pause decide whether you are truly prepared and ready to launch that new social media account and/or reevaluate a current social media account that might not be meeting the goals you have created for it.

I hope you have a great school year and hope that all of your social media goals come true!

To comment on Brendan's original post, please click here: "With Social Media Accounts - Less May Be More"


 About Brendan Schneider

Brendan J. Schneider is the Director of Admission and Financial Aid at Sewickley Academy. He is one of the leaders in the field for teaching on and knowledge about inbound marketing for schools. He presents and consults on inbound marketing, branding, marketing technology, and social media at the regional and national levels. With his workshops, the SchneiderB.com blog, and over 40,000 tweets of insight over the last four years, he continues to advance the abilities of the independent school admission, communication and marketing professional.   Brendan is also a Board of Director for the Association of Independent School Admission Professionals.

Find him on Google+. Subscribe to his blog and receive his Social Media System for Schools ebook for FREE. Download the eBook now!

 


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