Facebook post ideas for school are sometimes hard to come by. Of course, there are the obligatory kid pictures of kids doing everything kids do during the school day. But doesn’t everyone already know what kids do at school all day? Read? Write? Go to recess? So what are other facebook posts? Check out my 7 Best Facebook Post Ideas for Schools!
#FacebookFriday
A favorite Facebook strategy I tried last year and this year is creating a hashtag/event every Friday. This event lovingly became called #FacebookFriday. This means that I send a staff text, email, and facebook group reminder for all staff to post to our school Facebook page every Friday.
One of the best practices for using Facebook is being consistent. However, kids come first. We aren’t always thinking, “Oh this would make a great social media post!” We are living our best lives educating the tiny humans. As a result, our facebook engagement was waning. By including as many people as possible to post on Fridays, when we leave for the weekend we are sending the message to our community that it was a great week. Have a great weekend!
Assign Multiple Editors
Assigning multiple staff as contributing editors to your facebook page is a game-changer. Larger schools or districts might have a public relations person or Director of Communication. If that is the case, that district probably has a plan. On the other hand, smaller districts are left up to their own devices, literally, to come up with facebook page strategies.
In the facebook settings of your page, you can assign roles. Whether or not you have to be “friends” with your staff, I do not remember. I am “friends” with most of my staff. (That can be a whole other blog post.) As you can see in the picture my staff is assigned as “editors.” Only a couple are assigned the role of administrator.
Selfie Facebook Post Ideas
The most popular social media posts are selfies. Everyone loves a fun selfie. Schools provide an excellent pool of opportunities for selfies and the kids love them. Selfies make me super self-conscious so I prefer to use filters. I will touch on filters in the next idea.
Staff selfies with each other and/or with kids provide some of our best social media engagement. The teachers and I almost always have our cell phones near us. You can take a selfie to celebrate a goal or a good job on an assignment. Give your phone or a school device to the kids and let them take selfies. (I actually just thought of that one so I am totally doing that on Monday!)
Filters Are My Favorite
A word of caution…some filters are a little, how do I say, scary. I use Snapchat filters. I do not post the pictures to Snapchat. Absolutely no one that follows me on Snapchat will benefit from seeing my positive office referral selfies. On the other hand, I save the filtered selfies to my camera roll and upload them to facebook. The kids love the process of going through the filters to choose the one they want me to post. It’s an awesome way to build a relationship with a student.
Create Facebook Events with Fun Event Cover Images
This idea actually started out as a parent request. Many of our parents live on Facebook. In other words, they are on Facebook a lot. Apparently, some even use the events as their only notifications. This had actually never crossed my mind. One of the many things I love to do is to design images for all my social media channels. I was creating images with text so that our “events” would stand out in a Facebook post.
Another way to make the event stand out is to create an “event cover image.” Problem solved. I could still design my fun images AND parents were getting notifications. Win-Win! The image for this section of this post is a collage of “event covers” I used for my school facebook page. They are cut off a little bit because these image sizes are not event cover sizes. (I use the app Canva for the right size images.)
Use LIVE Video – Especially During Flash Flooding
No, I don’t necessarily mean live video of you. Although that is actually a very good use of a Facebook LIVE. What I mean here is to LIVE stream as much as you can. Assemblies, classroom parties, special events in the Library, field trips, and the list can go on and on. Most of our families work and cannot attend things during the school day. It can be quite impactful for a parent to come home from work and tell their child he or she saw the readers theater in the Library on Facebook.
A story about this facebook post idea…
One of our best live streams was a morning of very dangerous flash flooding. For those of you who don’t know, or have not been in a flash flooding situation let me set the scene. My oldest daughter had already left on the bus to go to middle school. My youngest daughter and I left the house 25 min. after she left. Within that amount of time, the majority of the roads leading to the town where my school is located were impassible. It took less than 30 minutes.
There was something else that made this a unique situation. The high school and middle school kids had already been dropped off and the buses were starting their elementary routes. Three of our elementary schools were not in the flash flooding zone while the other 3, including mine, were flooding very quickly. We had students that were already dropped off in our before school care program. Parents who had not left their own homes yet were completely unaware of how dangerous things were in some portions of our district.
I tell you this story for two reasons. First, this was a highly emotional event for everyone. Teachers trying to get to school. Parents trying to get kids to school. Parents who didn’t know anything was going on and school is suddenly canceled for the elementary. But not the middle and high schools? If you are a school principal or school leader of any kind, you have probably decided by now that you were glad you were not in our shoes.
So what is a principal to do? Go LIVE on Facebook and address all the questions, rumors, and safety concerns. I already knew what the questions were going to be. I had just lived this experience as both a parent and a principal. As soon as I got to school I went LIVE and started answering teacher questions, student questions and any questions that came through in the comments. Ultimately, I had my secretary ask me all the questions and I answered them LIVE. Kind of in a game show format as I mention in the video. You can find that episode here.
Create a Staff Facebook Group
Finally, and this isn’t necessarily a Facebook post idea for your school facebook page. But it is a facebook idea that has been extremely beneficial in building positive culture in our school. Everyone loves Facebook, or I guess they hate it, but my staff loves it. We have used Facebook for good and not evil.
All the funny and inappropriate posts we see on Facebook we can share in our group. When I say inappropriate I mean things we can’t share on our personal pages that parents or community members might see and judge us. I don’t mean inappropriate as we are horrible people. I have worked with my staff for 15 years. In addition, teachers we hire have probably known me on social media before getting hired. If not, they learn pretty quickly I use social media to benefit everyone. My social media life is an open book.
You will want to decide on a purpose for your group before you start one. If I remember correctly I think my teachers asked me to start the group. It has evolved over the years. We share funny posts, family posts, school posts, needs for our students, etc.
That about wraps it up! Above all, if you have read this far you are a true fan and I thank you more than you know:) If there is anything you’d like me to blog about just let me know. I love a good challenge and I will be completely honest. Here is a link to my school Facebook page if you want to take a look around.
You might have been wondering some things as you were reading….
- Nothing is confidential online and I know that.
- We have permission for children to be videoed or photographed online
- My own children go to my school and I wouldn’t do anything that would create a safety issue for them let alone everyone else’s child.
- I am an elementary principal and most of my students are not on social media, this is mostly for parents.
- Some of my students might have social media accounts. They should not.
My online BFF and award-winning principal Amber Teamann and I take our social media messaging to a whole new level in The Leadership Vault. The Leadership Vault is an exclusive membership for school principals and/or aspiring school principals. We provide you with monthly facebook post ideas to engage your school community. Find out more by clicking the link below.
