Keep Your District's Social Media Game Strong Over the Summer!

You made it! School's out, students are gone and while you may have vacations planned, summer PD scheduled and you're finally beginning those books that have been waiting for you all year, don't neglect one critical item: your school's social media accounts. Summer is a prime time to engage with your parents and community supporters. You can take your posting frequency down a notch or two, but don't quit altogether. You will lose followers and great opportunities to stay connected even while school is out. So what kinds of things should you post during the summer months?

• Learning tips for parents: Parents may want to help prevent the summer slide by ramping up their children's reading, practicing math problems, doing science experiments, etc. Use your social media accounts to provide tips or links to resources that will help them.
• Highlight summer activities: Have a summer program going on? Share pictures and videos of students in action! Parents and grandparents love to see that stuff, so show them what kind of things their kiddos are learning (Tip: Make sure you have written consent to post any of your students images online).
• Community engagement survey: Looking to ramp up your parent and community involvement? Looking for input on what activities people might like to help out with? A quick, easy survey made with Google Forms provides instant feedback, and you can keep it open as long as you need. Find out things like 1) how they prefer to receive information from the school (email, website, social media, phone calls, other); 2) what kinds of events would they like to volunteer for; 3) what hours/days would they be available, etc. Use all this information to build out a more robust and strategic communication plan for the next school year and beyond.
• Important upcoming dates: Use social media as another avenue for reminders about important dates and events. Post notices about vaccinations, back-to-school registration dates, enrollment deadlines, etc.
• Funny content: Your community likes to laugh just as much as anyone, so if you come across a funny education-related video, comic strip, meme, gif or any other laughable content, share away! These get shared more frequently, so they're an easy way to increase likes and followers and further expand your reach.

Additionally, here's a great article full of even more ideas to keep your social media game strong during the summer months. It's a few years old, but it's still relevant. Check it out--it might even spark additional ideas you can use!

If you still don't have school social media accounts, summer is a great time for you to create them. Need help? Holler! I would be happy to work with you on getting the accounts set up and show you how to effectively and efficiently use them.