Our Guide To Setting Up An Instagram Account For Your School

Did you know that Instagram brings together more than 28% of the world’s internet users? Among those people are your future families. There are over 200 million businesses on Instagram already. This powerful platform allows you to engage followers with highly visual, but authentic content and gives people a full picture of everything your school has to offer.

But without having an Instagram account for your school in the first place, you won’t be able to experience these benefits for yourself!

We’ve written this quick, step-by-step Instagram guide to help you do just that: set up an Instagram account for your school, giving you the chance to leverage this platform in all of your marketing efforts.

Our Guide to Adding Your School to Instagram

Before you start

Before diving into setting up an Instagram account, it’s crucial to establish clear goals of how you want to use Instagram and how you will measure it’s success. Are you aiming to showcase pupil achievements, promote events, engage with parents, or attract prospective students? Defining your objectives will shape your posting plan and guide your overall approach to using Instagram as a communication tool.

Mobile or Desktop?

One thing which confuses many first-time Instagram users is what platform they can use the website on. Can they use it from their office computer? Or do they have to access it on their smartphone? Back when we first wrote this blog post in 2019 – the answer was: ‘Yes, but..’. You could log-in and ‘like’ photos, leave comments and complete other basic functions, but you couldn’t post photos or other content. Thankfully, that has now been changed and you can now post from a desktop device.

Step 1: Set Up Your School Instagram Account (PC)

Setting up your school Instagram account is equally easy on both your PC and smartphone. For the sake of convenience (e.g. accessing an account verification email), we recommend you set up your account on your computer, but either option is perfectly fine. When you make your way to instagram.com, you’ll come across the following screen:

As you can see, you have two main options for creating an Instagram account:

1. Log in with your Facebook account.
2. Set up a new school profile from scratch.

If you choose to set up a new account (despite having a Facebook account for your school too), don’t worry – you can connect your Facebook page at a later time. If you choose to create an account from scratch, give a little thought to the username you choose. Try to pick the shortest version of your school name, to give people the best possible chance of remembering your account name and making their way back to your profile. Don’t worry if you’re having trouble picking one you like. You can change this later on too.

Step 2: Connect to a regularly monitored school email, not your own

To keep everything tidy and secure, make sure that the email address you connect to the Instagram account isn’t someone’s personal one. Use a school one – and one that is regularly monitored. Once you’ve settled on a username you like (and that’s available) and chosen a secure password, you’ll be ready to create your account.

Simply click the Next button and follow the process outlined (picking a few initial accounts to follow, inputting basic details, and verifying your account). Once your account is set up, you can move onto the second step: setting up your smartphone to use Instagram.

Step 3: Set Up Your Phone For Instagram Use

Now your school Instagram account is created, accessing it on your smartphone is simple.

First, you should download the app onto your device using the links below.

• If you have an Android/Google phone, click here.
• If you have an iPhone, click here.
• If you have a Windows phone, click here.

You can set up your Instagram account on a few different mobile devices if you like. However, Instagram can be a bit finicky when multiple different devices access an account at the same time, so be careful to avoid too much overlap in your usage!

Once the app is installed on your device, you just need to input the login details you created in Step 1 to log in.

It’s worth noting that whether you log-in via a PC or the app, posts aren’t sorted chronologically but rather according to Instagram’s algorithm (which is based on a mix of what’s popular, what’s recent, and which content you have interacted with most in the past).

Step 4: Personalise Your School Instagram Account

Your account is now created, so it’s time to move on and make it yours by writing your profile.

Take a look at Langley School’s (Norwich) Instagram account, who have a well-established profile. When we look at this account, we see that:

• Their school logo is set as their profile photo
• They offer a quick overview of their school and who they are for.
• They include a link to their school’s website in their bio (so people have an easy way to learn more about them).
• They have branded Instagram Story Highlights that feature key areas such as Sport, Art and Life @ Langley – meaning it’s really easy to navigate to the parts you may be interested in.

All in all, their account is well-optimised. When coupled with their effective use of Instagram Highlights (discussed in more detail here), we think their school Instagram profile is a significant asset to their marketing efforts.

In addition to doing the above, follow other interesting school Instagram accounts. For instance, these could include:

• Other schools in the local area to keep up with what’s going on with their accounts.
• Local politicians and celebrities.
• Charities and businesses that have a connection to your school (either in ethos or in practice).

Step 5: Start Using It!

Now you’ve completed these steps, there’s only one thing left to do… start using Instagram!

Create your content schedule, post photos, make use of the Stories feature, edit and play with images to your heart’s content – all of these actions are part of using Instagram effectively.

Here’s a quick rundown of four types of posts:

Instagram Feed Post – An image/video/carousel with the opportunity to add a filter, plus in a caption of text and hashtags to improve engagement. You STILL cannot add links to your caption. Instead, the workaround is usually to ensure that your bio link (in your main profile description) is your website. Alternatively, invest in Linktree or Lnk.bio where you can create a mini website for your Instagram account. This means you can have one link in your bio to house all the content you’re driving followers to. This article from Sprout Social has a useful ‘how to’ guide.

Instagram Stories – Appearing at the top of all feeds, Instagram stories are temporary stories that will appear on your profile for 24 hours. You can also create story highlights around a theme and add a story to that highlight. These remain at the top of your Instagram profile for followers to see after the initial 24 hours is up. These can be customised with text, stickers, music, hashtags, mentions, quizzes polls – the creativity is endless! You can also add a link to your website via ‘link sticker’. Select the sticker tool from the top navigation. Tap the ‘Link’ sticker and add in your URL and tap done.

Instagram Reels – An Instagram reel is a short-form video similar to TikTok videos. At 90 seconds or less, they help to engage audiences and build a bigger following on Instagram. Once you’ve recorded or imported your video from your camera roll, you can add stickers, text, or drawings just like in your stories.

Instagram Live – This creates a live-stream broadcast that your followers can tune in to watch. They can also leave their comments, so you can interact with your audience in real time. You could utilise this for a ‘Meet the Head’ session, or broadcast live from your open day.

Step 6: Gaining More Followers

A sound strategy and relevant, engaging content are the backbone of any school social media campaign, but using a ‘#’ also help with getting more eyes on your content. Instagram experts Wishpond have broken down effective hashtags into three main categories:

Brand and campaign hashtags – These two are quite similar, but if done right both pack a powerful punch in their own way. Brand hashtags should be a company name or a tagline that people know. It’s always relevant because it’s your brand.

Trending hashtags – We’ve all seen them #throwbackthursday, #worldbookday or #blackhistorymonth – Trending topics are really useful because even though the event might only be short term—a few hours, days or weeks—the traffic and followers you get can stick around for a long time to come.

Content hashtags – These are not only relevant to your brand but to that specific update, you’re about to put online too. Does your update fit any of these categories:

• Product
• Lifestyle
• Event
• Location

According to Sprout Social, Instagram posts with at least one hashtag have 12.6% more engagement than those without, so it’s worth experimenting!

If you’d like more a personalised roadmap to help you achieve your goals and turn your social media accounts into valuable marketing assets, just book a discovery call with us below. We also offer social media and marketing training for schools with no marketing function. You can find details of the course here.