The most important eight seconds in your business
Tips to improve your childcare center’s marketing
8 seconds isn’t a lot of time to captivate your audience
Eight. That is the number of seconds you have to capture interest on social media and engage families in a post. Eight Seconds – You have to make it count! Putting engaging and interesting content on your social media accounts for your families to interact with takes a bit of practice and a whole lot of timing. Here are some helpful hints to maximize those eight seconds.
- Know your audience
- Have a plan
- It’s not always about the children
- Don’t be so serious
- Quality matters
- Don’t overdue it
Know your audience.
Based on your demographics and the insights of your page you can determine when and who is online at any given time. Facebook provides every business page with a list of demographics including age, gender, location and time of day people are online. This is something to keep in mind when posting content. Take a look at your insights and try to plan (and schedule) posts around high traffic times.
Have a plan.
We find that having specific things to post each day will help take some of the pressure off of figuring out WHAT to post. Assign each classroom a day to send photos in (and include a description) so that you can post them to your page. It is important to use this as a guideline and stick to it the best you can, but don’t be afraid to stray from it. Is it infant photo day and the preschoolers did ‘THE COOLEST’ science experiment ever? Take advantage of their excitement and post the photos. The children will want to tell their parents all about it and the teachers can let them know to check the photos out online. This will increase your overall reach and engagement.
We also believe in scheduling a calendar of special days out for an entire year. This includes center themed dress up days/weeks. You can also visit National Day Calendar to look at exciting things that are happening each day during the year. Some of our favorites include: National High Five Day, National Chocolate Ice Cream Day and even, Wear your PJs to work day. By selecting some of these fun days, putting it on a calendar and giving it to your teachers at the beginning of the year, they can plan for these days, get the children excited about them and use this as a photo opportunity to post to Facebook. We are also big fans of celebrating your center’s birthday (the day you opened) with cake, ice cream and of course, the Happy Birthday song!
It’s not always all about the children.
In our experience, celebrating other things like staff birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, weddings, babies and graduations (just to name a few), often get MORE engagement than the children’s activity pictures. We feel that is because it gives families a glimpse into your lives. Families like to know more about the people who teach their children and love to celebrate accomplishments right along with them. We often know so much about the lives of the families that we take care of, it is ok to let them know a little bit about us too!
Posts are not limited to just your center. Is something fun happening in the community? Write about it and share an event. Is there construction going on across the street? Write about it. Did you have a family of deer walk around your center? Snap a photo and talk about it. Always be sure to tag any of businesses or community organizations in the post so they know you support them. All this will show families how important the community is to you as well.
Don’t be so serious.
We are in the business of children, and children are funny. Take advantage of that and have some fun on your page. Did some of the children wear the same shirt? Did a teacher dress similar to a student? Take pictures and share it. Families love this, and will laugh at it right along with you. It is ok to have some fun!
Quality matters.
Pictures, spelling, grammar. It all matters. When you are posting on your business page to your current and potential customers, quality matters. Make sure you are putting out quality photos of children engaged in activities. Blurry pictures are a no-no. Just don’t post them. It makes the post look messy and not thought out. When you type your description of what is happening, make sure to explain it so someone not used to working with children can understand it. Use complete sentences and re-read for spelling or grammatical errors. Most browsers will underline words that are misspelled. Be mindful of this. Nothing is worse than putting a post out there to have someone comment that a word is misspelled!
Don’t overdue it.
We know, we have been there. Picture this day. It is preschool picture day and they had a special visitor (post 1), it is a teacher’s birthday (post 2), 3 toddlers had the same outfit on (post 3) and it was National Grilled Cheese Day (post 4) and tomorrow is Water day (post 5). What do you do? Five posts in one day is excessive. Our recommendation would be to post the special visitor in one post. Post the teachers birthday AND National Grilled Cheese day in the same post with a caption similar to “It was a day filled with celebration! We celebrated Ms. Becky’s birthday and National Grilled Cheese Day! Happy Birthday Becky & Happy National Grilled Cheese Day!” and post all the pictures at once. And post the water day reminder. Schedule the posts out throughout the day. For example, 10 AM, 2:30 PM and 7 PM. Facebook has a great scheduling feature that allows you to schedule posts up to 6 months in advance. Then, save the other picture of the toddlers for another time.
Once you get in the habit of posting things on a regular basis, you will become the expert of your center’s demographics and what kind of content your followers like. Remember to make it interesting, funny or important so you can grab the attention of your views in eight seconds or less. Having troubles getting started? Let us know! We would love to help you develop a plan to fit your needs and teach you how to execute it. Call us today at 262.804.0339 or email [email protected].
Child Care Biz Help consults with centers across the nation to help owners and administrator strategize on growing their business, retaining employees, recruitment, marketing & branding and business operations. Caroline Jens, owner, recently released her first child care book for centers call P.R.O.F.I.T.S.-Child Care Success Formula. The P.R.O.F.I.T.S. Teacher Workbook is due to be released this July. SCHEDULE A CALL
Child Care Biz Help was founded by Caroline Jens, industry expert. Caroline has over 25 years of experience in finance and nearly 10 years in the child care field. Recently, Child Care Biz Help added, Justina Paterson, Marketing Director, who comes with nearly 10 years of child care experience in and out of the classroom. Most recently, Justina developed and oversaw the marketing campaign and success of a privately owned multi-location center. Together, along with Mr. Gunny Jens, Boxer, they make up Child Care Biz Help.
