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The answer may not be what you think! Recently on our podcast, The Multipurpose Room, we had special guest Matthew Desilet from SquadLocker discuss Best Practices for Managing Your Social Media Account. Dez has spent over a decade in the education field managing social media and has an interesting perspective. In this blog, we’ll share our top tips for who should be managing your social media account. Hint – it is all about considering your audience.
First, don’t boil the ocean with your social accounts. You don’t have to manage 20 social media accounts or even 3. You should look at where your audience is and choose 1 or 2 top social media services. These are likely to be Facebook and Instagram at this point. If you’re unsure which to choose and want to test it out, run a test for at least 3 months because anything less than that won’t give you a good idea of whether your strategy is working.
Second, pick something you can maintain. Being consistent in posting is critical. Facebook requires at least weekly posting, Instagram daily, and Twitter multiple times daily. Instagram is much more visual, so you must create visual content, whereas Twitter is text-driven. Consider how much time you can invest in keeping your social media up to date and what is sustainable year-over-year. We recommend creating tasks to remind your managers to create posts and having at least two people involved so that the work lies across more than one set of shoulders.
Finally, when selecting your social media manager, look again at your audience. You are most likely speaking to elementary and middle school parents. So, you want a parent who can relate. That person will more intuitively write messages that resonate. Students become part of your audience at the high school level, so you will want a student to run your account.
If you’re having heart palpitations over having a student run your social media, don’t! This is a great opportunity. You will want to establish guidelines for posting and have ultimate oversight, but the student can be the creative center of your postings. You should also look for a student interested in business and social media who will commit to the school year. You can rely on teachers for recommendations of students who fit the profile. With a PTA, PTO, or school leader as the ultimate decision-maker, you can still control the content and ensure you connect with your audience.
You can listen to the whole episode for more details about these topics. We also have additional social media tips on the podcast and our blog.