Social Media Marketing to Promote Your Private School
Recruitment is an acute challenge for many UK schools during the current nationwide teaching shortage. According to recent stats from The Independent, new entrants to Initial Teacher Training in 2022 reached just 71 percent of the government’s target. While many schools across England are already somewhat prepared for a long-term shortage of math, biology, and chemistry teachers, there is an unprecedented struggle to hire even English teachers.
Private schools need to be resourceful and creative to recruit teaching staff. Traditional hiring methods—job fairs, job boards, job-seeking platforms, and dedicated recruitment agencies—are no longer as effective as they used to be. Concurrently, effective recruitment channels such as social media are still underused by many educational institutions.
In this article, we will prove that social media marketing is a great way to look for new teaching talent and help you get started.
Why Is Social Media Marketing Worth Trying for Private Schools?
Social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. We use it to read the news, connect with friends, entertain ourselves, and share updates. Why not use it for a job search? Indeed, social media is a great means for private schools to attract new teaching talent. Here are the main benefits of social media advertising for private schools.
Reaches Relevant and Engaged Audiences
Marketing in social media gives private schools a unique opportunity to precisely target users with a certain educational background, professional experience, and demographic features. As a result, the vacancy is advertised to a relevant and more engaged audience, eventually leading to a higher conversion rate. Candidates hired after a social media ad campaign will likely stay with your private school longer, saving you time and money on their on/off-boarding.
Increased Brand Awareness
Private school branding on social media showcases its unique atmosphere, mission statements, and values. Schools with up-to-date profiles enjoy better brand visibility and awareness. If you post relevant updates consistently, it is likely to attract even those teachers who are not looking for new job opportunities. When they do consider changing schools, yours will surface from their memory.
Large Exposure of the Ad Among Candidates
As of 2023, the UK is home to 57.10 million social media users, equating to 84.4 percent of the total population. This gives private schools rich prospects to engage and hire new teachers via social media advertisements. By posting open vacancies on their social media profiles, schools attract local professionals and those who live in distant locations and foreign countries.
Higher Cost-Effectiveness Compared to Traditional Recruitment Methods
When the recruitment budget is limited, social media advertising is a preferred and more cost-effective method for private schools than traditional ones. These methods are obsolete and ineffective. Now, you are not likely to build a steady pipeline of prospective candidates via an ad in a local newspaper or online job boards. Hiring a dedicated recruitment agency to find suitable teaching staff is usually costly—around 10 to 30 percent of the candidate’s first-year salary.
Get Started with Social Media Marketing in 5 Steps
If you seek to leverage social media advertising and hire teaching staff for your private school, we’d like to offer five steps to help you get started. After these steps, you can implement effective social media strategies for your private school to reach prospective new talent and establish a positive school image on your chosen social media platform.
- Create the User Persona of a Prospective Candidate
The best way to understand whom to target while private school branding on social media is to create the so-called user personas of your prospective candidates. The personas are fictional characters who represent a typical person you’d like to engage with their educational background, professional experience, age, gender, interests, etc. Creating personas and crafting every post with their interests in mind will help you attract optimally relevant applicants.
For instance, a typical social media user whom your private school may target is a male or female between 25 to 50 years old, with a qualified teacher status, GCSEs at grade 4 (C) or above in English, and at least a bachelor’s degree from a UK educational institution. Once you understand the specific profile you are targeting, put yourself in the shoes of this “persona” every time you plan a new post. It should be relevant, interesting, and engaging to them.
- Work Out a Content Plan
Effective social media strategies for private schools are impossible without an up-to-date social media profile. You will need to ensure posts and updates appear in your profile regularly and consistently. Posting two to three posts a week is a recommended cadence. A content plan, with a calendar for posting, will help you keep the pace and alternate different categories of posts, e.g., news and updates, “Meet Our Staff/Students,” photos and short videos of school events, other visual content, etc.
Remember that consistent posting in your social media profile is key to increased brand awareness. With a content plan in place, your school’s profile will reflect its culture and atmosphere, showcasing its unique value proposition to potential applicants. Every feed update will be written following a single style and your tone of voice.
- Set Measurable Targets
Before starting your private school promotion on social media, you should set clear and measurable targets. It is not enough to simply put “attract more post views” as your goal, as the statement is too vague and unclear. Besides, it will not help you attract more teaching talent.
Some measurable targets when marketing to potential job candidates may look like this: “increase brand awareness among a certain user group by 15% monthly,” or “draw +10% of traffic to our website vacancy page via social media every month,” or “boost conversion rate from social media posts by 20% quarterly.”
- Set Up Analytics
To measure your regular social media updates’ productivity, you should set up a dedicated analytics tool. There are various out-of-the-box tools for automated social media analytics, which vary depending on the social media and the parameters they track. The most popular ones include Google Analytics, Sprout Social, Hootsuite, HubSpot, SocialPilot, etc.
In your profile analytical data, you will analyze the coverage (user views and engagements), which will help you identify the most engaging types of posts and an optimal time for posting. Over time, when you run a social media campaign for your private school, you will discover data-driven patterns in user behavior to use for creating more resonating content with a higher conversion rate.
- Run an Advertisement Campaign
When you have a good sense of what resonates with your target audience and where best to reach it, it is time to plan and execute a social media campaign for your private school. Craft a post that you would like to advertise (this could be an open vacancy, with a specific description of the candidate’s requirements) in the designated social media, spice it up with some eye-catching visuals and target the post at the corresponding user cohort.
Once the campaign is launched, check its progress through the analytics tool and adjust the campaign mechanics if needed. Measure the campaign’s conversion rate once it is finished and draw the lessons you learned from it to make future campaigns more fruitful.
Get Professionals to Handle the Social Media Hustle for You
Since not everyone has a marketing manager on staff, you may want to opt for professional help with planning and executing social media ad campaigns and managing results. Turn to Soccialy for a turnkey marketing campaign for your school or college!
Soccialy is a social media advertising platform and consultancy specializing in recruitment for the educational sector in the UK. Our teams work hand-in-hand with schools to help hire truly professional teaching talent faster and cheaper than other methods.
With Soccialy, you can save up to 30% of your recruitment budget. The average cost per candidate acquisition with Soccialy is just £391, and the average closing time for an open vacancy is around 23 days.
Do you want to know more? Book a free intro call with a Soccialy specialist today and harness the benefits of social media marketing-powered recruitment for schools!
FAQs
- What is the definition of social media marketing?
Social media marketing uses social media platforms, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. to promote a product or service. A social media profile is a component of effective social media strategies for private schools and a tool to showcase their unique atmosphere and daily activities, meet personnel and alumni, and post important updates.
- What are the most popular social media that private schools can use for job advertising?
Social media for recruitment depends on the industry and candidates’ profiles, but for the educational sector, the most widely used are LinkedIn and Facebook. Other less frequently used media include Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube.
- How do private schools advertise their vacancies on social media?
Private schools that use social media as a recruitment channel need to ensure they have a robust social media strategy and keep their profiles up-to-date and interesting for prospective candidates. Those schools that hire a few teachers occasionally may outsource social media advertisement campaigns to professional agencies.
- How do you write a marketing strategy for a school?
Start with creating user personas of the candidates you’d like to target. Proceed with a content calendar and different categories for your profile posts, then set up analytics for your social media profile and track it regularly and use the available tools, like soccialy to manage the hiring process efficiently. Make an enquiry by contacting [email protected]
