If you have been running your language school or teaching practice for a while now, you have maybe spent a lot of your career relying on more traditional marketing practices to grow your language school such as billboards, posters, radio ads, Google ads, and word of mouth. While many of these may still be working well for your school, if you haven't considered using social media platforms to market your school, you really should.
Maybe your school has been growing steadily, but you're ready for a big boost in student registration. Maybe your enrolment has taken a slight dip and you are ready to drive up those student registrations again. Either way, let's look at some of the ways social media can help your school grow.
To get you started on your journey into the wild world of marketing your language school on social media, we'll take a look at the following topics:
In a word, yes.
In the modern world, online and social presence is more and more considered a measurement of pertinence and an unofficial "background check." Of course you've already built an amazing website for your language school which should be the ultimate source of truth and information for your potential customers, but social media is a sort of necessary addendum. Think of it like the footnotes to an academic article. The article (your school website) is the home to the most pertinent, developed, and in-depth content, but the footnotes (your social accounts) provide a kind of evidence or secondary sourcing for your claims.
Beyond this "footnote" idea, your social media accounts can also be used to generate new leads and draw in new students. If you take the time and develop some good strategies, your social media channels can be doing some very inexpensive marketing for your while you are busy teaching or running your language school.
TikTok? Twitter? Instagram? Facebook? Snapchat? Wait ten minutes and there will be another option to add to this list! Social media is ever-evolving - just think of how quickly TikTok has gone from lesser known to top of the headlines over the past few years. Don't be overwhelmed. Your goal is to market your language school, not to became an influencer. You do not need to have every single kind of platform. We recommend choosing a few essentials that you are comfortable with and which will help you to best promote your language classes and school.
If you want to stick to the very minimum, we recommend Instagram. Why? Well, because instagram is fairly manageable, has permanent content (so people can refer back to a history of your content), has messenging services, and allows you to create connections with your target audience. Facebook also provides similar services and one advantage is you can connect your Instagram and your Facebook accounts so that if you post to one, the publication will automatically be posted to the other. Some people argue Facebook is declining in popularity, and while that may be true, make sure you take a little time to research what is popular in your area and with your target demographic.
If you have an employee or coworker at your language school who is comfortable with some of the other platforms and looking to try some things out, why not?! Again, the important thing is not becoming a viral sensation (that is a different approach altogether), the important thing is creating a presence for your school. Remember, your language teaching practice or your language centre is a business, so you don't need to behave the same way that an individual does on social media. You aren't looking for just any followers, you are looking for language learners.
This is the part where you get to get a bit creative. However, there are a few key rules of thumb: 1) Quality images 2) Consistency 3) Relevence.
If you are using social media to market your language school, you need to make sure that above all you are consistent. If you only post once every three months, visitors to your page during the no-post months may think your school is no longer active.
Some people believe in posting every day to grow as quickly as possible. For many people, this is a bit unreasonable unless you can hire someone to manage your social media or unless you are a language teacher who wants social media to be a bigger part of their practice.
We recommend picking a target (say 1-3 times a week) and creating a schedule. Post at the same time and on the same days every week where possible. Don't forget to leave yourself time to respond to activity on your page. This means you should dedicate a little time to respond to any comments, check out your new followers, and respond to any messages.
If you are looking to grow your school, you are maybe thinking about how to streamline some of the administrative end so you can spend more time growing your language school and finding new students. One great way to free up some time for strategizing and planning is by adopting language school management software. Language school management software can help take care of tasks like billing, class registration, receiving payments, assigning students to language classes, and distributing information to your team of language teachers. If you are managing your own teaching business, it can also be a good way to free up more time for teaching! Follow this link if you are interested in learning more about school management sofware designed specifically for language schools or contact us and we'd be happy to chat all things language schools!
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