Are parents excited to see your Facebook posts?
With so many people on Facebook, it’s difficult to grab the attention of your audience. In fact, Facebook is the world’s third-most visited website. While this makes it a great platform to engage with prospective families, you still have to encourage Millennial parents (your #1 demographic) to ‘stop the scroll’ by posting captivating content.
Read on to discover how you can create and post engaging content that Millennial parents want to interact with. Generate more high-quality leads with high-quality Facebook posts.
Use Facebook to Market Your Childcare Centers
Your childcare business is probably already using Facebook to spread information about your center locations. But the question is – how are you using it? Facebook is a great tool for increasing brand awareness in hopes of attracting new prospective families.
Do you find it hard to reach the right audience that interacts with the content you share? Without knowing how to create posts that feel relevant to your key demographic, important information and lead-generating posts (or ads) are overlooked by potential families.
The problem is two-fold:
1. You need to accurately target the right parent audience.
2. Once your content reaches the right audience, it needs to be relevant enough to make them want to comment, share, and learn more about your childcare centers.
In 2018, 78% of US consumers made purchases through discoveries on Facebook. That’s an understandable percentage considering most of your parent audience is browsing Facebook daily. When you post informative, eye-catching videos and images (classroom tours, center events) – the right parents are more likely to find information about your center.
If the Facebook algorithm notices your content is gaining traction with your current followers, it will increase your organization’s visibility by placing more of your posts on the feed of potential families. Facebook posts are a great way to highlight your center’s unique features to increase parent inquiries, tour sign-ups, and build a waitlist.
Plus, creating and posting content that proactively builds meaningful relationships to nurture parents requires a strategic posting and content plan. This may sound intimidating at first but not to worry - we’ve outlined the best practices for setting goals and creating a Facebook content plan.
Monitor How Facebook Impacts Your Childcare Center Enrollment Journey
Before building a posting schedule, define the goals you want your childcare business to achieve through social media. The most vital thing to consider when setting goals is the parent enrollment journey - what every parent goes through when searching for a childcare provider. Recognizing the needs of your parents at each enrollment stage gives you a clear number of follow-up communications, interactions, and Facebook posts to create.
Determine Your Childcare Business Goals
The enrollment journey covers every action families take – from discovering your center for the first time to registration and retention. Unfortunately, this journey often has many starts and stops. Delayed communication can cause parents to look elsewhere for care. But with the right Facebook posts, you can encourage prospective parents to continue along your enrollment journey.
Within the parent enrollment journey, all childcare businesses have KPIs (key performance indicators) to meet at each stage. For example, when a parent schedules a tour and completes it – that's a conversion. Conversion success (overall or by each stage) is a common KPI in childcare.
Set goals around what you want each Facebook post to accomplish throughout your enrollment journey. For example, do you need more parents scheduling tours at your center? Consider jumping on Facebook Live to do a Q&A around what to expect during a tour and how to easily schedule a tour with one of your centers.
Tip: Monitor how these posts impact your conversion success with childcare software to continually build meaningful relationships outside of Facebook.
Track Performance In Facebook
To understand your childcare business’ success, it’s helpful to know how your Facebook posts are performing. Within Facebook, three in-house analytics platforms give you information on follower count, total impressions, engagement, and reach. View this Facebook engagement blog to gain insight into each of these metrics and how they factor into your enrollment success.
Get to Know Your Key Parent Demographic
Once you have outlined relevant goals for your childcare business, it’s time to get familiar with your audience. Millennials make up 80% of today’s parents to children under the age of 12 and they prefer content that’s authentic, engaging, and detailed - yet still brief. On average, 87% of Millennials use Facebook at least once a week. Create consistent messaging that’s personalized, useful, and transparent to speak specifically to Millennial parents. Valuable content resonates with Millennial parents and increases the quality of your reach.
Check out this infographic below to better understand Millennial behavior and how it applies to learning about your childcare centers online.
For example, Cadence Education (a long-time LineLeader by ChildcareCRM user) provides valuable, age-appropriate content to engage with their prospective and current families. Doing so increases awareness about specific programs, classes, and promotions. It’s necessary to nurture prospective families so your business remains top of mind.
Create A Content Plan to Engage Regularly
Every delivery has a schedule. Your posts are like an individual, digital delivery to your followers – and they need to be on time. A content plan helps to keep your team on track, especially when they’re managing Facebook accounts for several different center locations. Check out this article that reveals the best content calendar templates for 2022.
The average engagement rate per Facebook post is 0.27%, but this drops significantly when audiences are overwhelmed by content. The sweet spot for posting lies at an average of 2 Facebook posts per day. Feel free to alter this number based on your staff's workload capacity. But whatever cadence you choose, remember to remain consistent.
Here are some best practices to help form your Facebook content plan:
1. Choose to schedule content ahead of time with Facebook’s scheduling functions or recycle and revive outdated content.
2. Post 1-2 Facebook videos or Live Sessions per week – regarding thought-provoking ideas or news in education, upcoming events hosted by your childcare organization, parenting tips, or announcements about your curriculum and programs.
3. Post a variety of information. Differentiate your content with fun images, a few personal posts, and a handful of enrollment-focused, lead-generating content.
4. Be authentic and write your copy creatively. Authenticity increases engagement and interaction rates. Use puns, jokes, and wordplay where they fit in, assuming it fits your brand guidelines. This helps break up dense information and you’re able to humor prospective families. Humor is a wonderful way to break through the information already on their feed.
5. Share your content plan with your teams. Tweak the deadlines based on their feedback, availability, and what trends or upcoming news they may see on the horizon.
Tip: With childcare CRM software, you can organize initial inquiries and automate parent responses to Facebook Lead Ads.
Learn more about the best Facebook engagement practices to increase enrollment conversions by subscribing to our blog.
What Type of Content Should You Post to Attract New Leads?
Current and prospective families enjoy valuable content. See below the types of childcare content that you can post to increase Facebook engagement.
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Blog posts are a great piece of content to engage parents. Write about topics that matter to them. For example - are you adding any updates to the curriculum? Opening a new program or class? Parents on the hunt for quality childcare want to know. If you want to share thought leadership content about hot topics in childcare, here’s a great example.
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Latest News & Events: What are you planning for the week, month, quarter, or year? Share exciting plans with your parents and potential parents on Facebook.
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Link to your Google and/or Facebook Reviews: Thank parents for leaving positive reviews about one or more of your childcare centers and then sharing them on your feed.
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Engage your audience: Ask your followers to participate in a Facebook poll, comment/share their own stories on parenting, or take part in an interactive survey.
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Photos – include images of your centers, teachers, staff, center events, and photos of children in your classrooms (if you have parent permission).
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Tip: Create your own images (or source images) that are the right size, so they display well on Facebook’s desktop and mobile modes. Here are a few examples:
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Profile photo: 180 x 180 pixels
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Cover image: 820 x 312 pixels
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Shared images in posts: 1,200 x 630 pixels
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For information on ad image sizes, view this Facebook Ads guide.
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Videos make up 82% of internet traffic and receive higher engagement on Facebook than other types of content. Because videos capture viewers’ attention longer than text or images can, they perform best with most Facebook algorithms.
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1-3 minute videos are ideal.
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Ensure you have good lighting; natural lighting looks the clearest on video.
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Keep your filming device on a level surface while shooting.
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Facebook Live is a great way to draw attention to your posts. Facebook Live lets you live-stream events, performances, and gatherings on Facebook. It includes features that let you engage with your audience.
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Video posts get at least 59% more engagement than other post types and it’s a great way to show the authenticity of your childcare business in real-time.
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Pair Quality Facebook Posts with Childcare Software to Boost Enrollment
Use Facebook to increase parent engagement with high-quality Facebook posts that target a wider audience. Reach more qualified leads that are open to long-term nurture or simply want to interact with your content more.
Once you’ve mastered creating engaging Facebook posts, boost key conversions and enrollment at every center by organizing Facebook inquiries. Keep track of all leads coming from Facebook with childcare software. Plus, use a childcare-specific CRM to automate meaningful parent follow-up that builds relationships. Your centers will never miss another enrollment opportunity.
Interested in Using LineLeader?
Schedule a quick demo to see how LineLeader works in real-time and discover how our integration with Facebook will help you increase conversion success.
Already Using LineLeader?
See the in-depth Facebook e-book to gain essential childcare marketing tips.
