Create A Stellar Social Media Video In Minutes

It’s no question that video is one of the best ways to highlight your center on social media. Video lets your online audience get to know your center. A good video can get thousands of views or more.

People generally find videos more engaging and more memorable than any other type of content. Nearly a third of online activity is spent watching video. If you want to increase your online presence, a video marketing strategy is the best way to go!

I know from experience, the hardest part is getting started. It’s important to remember it doesn’t have to be perfect. People love to see the genuine faces of your business. With practice, you WILL get better! Don’t be scared to just get video out there.

The video below is a compilation of shorter videos taken around a classroom. All the shorter videos were also posted on social media throughout the year. All the footage was shot using an iPhone. I hope it provides you with some inspiration! And remember, don’t be afraid to get in front of the camera! People want to see the faces behind the center. Read on for more tips…

How to Shoot a Video

You don’t need special hardware or a high-end video camera to shoot good social media videos for your daycare center.  You already have everything you need, right in your pocket — your smartphone. Any recent model Android or Apple smartphone can shoot high quality social media videos.  

Keep your videos short, usually 90 seconds are less.  You don’t have to be a professional videographer to shoot great videos.  Just move slowly and concentrate on a particular subject rather than trying to capture everything in one shot.

Videos should be entertaining, engaging, light-hearted, informative and personable. Videos are a fun way to connect with your followers and show the true essence of your child care center! 

What to Shoot in Your Video

Videos on a variety of subjects will connect well with your audience.  Short topics of interest include:

  • Activities going on in the classroom
  • Yourself talking about school updates.  Borrow something from your newsletter to put in video form
  • Have a teacher explain what’s going on in the classroom this week
  • Get in front of the camera and give a parenting or early childhood tip
  • Answer a frequently asked question
  • Introduce a new staff member
  • Talk about an article on ECE that you read
  • Parents giving testimonials about the center!
  • Give a brief tour of an indoor or an outdoor space – one area at a time will give you more content!

Rotating through each of these video types will keep your content fresh and give you plenty of subject matter.

Slideshows are another popular idea, especially if you don’t feel like getting in front of the camera! The video slideshow created below is based on parent testimonials. We used a tool called Lumen5, which is cool because it has an array of stock video footage that we used in addition to photos.

Getting On Camera

Some of the topic ideas in the list above will require you to get in front of the camera. If you are nervous at the beginning, remember that it will get easier with practice.

Something I have found helpful is to block off a time period on my calendar to focus on recording a couple videos at once. That way I can get into the flow! I will decide on the topics beforehand and then write out a couple main points. Preplanning can help to MOTIVATE you to get the videos done.

Some people will also write out a script first, which may be helpful if you tend to lose your train of thought while speaking to the camera. There are cool apps that will record video on your phone and show you the script at the same time. An easy one to use is Teleprompter for Video. You can put your script into a Google Doc or Dropbox and share it with the app. This tool made shooting video much easier for me and I hope it helps you!

Your smartphone will pick up your voice enough to be audible on video. No mic necessary! Just make sure you are in a semi quiet place if it is a topic where it is just you speaking to the camera.

Here are some more tips for getting on camera:

  1. Use calm, open body language. Don’t cross your arms, since this makes you look closed-off.
  2. Smile, especially at the beginning and end of your video. It makes a huge difference!
  3. Slow down slightly when you talk, and make an effort to enunciate clearly.
  4. I keep saying it but I’ll say it once more…practice, practice, practice. Watch footage of yourself and identify the areas where you could improve. Then make a conscious effort to work on those things.

Video Resolution and Size

You will normally want to shoot your video in the landscape orientation, that is, with your phone turned on its side.  This will produce a 16:9 video ratio, which works best with most social media platforms. Shoot your video at the highest resolution your phone is capable of producing.  At a minimum, you will want to shoot in the resolution called “1080p” which is also known as “Full HD.” These videos are 1920 x 1080 pixels and will look great across all platforms.

Edit Your Video

Basic editing is possible with your camera software on your phone.  For more advanced editing, you may wish to turn to one of many free video editing applications.  Since you’re already shooting the video on your phone, you can use a free app for Android or Apple to take your production to the next step.  There are many to choose from. Some top apps:

Magisto

Wondershare Filmagora

iMovie

Lumen5

Add A Call To Action

If you are talking in the video, make sure to add a call to action at the end. This means tell people what to do next! For example, if you are talking about something in your newsletter, let’s say the upcoming events at your school, make sure to say something quick at the end to the wider audience of parents. Tell them if they would like their child to join your center, to call to book a tour, and you can’t wait to talk to them! You could also create an image you can add to the end of every video encouraging people to book a tour.

Post Your Video To Social Media

Now you are ready to post! If you are posting any videos to your website, you will want to take one last step to optimize and compress the video files.   This step retains the quality and resolution of the final product while making the size of the file smaller. The smaller the file, the faster the video will load for your website audience. Luckily, compressing your videos is easy with a free app called “Handbrake”. Handbrake runs on MacOS, Windows and Linux and is easy to use.  It can often reduce your file size by 50% or more.

I hope this post inspires you to create video for your child care center or preschool! Once you get a process down and get a couple videos out there, it will be easy.

Want to learn more?

Enrollment just opened for Social Media For Child Care: The Ultimate Course. You won’t want to miss this one time event. Click to learn more.

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The Key To More Social Media Engagement For Your Child Care Business

When you post for your child care center on Facebook, do you feel like you’re talking to a void? Are you fed up putting work into your posts, just to see no results for your efforts? There’s one huge thing to understand about Facebook (and many social media platforms) and that is how to get engagement. When you know how to engage with your audience, you actually start seeing results from your efforts.

Engagement is when someone likes, shares, or comments on your posts. A lot of engagement signals to the social media platform that your post is interesting and relevant. This means your post gets shown more, and then you get even more engagement. This gets your business in front of more of the right people.

But how do you craft engaging posts? It comes down to understanding what your audience cares about.

Your key audience members are parents and community members. And this means ALL parents, not just the ones enrolled in your center! It means anyone that could potentially care about your child care business and become a client.

Most of you are parents yourselves, or at least know what it’s like to be one. Think about the values that are important as a parent. What would you care about? What would be worth your time to look at or to tell others about?

For example, a post about an arts and crafts idea may get a couple likes, but a post that taps into what it’s like to be a mom in a busy world, or a post that a parent can really identify with, will likely get a lot more engagement and shares. Most Moms already feel guilty that they don’t have enough time to craft with their kids, or create that cute recipe on Pinterest, so they will most likely skim over that post about crafts. But if you can create or share posts that tap into their values or identity, that is where you are going to get the most engagement.

It’s also important to take a step beyond posting only about your center. Remember to try to be helpful and engaging for any parent!

The following stats will help you further understand…

People share and engage:

  • To bring valuable and entertaining content to others. 49% say sharing allows them to inform others of products they care about and potentially change opinions or encourage action.
  • To define ourselves to others. 68% share to give people a better sense of who they are and what they care about.
  • To grow and nourish our relationships. 78% like and share information online because it lets them stay connected to people they may not otherwise stay in touch with.
  • Self-fulfillment. 69% like and share information because it allows them to feel more involved in the world.
  • To get the word out about causes or brands. 84% share because it is a way to support causes or issues they care about.

Keep all of these reasons in mind the next time you are on social media and are about to like something or share something. Is it because of one of these reasons? Most likely yes!

A social post will get much more engagement when it resonates with people’s values, taps into their self-identity, or will help them demonstrate to others what is important to them. Think about how that relates to your child care and your audience. How can you tap into the values or self-identities of a parent?

Sharing helps people connect to others, so tap into that motivation. What do they care enough about to share? What really taps into their values? What demonstrates their identity? Think about what you share on social media.

I hope this article helps you think a little bit differently about what you post on social media and helps you get more engagement for your child care center, preschool, or early education center!

Now, WHAT to post on social media? Here’s my content guide cheat sheet, just for child care centers and preschools, to give you a whole lot of ideas on what to post on your business page for better engagement.

CLICK TO ACCESS THE CONTENT GUIDE CHEAT SHEET

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How To Use Facebook Groups To Market Your Child Care

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You’ve probably noticed that Facebook is constantly testing and adding new features. It might drive some of us in the child care business crazy, as social media can sometimes be hard to keep up on while running a very involved business! Part of why I write this blog is to help you stay up to date with new features that are relevant to child care owners. This is one brand new (and free!) way to market your child care on social media. It just takes a little bit of know-how, which you can get from this step-by-step, and a dash of your time. 

The new feature is the ability to join Facebook groups as your business page. What this means is that you can seek out local Facebook groups (there might be more than you think!) and interact with people in those groups as your business. This is a great way to reach the local community, grow your following, increase your engagement, and be social with the right people! 

However, you’ve got to do it right to get engagement and not scare people off. No one likes spammy businesses! Some groups also have certain rules. In this step-by-step we’ll talk about how to find the right groups, how to interact as your page, when and what to post in the groups, and how to follow the rules so you don’t get kicked out!

Before reading anything else you need to remember this one rule for using Facebook groups:

THE NUMBER ONE RULE FOR USING FACEBOOK GROUPS AS YOUR BUSINESS: BE USEFUL AND BE ENGAGING! 

Just like your regular social media posts on your business page, you can’t just post promotions for your business. This is boring and not what people are interested in seeing in their Facebook groups. Think about posts that families will find useful, and you’ll become a rockstar. It’s important to create posts to allow families to get to know you better, get valuable information from you, and start thinking about you as a trusted authority (which you are!)

An example of this would be to link to a blog post or PDF about HOW to choose a child care, hopefully to your blog that lives on your website and highlights your center. This is much more engaging and useful than posting a self-promotion. Even if you don’t have blog on your website, helpful links that enable you to talk about your child care will go much further. For example, a link to the benefits of yoga or yoga resources for kids is helpful for families. You can add on to the post at the end that you offer yoga at your program. When you do this, your are being helpful and it’s not an ad.

Being Engaging vs Not Being Engaging In Facebook Groups Is The Difference Between…

This, Which Isn’t Very Engaging And Considered Self-Promotion:

Affordable child care, in home daycare, available from 6:30am to 7pm, now enrolling! Visit our website at abcchildcare.com

Vs This, Which Is Engaging, Useful, And Sends You The Right Website Traffic:

This type of post isn’t self-promotion, yet attracts families with interests that align with the school’s core values. This school is being useful to local families with interests that align with their own and, therefore, beginning a relationship with them!

So, now you understand how to be helpful And engaging In Facebook Groups. How to do the rest? It’s easy! Just follow this step by step.

*This is on desktop – mobile may look a little different!

Step One: Search For Groups In Your Local Area

You’ve probably noticed the Facebook search bar and maybe have used it to search for businesses, friends, etc. Well you can also use it to search for groups. I’m going to start with the example of “Denver moms.” I’ll give you a list of different search terms we can use in later steps. 

USE THE SEARCH BAR:

Step Two: Make Sure To Select Groups In Your Search

After you search for a term, you’ll come to a screen that looks like the picture below. From here you want to make sure to choose “See All” to view all the groups, or click on the “Groups” tab. This shows you more groups to join.

Step Three: Select Active And Popular Groups And Press Join

Join any relevant groups. Try to stick to groups of over 1000, they will be more active and a better use of your time! Pretty straightforward, you got this!

Step Four: Choose To Join The Group As Your Business

When you click to join the group, a box will pop up where you can choose to join as your business. For example, you can see my own business page, and I am choosing to join as that page. Some groups will not allow you to join as your page. In that case, there won’t be a pop up box. But the majority of the time you will have the option. 

Step Five: Answer Any Questions The Group May Require

Some groups will require you to answer some questions to join the group. For example, “Denver Professional Moms” group asked me what part of Colorado I am in, what my profession is, and if I have kids. Just answer the questions as honestly and as best you can. If the group decides not to allow you in, don’t fret, it just wasn’t a good fit. Some of the groups will be a good fit! 

Step Six: Remember The Rule….Valuable Content!

When you’re answering the questions it’s important to remember that you are an early childhood education expert and that you have valuable advice for people in your local area. You won’t just be posting promotions. You’ll be posting content families want, as you learned earlier. I tell you this because as you see below, some groups will tell you that you can’t sell or post promotions. Don’t be scared away by these questions. If you stick to my rule of posting valuable content you are good to go! For the example below I just typed “Yes, I understand.”

Step Seven: Look For Other Groups To Join Using Local Search Terms

Start off with simple local groups. Just searching for your city like “Denver” or “Exeter, New Hampshire” or “Sandwich Massachusetts” will turn up some groups. News groups and community centered groups are great places to post. Some of these even allow general business promotions, so this is a great place for that.

Here are some other search terms:

  • [your city] moms
  • [your geographical area] moms
  • [your state] moms
  • [your city] parents/parenting
  • [your geographical area] parents/parenting
  • [your state] parents/parenting
  • [your city] kids
  • [your geographical area] kids
  • [your state] kids [your city] child
  • [your geographical area] child
  • [your state] child
  • [your city] baby
  • [your geographical area] baby
  • [your state] baby

Some towns are small and you may not have many groups you can find. For example, I am originally from Exeter, New Hampshire and when I search for many terms in the town I don’t find much. But if I expand my geographical region to New Hampshire Moms or Southern New Hampshire Moms or New Hampshire Seacoast Moms, I find a lot more! Just play around with the terms.

Step Eight: Read The Rules Of The Group Before You Post

Make sure to read the rules. Some groups encourage self-promotion, while others strictly forbid it. Understand your groups.  For example, this group in the example below does not mind an occasional share of your business.  Sometimes the rules will be in the “About Us” and sometimes they will be pinned at the top post of the group. Sometimes they will be in the questions you answer before joining the group. It might be helpful to keep a spreadsheet or list on what groups allow, so when you go back to post on a regular basis, you will have a good reference. 

Step Nine: Start Posting

If you have a blog for your child care, this gives you tons of content to post in the groups. If you don’t, consider shooting a couple blog-type videos and grab them to post in the groups every once in a while. If you need some ideas on what your videos could be about, check out my social media content guide cheat sheet here. If it is a general community page, pictures of “news” at the preschool is always great.

A general guideline on frequency, is once a week. However, it also depends on how often people are posting in the group. If it is a quiet, slow group where people only post a couple times a week, you may want to post every other week. If it is an active group with more than 15 posts per day you may want to consider posting more. If you are posting regular engaging content on your Facebook page you can just grab that content. Link back to your page when you can, as long as it’s in a useful way! You’ll also start getting a lot morel likes on your Facebook page when start marketing your business in Facebook groups.

I hope this helps you with your social media marketing! Feel free to comment with any questions you may want answered on marketing your preschool business.

Do you struggle with figuring out what to post on your child care center’s social media pages? Never be stumped again…get the Social Media Content Cheat Sheet, just for child care centers.

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Is Your Facebook Page Helping Or Hurting Your Business?

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Have you ever Googled yourself? How about your business name? I bet you have! Guess what? Parents are Googling your business too!

If a parent is searching around for child care and have just learned about yours, they will almost always Google your business name to find out more. In Google search results, your business’s Facebook page will more than likely show up. The parent will be landing on it and what they see immediately shapes their opinion of you, before they ever even call you or walk in the door. This means, like it or not, the Facebook page of your child care center, preschool, or early education center is already one of the most visited online sites representing your business!

So is your Facebook page helping you or hurting you?

A well-maintained and engaging Facebook page with a strong following can be a powerful marketing tool that can turn into enrollments. And a neglected, deserted page can send people away, causing a parent to second guess your center, wondering why there aren’t reviews or pictures, and creates a sense they can’t trust you with their child.

Let’s step into the shoes of that parent that is shopping around online for child care centers. This is a big decision! They are gathering information online and forming opinions, before ever talking to you! This parent is comparing, checking out websites, and landing on the Facebook pages of the all these centers. If a parent lands on an almost empty Facebook page that has been forgotten, it starts to form a sense of distrust. Think about how much more likely the parent is to pick up the phone and call the business with a vibrant Facebook page that showcases lots of pictures, has a lot of reviews, features, descriptions, and many likes. An engaging, interactive Facebook page helps parents form a connection with you and makes them aware that other people trust you too. It nurtures a relationship.

Why is this? Any client needs to get to know, like, and trust you before they decide to do business with you. This is especially true in the child care industry where a huge amount of trust is necessary! Think about all that information a client gathered before they decided to even give you a call for a tour. They Googled you, they looked through your website, they read reviews online, they got emails from you, they saw your Facebook page, they read your blog. THEN they called you to ask you questions, they asked their friends, and THEN came in for a tour. All of these points of communication are called “touch points.” The more touch points, the more a relationship develops. And it’s really all about forming a relationship during this time and building trust. An engaging, optimized Facebook page helps you do this.

So how do you start optimizing your page? How do you develop a page that helps your enrollment building? It’s time to start posting valuable content on a regular basis! This complete content guide teaches you how to do this if you need some more help.

A lot of child care business owners get frustrated because they don’t have a lot of likes on their Facebook pages. This is totally normal for child care centers and in fact, many local brick and mortar businesses! With time, consistency, and an understanding of what is engaging to your audience, your Facebook page WILL grow if you stick to it. When you have excellent engagement and are posting useful, valuable content, your fan base will grow organically. Using this guide on what to post on your child care’s social media pages will show you how to do that.

To make a child care decision, a parent really NEEDS all these touch points to get to know you. Social media is essentially a tool for nurturing a relationship with potential families! And ultimately, Facebook is an effective marketing platform that you can use to send traffic to your website, collect leads, and convert leads into enrollments. But where do you start? Start by posting consistently on Facebook. With consistency, you will get results!

If you get overwhelmed by coming up with daily content to post on your child care business’ social media accounts, follow this definitive content guide on how to create a powerful social media presence. It will simplify the process and ensure you reach your audience with ease!

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Having An Event Or Open House At Your Child Care? Here’s How To Market It On Social Media!

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An event like an open house or a family fun day is a common way to invite families in your area to experience your child care center and possibly enroll with you. But how do you get the word out about your event? Social media can be an extremely effective tool for marketing your child care event or open house. Here are some common social media strategies I use with my child care clients to get more people to attend their event…

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How To Get Child Care Enrollment Leads From Social Media…

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If you’ve been waiting for the right time of the year to run social media ads for your child care business, this is it! As most of you know, the beginning of the year is usually a very busy time for child care centers. January can mean a time of change for some families, and other families are planning for changes to come. That means it’s time to get some social media ads out there to engage with the people that will need your services.

My child care clients have been seeing great results this January. Social media ads can get expensive towards the end of the year (November & December), because you are competing with all the other businesses that are running ads over the holidays. (This happens because you usually pay for the ads based on a bidding system.)

How should you take advantage of this time of the year? For many of my clients, I will run offers to potential families for a special to save $300-$1000 off enrollment. I’ll put together targeted Facebook ads that run specifically to families with the right age children within driving distance to the school. A parent will see the ad and click to input their information in order to get the flyer or coupon to save on enrollment. On the coupon will be a number to call to book a tour. If they don’t book a tour right then, it’s ok, now you have their email information and phone number so you can continue to market to them throughout the year. If you are consistent about sending out emails and engaging with your leads, this means even more enrollments down the road.

This January I’ve seen some of the best results from social media ads yet. If you have an offer or special that you’re running in a newspaper or have on a flyer, now is a great time to create an online ad for it. I started a campaign for one of my clients just a couple days ago and they have already gotten 6 leads!

If you try out this strategy, make sure to have a tracking number set up that you use on the coupon, so you know which calls are coming from the ads. The coupon should also state that the touring family should show the coupon to get the savings. The director or person doing the tour can then mark that person in your tracking software as coming from Facebook. This is a complete system that will let you know exactly how many enrollments you get from running the campaign.

If you’ve been waiting to build Facebook ads, now is the right time.

Try it out, and let me know what kind of results you get!

Do you struggle with figuring out what to post on your child care center’s social media pages? Never be stumped again…get the Social Media Content Cheat Sheet, just for child care centers.

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Social Media For Child Care: Better Engagement Means Lower Cost Ads

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There’s one important thing you should understand about engagement on social media. It’s something I call the “Wave Effect” that happens with Facebook and Google search and riding the wave will save you money with ads!

When your audience starts responding to and engaging with a particular post, Facebook recognizes that this is happening, and is more likely to show your next post to more people (or more of your posts, if it is happening a lot). In other words, if you put out a highly engaging post one day, the next post you put out after that is much more likely to reach more people.

Facebook also recognizes when a particular link is getting a lot of click-throughs from your posts and that makes a difference in creating your ads. If you create an ad from a link that is getting a lot of social media attention, then Facebook is much more likely to show your ad to your audience, which will cost you less, since it has been deemed relevant and engaging.

For example: Let’s say you post a link on your Facebook page leading to your blog post called, “10 Questions You Should Ask Every Daycare On A Tour,” and you get a lot of natural engagement. Then, when you turn around and create an ad or a boosted post with that link, you’ll save money because it has already been deemed a high-quality link. This means you’ll reach more people for less money. So, an ad or boosted post can be used to amplify an already engaging post to reach a massive amount of people with a more cost-effective ad.

If we put out a social media post, and it’s engaging, highlights our brand, and supports our marketing, this is generally a good time to at least boost it, because it will be a more cost-effective boost, and we’ll “surf the wave” of engagement, so to speak.

Facebook even takes into account signals from around the web. If you get a lot of website visitors because people search for “child care Dayton, Ohio” and you’re the first one that shows up in search results for those terms, Facebook recognizes you as a high quality site. This means they will more likely show your posts and ads to your website at a lower cost. It all works together!

Hate staring at your computer screen, trying to figure out what to post on social media? Get The Social Media Content Cheat Sheet, Just For Child Care Centers

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Just For Child Care: 10 Social Media Hacks

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If you are wanting tips on how to grow your social media audience and connect with new families, then look no further.

Here are 10 Social Media Hacks for your child care to help you grow your presence and kick start your social media…

1. Add all of your social media links to your email signature. Every email you send should automatically give people a connection to your website, Facebook page, Instagram, Twitter, blog, etc.

2. Boost a Facebook post. Even with a $5 budget you have the potential to get HUGE reach! By playing around with strategy and carefully selecting your target audience, you can connect with families right in your area and market your child care center to the right people. You can tweak your settings and gain the best reach by logging into the Facebook Ads Manager and following the prompts.

3. Always include graphics with your Facebook posts. Adding graphics to your posts can dramatically increase the number of people that view, comment and share them, helping to build engagement

4. Schedule your daily social media posts ahead of time. Rather than throwing up a random post at a random time of the day, set aside some time once or twice a week to plan and schedule. It will save you time in the long run and make things much easier! Scheduling also helps create consistency for your audience and sets expectations for when they’ll see posts from you. A user-friendly scheduling site such as Buffer gives you the ability to send out one post on multiple accounts- Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Pinterest! And because Buffer allows you to see all of your posts at a glance, you can evenly spread out the different types of content you share.

5. Optimize your posts for engagement. Use hashtags, add descriptive text, and ask questions. A ‘call-to-action’ will significantly increase engagement on your social media posts.

6. Use Geotags. A simple way to build your local network and attract new clients is to add geotags for the location of your photos posted to Instagram and Facebook. After you’ve posted, click into the geotag you used and start browsing through the photos others have shared using the same tag. Now you can connect with local families and businesses, and start a conversation that could potentially lead to new clients and enrollment for your child care center.

7. Use popular #hashtags. Hashtags are great for visibility, and increased visibility leads to follows, likes, clicks, and more engagement. Websta has a running tally of each day’s most popular Instagram hashtags. If any of these fit with what you’re posting, it is a good chance to see the effect a popular hashtag has on your engagement! Hashtags can also be used on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

8. Create ‘Pinnable’ content on your website & blog. Pinterest can be one of the most effective ways to promote your child care center online. Have pinnable images on both your website and on every blog post you publish and post them to your Pinterest page. You have two opportunities with each pin to add your link: one in the description and one in the source for the pin. Linking back is always key!

9. Keep it brief. Try to keep posts relatively short. Aim for between 100-250 characters in length as they generally receive 60% more comments, likes and shares.

10. Engage and communicate. Search out new people and local businesses to follow on all social media platforms. Take time to comment on their posts. ‘Liking’ posts is great, but making a comment gets more attention from both that person and the public. Get your child care center noticed!

Get the content guide to help you with your child care’s social media content.

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Child Care Owners: Do You Have Facebook Reviews? Now Is The Time.

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Facebook is testing out a new service similar to Yelp that could impact your child care business. It is a search engine of local Facebook business pages based on reviews.

So therefore, a potential client can go in and search for child care services near them and see all the top reviewed child care businesses. You can check it out for yourself here.

A search for “child care” in my area turns up results like this:


You probably already know how important reviews are for your child care business and Facebook is one hot spot where you should be collecting them, alongside the others. But this new service is all the more reason to start doing it NOW.

While Facebook is still testing and perfecting this service (there were some non-related search results in there for my area) it is definitely something to keep an eye on. It’s yet another area where parents (potential clients) will be able to find you, judge credibility, and do their information gathering on their enrollment decision.

If you don’t see any way for people to give you reviews on your Facebook business page you need to make sure your page is categorized as a “local business.” Only local businesses can receive reviews. You can change your category in the “About & Info” section of your business page.

How to collect reviews? Just ask. Send out a link to your email list. When you send out a link to the reviews section of your Facebook page people will automatically have the option to leave their own review at the top if they are signed in to Facebook (which most are). Offer an incentive for leaving a review such as a drawing for a gift card. Getting these reviews is not only great for where you show up in the Facebook Services listing but also where your Facebook page shows up all around the internet (Google, Yahoo, etc.).

Now go out there and get some reviews for your business!

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

 

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10 Social Media Post Ideas For Child Care Centers

Coming up with content to post on social media that is both engaging and has high organic (free) reach can be a little overwhelming. It’s important to have an even mix of “outside content,” such as articles, quotes, etc. (which we provide for you in the Done For You program), as well as “inside content,” which are posts created by you to illustrate your school’s personality and brand. But what if you’re stumped, staring at the computer, trying to figure out what to post beyond all those pictures of cute kids that you have?

Here are 10 social media post ideas to help you craft interesting content and increase engagement and reach on your Facebook business page:

1. Video

Video is the hot topic this year in the social media world as a strategy to increase engagement on social media, especially Facebook. I’ve noticed better results when uploading a video directly to the Facebook page. It doesn’t have to be completely professional, just take five minutes and use your phone to get some quick video. (And don’t film vertically!) Film an activity going on in the classroom. Record you or a teacher giving a parenting or early childhood education tip. Have a new staff member say hello and introduce themselves. Anything that is relative to your childcare and conveys a positive message can be a candidate for a video subject. The possibilities go on!

2. Behind the scenes

Take pictures or get a quick video of everyone saying “hello” at your team meetings or staff get-togethers. People love seeing what it’s like “behind the scenes” at your business and it gives your school more of a personality.

3. Teacher and staff features

Feature different teachers or staff (with fun pictures!). Tell an interesting “did-you-know?” about the staff, their favorite quote, or a picture of them with their family. Get creative!

4. Your school’s story

Craft posts that tell the story of your school, or “the why” of your business. Tell about features and unique benefits that set your school apart and make it different. Illustrate with photos or take snippets from your “about us” page.

5. Personal posts and photos

Yes, your audience wants to know more about you. Don’t be afraid to share your own photos or snippets from you own life. The most engaging posts on Kris’s page are usually ones of her with her family or on trips. Let your audience get to know you a little. This is a great opportunity and platform to create a level of trust that parents need to have with you.

6. Blog posts

The biggest mistake people make with a blog post is posting the link to the blog on social media once and then never posting it again. If you have a blog, leverage it! Post about your blog posts multiple times (spaced out, of course) but use different wording. Brainstorm different titles, take a quote from it, or create a different image for it. You put all the work into posting the blog, now get the word out!

7. Testimonials and reviews

Testimonials and reviews provide great content! If you have video testimonials, post them on social media. Grab quotes from the testimonials and reviews and create a graphic to post. Canva.com is a great tool to help you easily create graphics. You can also take a screenshot of any online review and repost it to your company page and say something like, “Thanks for the great review!”

8. Quotes from you or your staff

Create a graphic of a quote from something you or your staff have said or written that illustrates your school’s philosophies on early childhood education, that supports your brand, or that create a little bit of fun. This is another chance to get creative!

9. Cross-promotion

Team up with a business that offers a complimentary product or service (kids hairstylists, pediatricians, etc.), and help cross-promote each other. Tag each other in Facebook status posts, recommend that your fans ‘like’ each other’s Pages, or simply share each other’s content.

10. Throw-back Thursdays

People love seeing old photos! Post some old photos of your school and the kids. Make sure to hashtag #tbt (which means throw-back Thursday).

And ok, yes, post all the cute pictures of the kids at your school. But make sure to tell the story behind the photos. What are the kids learning? How are they learning it? Who is teaching it? Illustrate your philosophies and school’s brand when you are posting these photos to remind people about what makes you different, unique, and awesome!

For more ideas of what to post on social media, get the content guide.

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