Are you looking for the perfect time to post on social media for your school?
Are you getting the maximum reach and engagement for each of your posts?
In this article, I discuss three perfect times for schools to post on social media because of our local presence and our set carpool times for our campuses.
Take Advantage of Being Local
One advantage that Social Media Managers in a school district have is that we are a local operation. We do not have to worry about a global market or a global audience. We have the benefit that our audience goes to sleep, as well as having set times for our operations.
Being local makes it easier to find perfect times for schools to post on social media including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
You can see from the graphic below that our audience on social media is active from about 6:00 am until about 10:00 pm. I call this riding the whale because of the unique shape of the Facebook engagement graph.
Patterns & Trends in Social Media
When you study your social media analytics, it is important you look for patterns and trends in the data. You can retrieve a graph of active times of your followers on Facebook from their insight tab on your school or district page. Insights are Facebook’s free analytic data for page users. Facebook gives you a wealth of free information that can be very valuable for its users.
By examining our Facebook insights, our district found three important times to post on social media: carpool times (drop-off and pick-up) and our student bedtimes. By utilizing our carpool drop-off and pick-up times, we were able to post important messages for our elementary school parents that drove strong engagement because of the time we posted our content.
Why would carpool times impact your social media schedule?
Think about what America’s new favorite pastime is… Interacting with their smartphones, especially while in the car. Sitting in the carpool lane waiting for the bell to ring is a perfect time for parents to check their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. Capitalize on this to drive engagement.
Carpool and Social Media
In CFBISD, our elementary schools start at 7:40 AM and get out at 2:55 PM, so we usually post a elementary school social media message at 7:20 AM and at 2:30 PM to engage with our parents waiting in the carpool line. By doing this we can target the parents who get to the carpool lane early and have the time to check their social media accounts and interact with our content.
Bedtime Works Too
Kid’s bedtimes are also a perfect time to post on social media to engage parents. When the kids go to bed, the smartphones come out. Bedtime is the first time during the day that most parents have time to catch up on social media. A post from the school their child attends between 8 PM and 9 PM would be a great time to reach parents.
Conclusion
Think about these three posting times the next time you are going to post about Meet the Teacher or about the canned food drive at your elementary schools. Take advantage of bored parents. They might just enjoy seeing your content.
