5 Steps to Create your School Instagram Strategy

With more than 1 billion active monthly users, Instagram is definitely not a platform for you to be ignoring.

More and more people are turning to Instagram instead of Google to search for brands and 83% of Instagram users are said to have discovered a new product or service on this platform. Considering all of the above, Instagram is the perfect place for you to generate valuable leads and connections with both current and potential interests around your school.

At first glance, it can get a little overwhelming when trying to navigate an effective strategy across multiple social media channels, as no channel or its audiences are the same. As a starting point for Instagram, we would recommend drawing from your current overall marketing strategy to keep your efforts consistent.

We have narrowed it down to 5 simple steps for you to really get your teeth into, all focused around the essential tools of inbound marketing. We will touch on using external tools like HubSpot, side by side with social media, to get even more from your analytics data and improve your relationships with your audience.

Goal setting

This one may seem a little obvious, but it is the most crucial starting point to ensure that your strategy is always supporting this overall vision. Feeling a little overwhelmed on where to begin narrowing down your business goals? We would recommend beginning by asking yourself the following questions:

Why are you on Instagram? - Try and be specific about your answer. E.g. 'to find new families to join the school', or 'to engage with current families'. This could also be a specific goal such as, 'to provide an insight into everyday school life' or, 'build brand awareness' etc. (There can be more than one answer here!)
How is Instagram supporting your overall goals as a school? - Align your Instagram strategy and goals with your overall marketing strategy.
What are your SMART metrics? - Use SMART metrics (Specific measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) to help you whilst you are reviewing your growth. Give yourself clear specific goals, such as, '... to grow your audience by xxx amount by xxx date'.

When it comes reviewing your growth, HubSpot is a great way to get a clear overview on specific data.. But more on this later...

Identify your Audience

This is something you should be clear of before you begin your marketing strategy. A good place to start would be to take a little look at your competitor's followers. This will help you get an idea of the kinds of people you are looking to reach with your content. Researching relevant hashtags to follow and looking into the audience engagement with this content is also a good indicator.

In addition to the above, have a think about the demographics of your audience, such as age, location and income. Looking at your school's current parents and families and identifying any common patterns in their details may also help. If you are a HubSpot user, this could be done by filtering your contact lists with any specific properties. You can then save this list and use it again for future analysis!

Personalisation & Optimisation

The value of humanising your school profile is huge! People want to interact with people, as oppose to automated robotic messages. So with this in mind, it is important for you to consider...

Your brand values
How your customers would describe your brand
Your school's USPs/niche selling points

A good place to begin with these questions could be to identify and connect with the current customers at your school and ask them for feedback. A short, quick form can easily be created on HubSpot and sent to the contacts who regularly interact with your website and content. These contacts can all be identified using the CRM's active list function, helping you to identify and collate a list of the parents most engaged in your school content and real-time interactions.

Your Instagram stories are also a great place to inject your school personality into your profile by showing the people behind your business. For a more relatable approach, you could have staff or department story takeovers, or perhaps have live Q&A's with senior leadership team members and even current parents.

Optimise your profile and posts by:

A Public profile
Searchable username .
Useful links within your bio
Hashtags
High quality imagery
Posting schedule
Key words

Analyse, Review & Repeat

Creating an effective Instagram strategy is easy when you have data to back your decisions. We would always recommend using a business profile for your school Instagram page. This type of account automatically gathers analytics for you to help you gain a general insight into what pieces of your content worked best.

As a first step towards analysing your audience in further detail, we would suggest to begin with a competitor analysis. From this, you will start to create a clear picture of what content in your field performs best, giving you a benchmark to begin. This can also be a great opportunity to identify any gaps in your marketing – increasing your chances of producing original content.

HubSpot recommends a variety of free, external analytics platforms for if you would like to gather more in depth information on the activity on your followers. Please see the full article here.

Including a CTA (call to action) link in your bio can allow HubSpot to track if any of your Instagram followers have visited your website, what pages they have visited and how long they have spent browsing your content as a direct result of seeing your posts.

The final key in this step? You guessed it...repeat the steps above on a regular basis!

Convert followers into customers

As your following begins to grow, you can begin to focus on converting them into customers using fun and creative methods such as:

Exclusives: For schools, this could include something as simple as early access tickets to a musical or drama performance or sneak peak/teaser images of new school facilities to build excitement and a sense of community.
Competitions: Encouraging followers to participate in competitions that require providing information to enter. This could be an offer such as submitting a picture of your best art work using a hashtag or a competition that requires people to follow and share content from your account or hosting a charitable virtual raffle.
Early admission promotion - Adding a CTA (call to action) to your profile such as a 'Registered interest' form in your bio.
Posting relevant content- promote new blog posts and video content from the school that makes followers want to click through and subscribe to your website and school blog. A good way of doing this could be to post a sneak peak of your blog that leaves followers wanting to read more. This is a great way to encourage customers to potentially subscribe to your blog and submit their details onto your system, giving you the opportunity to personalise and tailor your marketing effectively to them.

And there you have it! Implementing these 5 main steps is a great place to start with your strategy and you will begin to see the direct effects towards your overall goals, whilst gaining valuable insights for your school's profile!