Getting The Most Out Of Instagram For Your School

At Ambleglow, we think that Instagram is such an underutilised tool when it comes to schools. It’s one of those social media platforms that you can be really creative and unique on, showing off your school’s personality and the human side of things.

Instagram has so many features for you to take advantage of. Plus, Instagram is constantly bringing out new features so it’s always evolving. 

Here are Ambleglow’s top tips for getting the most out of Instagram for your school.

#1 Create a school hashtag

Brainstorm a school hashtag, make sure it’s not being used by anyone else and then use it on all of your Instagram posts. This will encourage your school community to do the same and soon you’ll build a library of content for people to explore. 

This also means you’ll be able to see content that has been shared by students, parents and the wider community which you can then repost and engage with.

#2 Think outside the box

As we mentioned earlier, Instagram is the social platform where you can get creative and share different content than you would share on platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn.

So, instead of posting a standard ‘smiling at the camera’ photo, try creating a video time-lapse of a PE lesson or use Instagram’s new Reels feature to create something exciting and unique.

#3 Keep your profile up to date

It’s easy to become wrapped up in the excitement of content creation, but don’t forget to keep your school’s profile information up-to-date as well. Make sure your school name, school website, description and contact details are always accurate.

We’d also recommend that you optimise your Instagram bio. Your Instagram bio is seriously valuable, it’s the first thing anyone will see when they click on your profile. 

Here are three things that every Instagram bio should include:

• You school’s unique hashtag to encourage tagging and sharing
• Your school’s motto or slogan
• A link back to your school’s website

 #4 Post consistently

Make sure you’re posting frequently and consistently to keep your followers engaged. There aren’t any strict rules around how often you should be posting on Instagram, but you want to make sure you’re not posting too often or not often enough. 

Try & aim to post new content to your feed around 3-4 times per week. We’d also recommend that you’re posting to your Stories daily.

#5 Use Instagram Stories

That leads us nicely onto our next tip, using Instagram Stories. Instagram Stories allows you to share real-time photos and videos (of up to 15 seconds in length) which will feature on your profile for 24 hours unless you choose to add it permanently to your profile as a Highlight. 

Stories are a great way to show authentic, behind the scenes action at your school. Here are a couple of ways you can use Stories:

• Take your followers on a virtual tour
• Put your followers on the sideline at sports day
• Quickfire ‘meet the teacher’ 
• Share interesting science experiments
• Showcasing awards and achievements 

#6 Include a call to action in your captions

Just like your Instagram bio, your post captions are so important. Make sure you’re making the most out of them. Here are a couple of ways you can engage your audience through your captions:

• Ask a question
• Encourage your audience to share the post
• Direct people to a link in your bio

By using these simple and easy to implement tips, you’re certain to see a pick up in your engagement and hopefully your website traffic too if your call to actions push them towards this. 

#7 Engagement is key

Perhaps one of the biggest mistakes that many schools and businesses make on Instagram is that they do all the talking and forget about all their followers.

Replying to questions from your followers is not only good practise but also really important for your engagement rate. Instagram likes to see you engaging with other accounts as much as they like to see you posting.

#8 Keep an eye on your Instagram analytics

Keeping up to date with your Insights on Instagram is going to be so important for your strategy moving forward.

By looking at your Insights regularly, it’s going to change the way you:

• Frame future content
• How you reply to comments
• How often you post
• When you post 
• How you word your captions
• What call to actions you use

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Instagram Insights can offer you so much insight, excuse the pun, into what content is working and what content is redundant.

Final thoughts

I think we’ve made it pretty clear that the possibilities with Instagram are endless, so what are you waiting for?

We love seeing our top tips being put into practise so if you take any of these tips on board for your Instagram strategy, we’d love to hear your results.

And, if your school is already seeing huge success with Instagram, we’d love to hear from you and feature you in an upcoming blog.