Posts

When Should You Boost A Facebook Post To Promote Your Child Care Center?

Boosting a post is one of the quickest and easiest ways to increase engagement and grow likes on your child care business Facebook page. Some businesses invest a couple dollars into boosting every post just for this reason. But we all have a limited budget and what does engagement and likes really get us at the end of the day? (Besides a fleeting good feeling that people are starting to notice our child care online.) Your boosted posts should also be sending your website traffic & sending out a message to let people know what your child care business is all about.

As in any marketing, it is important to remember your overall goals when deciding where to spend your money. If you are going to invest money into boosting a post make sure the post is:

1. Sending your website traffic

And/Or

2. Supporting and demonstrating your child care “brand”, philosophies, and values while providing something of value

If the post is a link to send your website traffic, you don’t just have to stick with the standard “Now enrolling at….”. Get creative! You can link back to blog posts, testimonials, reviews, photo galleries, etc. Most content you post can be tied back to your center and linked. Make sure there is a clear call to action such as “Click here to read more” or “Check out more testimonials here.”

If the post is supporting your child care philosophies and what you have to offer you can still link back to your website. For example if it is a picture of kids in the extracurricular yoga class you can say something like, “The kids having a blast in Miss Mary’s weekly yoga class. Yoga is beneficial for kids because it reduces stress and supports healthy habits. Click here to learn more about our yoga programs…”

Even if you aren’t linking back to your website, think about how the post is supporting your brand and values. Craft every boosted post so that it fosters a sense of community, teaches, inspires, and creates a relationship with the parents that are interested in what you have to offer.

When boosting a post it will have to pass all of Facebook’s advertising policies. One big thing is that the image cannot have more than 20% text. Here is a really simple tool where you can upload a graphic and check to see how much text is in the image: Click here.

While boosted posts are great for quick and easy marketing for your child care, Facebook is also a whole advertising platform that can help you turn clicks into enrollments. Read more about Facebook advertising beyond boosted posts here.

Click here for the content guide cheat sheet for more tips on social media for childcare.

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Social Media For Child Care: 6 Tools To Create Stellar Graphics

The most engaging social media is all about imagery. No matter the social media platform, images are what grab the attention of your audience. And you don’t have to be a graphic design expert to create engaging images. All you need are the right tools and you will be on your way to quickly creating images that tell the story of your child care business. Here is a roundup of the top 6 tools to help you create awesome graphics for social media.

1. Canva

This is one of my go-to tools for creating beautiful graphics for social media. The website is very intuitive and you can use one of the thousands of templates they already have or build your own. This is a wonderful tool to build images that let your child care brand shine! While some of the templates are not free, there are quite a bit that are free to use.

From the menu, you can select a layout, search for images, purchase stock photos, add effects to your image, and customize the graphic to match your brand color palette and fonts. Play with it, get creative, and see how your audience responds! My clients have told me they’ve gone on to use this tool to create other stellar marketing materials for their child care.

2. Over

Over is a mobile app that allows you to easily create graphics on-the-go to upload to social media right from your phone. Snap photos around your child care, layer on some text, add effects, and there is your post for the day. Easy as that!

3. PicMonkey

PicMonkey is another go-to tool that I use for creating graphics for child care centers. It is similar to Canva in that it is easy to use and offers an array of templates and project types to get your started. A bonus feature of PicMonkey is that you can create some amazing collages, which you can use in any marketing promotions or on the Pinterest boards for your child care center.

4. Pixabay

I always get asked by child care center owners and directors where they can get stock photos. While I highly encourage you to use photos from around your child care center as much as possible, sometimes you need specific pictures to express an idea, holiday, etc. Pixabay is a GREAT resource for FREE stock photos.

5. Social Image Resizer Tool

I am so excited to have just discovered this tool. I can’t tell you how much time I’ve spent inefficiently resizing images for different social media uses. No more! Check out this website to help you resize your images!

6. Facebook Grid Tool

Ok so originally this article was going to be 5 tools but I couldn’t leave this one out. As most of you know, but maybe some of you don’t, paid ads on Facebook can not contain more than 20% of text. I use this Facebook Grid Tool almost every day to make sure I am under their 20% rule. You REALLY don’t want to upload images with more than 20% and get your ad disapproved. While it might be an inconvenience to you to re-upload a different graphic, it also counts “against” your Facebook account and could lead to it getting shut down someday. I wouldn’t want that to happen to you!

Hope this helps! Have fun creating some graphics for your child care business.

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

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