How to use Instagram stories to benefit your school social engagement

When it comes to growing your social engagement on your school’s Instagram, an aesthetically pleasing feed and consistent posts are all great, but the icing on top of the cake that drives engagement is in fact, your Instagram stories. 

How many people on your personal Instagram accounts do you follow purely for the entertainment value of their daily stories? Get yours right, and you will see your engagement go through the roof!  

In a world where parents' school search starts with scanning through endless, seemingly duplicate school websites in search of the perfect school for their child, Instagram is the perfect way to set you apart from the rest.

Here are a few of our top tips on the best ways to leverage your Instagram stories to benefit your school’s social media engagement.  

Show your reality 

Your stories can be seen as a portal to the inside scoop of your school and by providing your followers with this exclusive insight into everyday school life, you begin to gain authenticity around your school brand. We all know, when attending a school for an event, that what you are seeing is a well-polished, staged and pristine version of the school. Which is all lovely for an event, but showing what goes on throughout the school, day to day is where you really get the attention of parents and prospective pupils, who want a realistic view of the school and all it has to offer. 

Ask questions 

One of the best ways to increase social engagement is Instagram's very own questions and polls feature - the Instagram story ice breaker if you will.

While Instagram polls are genuinely fun for you to create and for your followers to enjoy, they can really provide a useful insight into your audience. This could be done in many ways and can maybe start off with something as simple as asking questions such as, ‘We are serving a special Christmas dinner this Friday at HubGem school, but the big question is, do we go traditional turkey or Christmas chicken?'. Or something else along the lines of, ‘We’re thinking of beginning an annual parent brunch for all new and current parents, would you be interested in this event?’ 

You could even add extra slides going into more details such as, ‘ Would you prefer a coffee morning or brunch?’ 

This last poll can provide your marketing team with a great insight into what parents would prefer for an event, which could also be used for future content (Such as some fun posts on stories of the cafeteria’s lovely breakfast options etc.) 

Polls like these may seem small, but if done regularly, you really start to gain a better engagement with your audience whilst finding out valuable information. You could even start a competition series between the teaching staff asking questions such as, ‘Who did it better?’ along with an image of two teachers’ artwork pieces or Halloween costumes side by side for voting! 

Link your stories to your feed 

Your stories should be an extension of your feed, offering more context and BTS views from the most recent posts on your feed. If your Instagram page and overall school branding tend to be filled with professional looking photography, posting the BTS outtakes of the pupils or staff or adding a story linked to your last post, is a great way to really boost the value and context of your overall content. 

Utilise original content  

Your school blogs are a great way to increase engagement. Posting a new blog on your stories along with a little quote to entice your followers to want to read more is a great way to encourage engagement. Or, to mix it up, you could perhaps repurpose a text-heavy piece of content from your website into a number of bold, fun graphic slides to post onto your story. Apps such as Canva are great for creating these visuals (and free)!

Story Takeovers 

At a school, you are completely spoilt for choice when it comes to story takeovers, there are so many angles you can include with this! So let’s explore a few for a little inspiration... 

> Teacher Takeovers – Teacher takeovers are the perfect way to inject personality and fun into your school’s online persona. ‘Teacher Takeover Tuesdays’, for example, could be a great way for you to show a different department group of teachers every week or head of the year showing their day in the life stories. They could include their classes, school trips and speak directly to followers. 

With teacher and alumni takeovers, these are also great opportunities to ask your followers to reach out with any questions they may have throughout the day that can be answered on stories -  especially around key recruitment times or upcoming events!

> Student takeovers -This is another good one to promote the school through the eyes of a pupil and provided real valuable content for both prospective and current pupils and parents! Head boy and girl are good takeover angles or perhaps GCSE/A Level pupils showcasing what each of their GCSE courses consists of or in a day in the life of a pupil in work experience.  

Both pupil and student takeovers are great for any school events such as sports day!  

> Alumni takeover – For any school alumni, a story takeover of them in their current roles is a great way to show parents an aspirational viewpoint, showcasing where education at your school can lead to.   

Utilise Instagram highlights 

You should think of your highlights like pages on your website. There is so much going on within a school at any one time a highlight reel on your feed is a great way to pinpoint some of your highest engaged and best stories for anyone to see! You should also always add on-brand graphics as thumbnails to further add to your overall page brand aesthetic! 

You can break these down into themed highlights such as Nursery/Prep/Senior schools and separate ones for Open Days, or even subject-specific. A highlight reel dedicated to your takeovers could also be another great category. This also means that each story highlight is an opportunity for parents to share, direct message with any questions triggered from the content. 

Share your recent posts on stories 

Linking a screenshot on Instagram stories of your most recent posts to your feed is great for engagement. Share the first few lines of a lengthy caption on a new post, or use enticing phrases such as, ‘We can’t believe our head girl has just won this award!’, directing your followers to the post where they are more likely to read the caption and like, comment and share.  

Be relatable 

Most schools fall into the trap of being too heavily focused on their academic achievements. Whilst this is important to parents, we believe this is one of the aspects your website is for. When a follower visits your school Instagram page, they want to see the people behind the school! So keep things relatable A bonus of stories is they don’t have to be polished and edited content, it can be a little more candid and fun. Let your followers see the story behind the glossy stuff on your feed. Remember, people buy into people and experiences and will be more likely to engage if you produce relatable content.

Monitor your progress 

When you have tried a few of these techniques over time – we would recommend tracking any patterns in your overall engagement through analytics either in Instagram, or, for more in-depth insights, via an external CRM such as HubSpot. Correlating where your engagement spikes and dips alongside an engaging story is a great way to gain an insight into what you can do more of further down the line to continue to grow that engagement! 

And there you have it! The cheat sheet to begin growing your social engagement using Instagram stories.