Using Pinterest To Market Your Preschool

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Have you heard of Pinterest? If you love visual marketing and creative ways of interacting with your child care clients, then you’ll want to check out this social media platform!

Pinterest is a fun and easy social networking site that connects people around the world through common interests. It is allows users to visually share ideas, beautifully curate their own image boards, and browse what other users have pinned to discover new interests. Because you can quickly and easily share images with over 100 million users, Pinterest is now considered to be one of the most effective ways to promote a business online.

To help get you started, I’ve put together some simple and effective tips for putting Pinterest to work in marketing your preschool…

START A PINTEREST ACCOUNT FOR YOUR PRESCHOOL

Make sure your profile clearly states what your preschool is about, what makes you stand out above the rest, and how you can help your clients. Always link back to your website.

Set up a Pinterest button on your own website for parents to easily find you. By integrating Pinterest share buttons into your other social media platforms (such as Facebook & Twitter) you can greatly increase your audience and interaction. Your school newsletter is also a great place to include a link to your Pinterest account.

CREATE A ‘TOUR YOUR CENTER’ BOARD

Take advantage of Pinterest’s visual real estate and create a TOUR YOUR PRESCHOOL board. Create pins by adding photos of your classrooms, outdoor spaces and activity centers. Be sure to include the things that make your school unique.

A ‘MEET THE TEACHER’ board is a great way for your staff to say hello and introduce themselves to the parents by including a picture & short bio.

Now you can direct potential clients to your preschool Pinterest page so they can tour your center online!

ADD NEW BOARDS + PROMOTE YOUR PRESENCE

Start by researching what your potential clients are pinning and create your own boards based on their interests. Some of the most popular kid & family friendly Pinterest trends that people search for are:

– Easy DIY activities for kids

– Children’s books

– Lunch + snack ideas

– Art + crafts

– Kids science experiments

– Sensory play

– Nature activities

– Parenting hacks

– Quotes + Humor

– Inspirational + Motivational

Always carefully select the most striking images for your board covers to keep your profile page looking the most attractive. Once you create a range of boards that are relevant to your preschool it’s time to start pinning and promoting your presence. Find new people, follow top influencers, pin, repin, comment on & like pins, repeat. Get some interaction going and find yourself getting new followers.

Seasonal and Holiday themed boards are often a big hit and can aide in getting you noticed. Choose something fun or engaging that you’ve pinned that fits a current season, holiday or trend, and cross-promote it on your other social media platforms.

CREATE PINNABLE CONTENT + BEAUTIFUL IMAGERY

If your preschool has a blog always use bold, eye-catching, clear high quality images. Keep in mind that light images are repinned 20 times more often than dark, and simple images have a greater impact.

Have a pinnable image on every blog post you publish, always post it to Pinterest, and include relevant links back to your website or blog. You have two opportunities with each pin to add your link: one in the description and one in the source for the pin. Create your own fresh content!

OPTIMIZATION + CALL TO ACTION

It’s one thing to create a fantastic pin, but it’s a whole other game to get it seen and shared. No one is going to find your pin if you don’t optimize it for engagement. Use hashtags, add descriptive accompanying text, and if you’re pinning someone else’s content always give credit where credit is due. A ‘call-to-action’ will significantly increase the engagement of your pins- up to 80% more. In your pin’s description, ask a relevant question or add a little something like:

“Repin to your own inspiration board.”

ALWAYS USE KEYWORDS

Since users can search for pins, boards, and pinners by keywords, you need to put keywords everywhere you can. Include them in the descriptions on your pins, your boards, and even your profile. Keywords are just as important on Pinterest as they are on Google.

POST FREQUENTLY

Aim for 5-20 new pins daily, and make sure you are spreading your pinning throughout the day to gain the most followers and get the best engagement.

TIP: Creating a ‘Secret Board’ can save you tons of time! Load up your pins a couple times a week and keep them on your secret board. Throughout each day, return to the board and grab the pins you want to pin on your other live boards.

MOST POPULAR BOARDS FIRST

Over time, you’ll be able to see which boards are more popular and get the most engagement. Put your best foot forward and move these boards to the top of your page so when users come over, they will see your best material first.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Connect with parents, families, and potential clients in your area by using local keywords in your searches and by including them in your hashtags. You may not be able to search FOR specific users by their location, but you can search for pins that include these keywords in their descriptions. Try searching your town, city, state etc to engage on local posts, and add place names in your hashtags to get discovered.

…AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, ENGAGE…

FOLLOW other pinners and their boards. Take time to COMMENT on the pins of other users. You can also LIKE a pin, but making a comment takes it one step further and gets more attention. Doing both is even better! SHARE if you like something and appreciate it, by repinning to your own board. ADD CONTRIBUTORS to your boards. You can let other parents join the fun on your page, as it will create an image of approachable, fun company to follow and more people will want to get involved. This can be a fantastic way to gain insight into your audience’s tastes and preferences and create a sense of community around your preschool Pinterest page.

Get the content guide cheat sheet to help your childcare grow their social media network.

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Boosted Posts vs. Dark Posts in Facebook

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If you are new to advertising your business on Facebook it’s important to understand the difference between boosted posts vs. “dark posts”.

In short, a boosted post is published from the News Feed on your Facebook business page. A dark post is created and published with Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor. A dark post DOES NOT show up on your Facebook business page, although it shows up in the News Feeds of other people (that you choose through targeting) as coming from that business page.

Think of your Facebook business page as a “store front,” “community center,” or “brand center” where you can create messaging that supports and engages your audience so you can build a relationship with people that are already interested in what your business has to offer. Now think of dark posting as a function of “Ads Manager” which is more the back-end advertising machine of your business.

Dark posting allows you to run multiple ad posts with different messaging to as many different target groups that you need. You can run ads to people that have visited your website, ads to different demographic audiences you create, lookalike audiences, etc. And it doesn’t all show up as an advertising mess on your Facebook business page. It is all organized in Facebook Ads Manager.

You can also split test. You can switch out images if one isn’t working for a particular audience or test different copy or offer ideas. You constantly want to be split testing your ads for improvement and using dark posts allows you to do this.

Hopefully this clarifies a little better on what it means to advertise on Facebook. Happy marketing!

For more tips and tricks, get the social media content guide cheat sheet, just for childcare centers. 

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Should You Create A Landing Page For Your Facebook Ad?

Something to consider when marketing your childcare business on Facebook is WHERE you are sending new potential customers to. If you just send them to your child care website then you probably aren’t capturing their information. Why do you want to capture their information? Studies show that you need to have at least 7 connection points with a potential customer before doing business. This is ESPECIALLY true in child care, an industry heavily based on trust, with a lot of time and consideration put into the decision making process. If you capture their email and telephone number, you then have endless opportunities to follow up with them and create a RELATIONSHIP with them via email, text, a follow up call, etc.

A landing page is a spot where the potential customer can sign up for more information/events/giveaways, coupons etc. This is the key way to collect important data and contact information from your potential customer. Landing pages are a great way to utilize Facebook ads to capture the information of families in your area.

First, its important to understand that a landing page is a standalone web page distant from your main website that has been designed for a single objective. The main reason for this is so not to distract your visitor from the intended goal, such as joining your email list. You can use websites such as www.leadpages.net to aid you in creating beautifully designed landing pages. They have tutorials and templates which make the whole process easy to handle.

The main type of landing page for a child care center to focus on is Lead Generation. A Lead Generation landing page is used to capture visitor data such as name, email address and telephone number. A lead page will have a form to enter details and a description on what the visitor will gain in return for submitting personal data. For example, you could be offering a coupon if they book a tour of you childcare center and for a visitor to be able to book an appointment they would need to hand over their contact details.

Below are some tips to get the most out of your landing page to drive your business…

1. The best way to get your visitors to sign up is to keep the data required to the bear minimum, people don’t like giving over personal details at the best of times so keep it as streamlined as possible.

2. Make your call to action (CTA) big and prominent and above the fold (able for people to see without scrolling down too much) so viewers can’t miss it.

3. A landing page should have a single purpose and thus have only one single focused message!

4. Make sure you show your service or product being used in context, pictures of cute kids works well. Imagery is key here.

5. Use testimonials if you have them. Viewers are more likely to sign up if they read positive feedback on the service you are offering!

6. Experiment with A/B testing, testing different imagery or copy and letting your viewers decide.

7. Make sure you include contact details and social media links so viewers can read up on your childcare services, you’ll look more trustworthy and viewers are more likely to sign up!

That is all for now, I hope this information helps and guides you to creating a successful landing page to further your childcare business and get the most out of your social media ads!

Want more tips on how to do social media for your child care? Click here.

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8 Top Tips On Using Video In Your Social Media

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Ever thought about creating video ads to drive traffic, sales and awareness? Or just not sure if your video ads are ticking all the boxes? I’ve noted some helpful hints and tips to help you get on your way and start converting those viewers to successful new enrollments at your child care.

Videos get three times as much engagement than any other content but unfortunately it’s largely underutilized. Facebook has reported that video posts per person has increased 75% globally and 94% in the U.S. Now you see how video is becoming more and more important, use the steps below to create awesome video ads to drive traffic to your childcare business today.

1. Think About The First 3 Seconds

Have you ever noticed that videos on desktop and mobile news feeds play automatic when you’re scrolling through? So you probably have around 3 seconds to grab that viewers attention before they scroll on past. You need to get your viewers invested immediately with engaging content, minimal text and optional background music.

2. Offer It Up

Don’t do an advertisement unless you have a compelling offer for your call to action. End the video with a call to action….maybe a coupon with a discount or even an invitation to an an event like a family fun day or open house at the end of the video.

3. Get Personal

Videos are a great platform to show off your personality. If you record yourself, speak directly at the camera and make the viewer feel like your connecting with them. Make sure you sound excited about your business and show off what you have to get people to convert. Never forget that people make connections with people not businesses.

4. Captions Galore

Be sure to add captions to your video so they can still be watched and understood with the sound off.

5. Curiosity Got The Headline

Make sure your headline is eye grabbing and compelling, you want your viewers to be instantly interested. It’s also a great idea to start doing some split testing here, change your headlines and see what’s getting the most attention and conversion.

6. Don’t Forget The Text

Adding text to a video is an awesome way to help the viewer get the information without watching the whole video. Use iMovie or Movie Maker to do this and only state important points.

7. Be Descriptive Please

Make sure your description is detailed and informative, say what you need to say to support your video content.

8. Always Analyze

Facebook provides deep insights and allows you to understand your audience like never before. Having this knowledge will prepare you to deliver content attracting more of that audience. Metrics to note are: your demographics, avg view duration, 10 second views, sound on, sound off, and clicked annotations.

Want more tips on how to do social media for your child care? Click here.

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Social Media Basics: One Simple and Free Way To Organically Grow Your Business Page

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This is a really simple tip that can organically increase relevant traffic to your Facebook business page.

Check out the video to learn how:

Login to Facebook and then choose the option to use Facebook as your business page. (The video below will give you instructions.)

You will then see a separate news feed that is the news feed of your “business page.” From here you can search for and like pages and also comment on and like other business page posts. This can give you a boost of organic traffic and also give you ideas for content to post on your own business page.

Want more tips and tricks on growing your social media following, just for childcare centers?

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Child Care Owners: When Should You Post on Facebook?

One of the biggest questions I get asked is WHEN businesses should be posting on Facebook and other social media sites.

The answer is different depending on the audiences and the industry. However, when posting for child care centers and for Child Care Marketing, I’ve noticed better engagement in the afternoons and evenings, when people might be taking breaks from busy work days, or winding down at home.

You’ll want to experiment posting at different times of the day to see when your audience responds best. Sometimes if I post and don’t get much engagement from that post, I’ll employ a little trick. I will simply delete and re-post at a different time of the day and watch engagement take off. Sometimes it’s as simple as that!

Facebook also has a metric that will allow you to see what times of the day most of your fans are online, which will allow you to get a better sense of when it is the best time to post.

To find this information, you’ll want to go to your Facebook Business Page. On the top you will see a tab that says “Insights”

Then, on the left hand side of the screen you’ll see a tab that says “Posts”.

Click on this and you will be shown a screen that looks like the one above. This gives you a graph of when, on average, your fan base is online. In this example, the largest amount of our fan base is online around 6pm. I definitely notice an increase in engagement if I post closer to this time than at say 6am.

Check out your Facebook Insights and experiment with different posting times and see what gives you the best results.

Want more tips on using Facebook for marketing your childcare? Get the content guide cheat sheet here.

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