"If you build it, they will come." Kevin Costner was whispered those powerful words in the movie Field of Dreams, and it changed his character's life. You built a Facebook page, did your audience naturally come find it? How many followers do you have? How many Likes? Do people comment?
It takes effort and promotion to grow your audience, and it's worth the time and energy to invest in that growth. Implement some of the strategies below and continue to grow your audience so that more and more people are impacted by the good news you are sharing. 1. Invite your friends- Open your Facebook page. Under the Sharing button, is an option to invite friends from your profile account to like your page. Which of your friends is interested in your work? Invite other teacher friends to Like your page. 2. Request a Share- Ask your friends to Share your page with their friends on their Facebook timeline. You could even provide them with a short sample post to include when they share your page with their friends. 3. Add your page to your email signature- Be creative, add a Facebook logo and a tagline. "Like our classroom page on Facebook" or "Get a closer look at our classroom on Facebook" 4. Pay attention to your Insights - When is the best time to post? That depends on your audience. Post at different times and track your insights. When is your audience most engaged? Once you know more about your audience's viewing/posting/liking habits, you'll gain more traction by posting during those optimal times. 5. Post Regularly - remember last quarter when we set a goal, a posting theme, and a schedule? Is that goal still relevant? Does it need to be tweaked? 6. Respond to comments and messages - Facebook is a social platform, respond to every comment positively. This is a great opportunity to model digital citizenship in a meaningful way. 7. Ask your followers questions - Their responses are public and it gets your page more potential views. What's their favorite childhood book and why? Who is their real life superhero? Connect a question from your classroom content. Get the students involved with forming the questions. 8. Include a school hashtag- If your school posts to a hashtag, be sure to include it in your posts. 9. Ask other pages to share your page - If your school or PTA has a Facebook page, ask them to share your page with their audience. Provide them with a sample post that encourages their followers to Like your page. 10. Word of mouth - Yes. It's still a powerful form of communication, and it works! Most importantly - don't give up! Promote, post, analyze insights, repeat! Provide transparent content to your audience. Be real. Be consistent. Be a digital role model for your students and the community. Social Media in EDU Challenge (TKES 10) 1. Set a goal to increase your followers by __% by the end of the quarter. 2. Grow your audience! Use some of the strategies above or create your own. 3. Share your experience in the comments below. Include the strategies you tried, your audience growth, and your next steps.
1 Comment
Lisa O'Donnell
1/30/2017 01:31:15 pm
We have received the best response by posting our FB page on the school's PTA FB page. We did that when we first set up the page and then we did it again recently to boost our following. I will probably post on their page at least once a semester (if not more) in order to reach new families. We also asked our media broadcast class to mention our page on their morning broadcast. Those broadcasts are available on our school's website and I plan on posting about the class on our page as well in order to cross-promote.
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