It’s tempting to follow thousands of social media users in the hope of getting followed back and increasing your social media network, but the repercussions of doing so can severely affect your school marketing. There is a possibility that your social media feed will get oversaturated with posts, usually from fake accounts and follower bots, and you might miss important news, lessons, and announcements from relevant sources in your feed. Worst of all, your indiscriminate following might appear spammy to your prospective parents and students, and this can tarnish your social media image.
Instead of aiming for quantity, it’s better for your school’s social media to follow personalities and brands that can provide you with valuable content, which you can study and apply to your online marketing strategy. As an added incentive, you can even repost their content as part of your content curation strategy, thereby improving your social media credibility.
Here are the specific kinds of users that you should follow on social media:
1. Social media influencers and brand ambassadors
Engagement and reach are two essential components for social media success. Social media influencers and brand ambassadors are definitely no strangers when it comes to engagement and reach, and they can help improve your social media presence as well. It is best for you to find them online and identify the type of content that they share with their audience – you can pick up very important lessons in optimising your own social media engagement and reach from them. Best of all, you have the opportunity to coordinate with them so that you can develop and share content that can amplify your own brand and attract more attention to your own social media accounts.
2. Active followers
Follow back active social media users that regularly post and share valuable, no-nonsense content that relates to you. Following back is essentially acknowledging your relationship with your social media followers.
By connecting with them, you have the opportunity to directly engage them, which brings a lot of benefits. Firstly, you can convert these active followers into brand ambassadors, who can help promote your school through social media. Secondly, as avid yet independent observers, they can help you pinpoint your school’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can get valuable insights from them to improve your marketing. Finally, you can craft and apply your marketing and communication methods on them before working and meeting your prospective parents in person. You can treat them as contacts that can help you develop the perfect persona for your marketing strategies.
3. Think tanks and industry watchdogs
For every industry, there are reliable resources that provide news updates, commentaries, reviews, and more. You must follow them through social media to subscribe to the latest industry news and gain precious insights from other experts, especially those who are present in LinkedIn groups. You can also share and apply their content to your online content curation strategy, particularly for blogs, podcasts and webinars. Moreover, they have an extensive network of contacts that you can connect and communicate with. Use this vast network to your advantage to get your school noticed online.
4. Suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers
Social media networks can also serve as directories for suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers, which you can contact for your marketing projects and activities. These companies also have their own Facebook pages that contain folios of their latest projects, so that you can check which of them will suit your project requirements. These contacts may prove to be invaluable partners later on, especially in instances when you have simultaneous events that might need multiple suppliers.
Always remember that social media marketing success is no longer just based on the quantity of your followers – quality is much more important. The same thing can be said about the people and brands that you follow. Make sure that every follow can improve your school marketing strategy to reduce clutter, and develop more valuable content.
