Being a part of your school’s parent council can be an onerous task. You are often left with very little time on your hands as there is much to do throughout the school year. Having to work on your parent council social media presence doesn’t have to be stressful and time-consuming, if you learn to use the tools that will make you more productive.
Here are some tools in my social media tool box that I have used with my Parent Council that I have found to be really useful. It has freed up some of my time without having to cut back on the quality and/or quantity of our parent council’s social media marketing.
Buffer
Don’t you hate having to always remember to pull out your phone and post when your next school pizza lunch or event is? Don’t fret. What if I told you you could schedule your social media updates over multiple accounts? Buffer does this and is a smarter way to share and schedule your information on Social Media. What Buffer does is simple. You add updates to your Buffer queue on your multiple social media accounts and it will be posted for you well spaced out over the day. Once you have used the tool for a little while it will even suggest the best posting times for better engagement.
Not in front of your desktop? No worries Buffer also has a mobile app that you can use on your Android or iOS device.
Keep in mind that Buffer does charge for premium accounts. I find that most school parent councils can get by using their free individual account. However, if you need to schedule more than 10 social media posts per account, I would suggest upgrading to their “Awesome” account which can be had for $10 USD/month. Buffer does provide a discount for prepaid yearly subscriptions.
For more information on Buffer visit: https://buffer.com/
TweetDeck
If your school only uses Twitter, another great tool to use is TweetDeck. It is free and will allow you to schedule your posts along with some other added features not found in Buffer such as TweetShrink. TweetShrink, when applied, will attempt to shorten your wordy tweets because we all know sometimes it is hard to get your message out in 140 characters or less. TweetDeck will also allow you to get notifications and alerts. If want to make sure you don’t miss important tweets from other parents, schools or school boards using a specific hashtag you can set up a pop-up or audio alert within TweetDeck.
For more information on TweetDeck visit: https://tweetdeck.twitter.com/
Canva
Now that you have been introduced to two social media tools to make posting your parent council’s social media information quick and easy it is time to take some of that saved time and put it into jazzing up your social media posts. With Canva, you can add images to attract your audience to your social media posts.
Canva is a tool loaded with enough easy-to-use features and functionality that anyone can use to help make your social media content more engaging and look like your parent council paid a graphic designer to put it together. It has an easy to use drag and drop interface that you can access from anywhere by simply using your web browser. It has a plethora of images, fonts and ready made layouts to help speed through the creative process. The best thing about Canva, however, is that it is free! The only time you’ll need to pay is when you decide to use one or more of their premium images or layouts. In most cases these premium images/layouts sell for the low price of $1 each.
For more information on Canva visit: https://www.canva.com/create/social-media-graphics/
Don’t waste any more of your time. Start filling up your own social media tool box.
Using tools like Buffer, TweetDeck and Canva will help remove the stress of having to post engaging Social Media posts. This will allow you to spend more of your time focusing on other Parent Council priorities. You don’t always have to work harder, just smarter. Using these tools should cut down your time and will help make putting your social media marketing together easier. Not to mention, these tools will also help create a polished social media presence.
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