Social Media and Data Collection for Schools

JULY 26 2022

Social media is a fantastic way to share your school’s message and interact with parents but are you using its potential to capture data and insights from your audience? By monitoring and tracking your social media analytics, you can make informed decisions about the type of content you create and share based on what’s working (and maybe even more importantly, what isn’t working), making the most of the time and resources of your undoubtedly busy marketing team. We’ve listed some of the questions that you can begin to answer by analysing the your school’s social media data;

  • What are the gender and age demographics of your audience? By knowing this, you can decide which social channels to focus your time and energy as each will have a typical demogpaphic following.
  • What time of day is your audience most active? The most important thing is to be consistent with your posting; it makes sense that if your followers are most active in the evening, that’s when you should be scheduling your posts.
  • Which type of content is the most popular? This may vary across channels. Instagram for instance puts focus on short-form videos (reels) rather than static images. It would be wise to focus on creating those if having a strong Instagram presence is part of your social media strategy.
  • What subjects are your audience most interested in? If a certain blog post gained a lot of traction, this could be a sign that you should be creating more content around that topic.

Where to Begin?

Each social media platform will have its own analytics page connected to your account. The data included varies but some of the key metrics you should track are;

  • Demographics–age, gender, location of your audience
  • Reach
  • Engagement–clicks, likes, shares and comments
  • Impressions
  • Video Views
  • Profile Visits
  • Follower numbers

Most platforms don’t keep data indefinitely so we suggest creating an Excel document or Google Sheet to track the metrics on a monthly basis. Over time you should begin to see patterns that help you to gain a better understanding of how your social channels and content are performing.

If you use a scheduling system such as Hootsuite, Later or Buffer you can also take advantage of their analytics and data collection tools. Google Analytics is a free way to track your marketing efforts across platforms, including your social media. Through there you can monitor the customer journey and see where conversions and downloads occurred as a result of social media interaction. The better you understand the path your customer takes to convert, the easier it becomes to consolidate the process. We shared more about how Google Analytics can improve your school marketing on Ubiq’s website.

Personalising Your Social Media

Incorporating personalisation into your wider marketing strategy can give you a distinct edge over competitors. Begin by personalising the digital experience across your social media channels, website and your school SEO strategy. The insights gained from social media data can be used to create a more tailored social experience. Your content can become specific to the location and behaviours of your most engaged customers. This can evolve further and extend to your digital and social advertising:

  • Utilise specific data points to attract attention when designing creative copy and imagery
  • When advertising on Facebook or Instagram, create lookalike audiences based on the followers of your current channels–an intelligent way to expand your reach
  • If your data shows a post or piece of content is doing well organically, it might be prudent to invest some of your advertising budget into sharing it with a wider audience. This can quickly be done by either boosting the content or turning it into a sponsored post.

If you feel that your school marketing team would benefit from some additional support with social media and data collection, The Virtual Marketer can help. Find out more over on our Social Media Marketing For Schools page.

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