Did you know that 93% of all businesses use Facebook?
This makes Facebook a great platform for engaging with potential parents, but it’s also competitive. If you don’t have a strategy to improve your Facebook engagement, you’ll lose out on new leads. Facebook reports that 2.18 billion people are reached through ads and content.
Discover how to strengthen your content strategy to increase the number of parents who see and interact with your posts, then ultimately convert.
The Importance of Improving Your Childcare Center's Facebook Engagement Rate
Millennial parents make up your largest demographic, and most of them are already using Facebook. In fact, 83% of Millennial parents use Facebook every day. Your potential leads may inquire about care with another childcare provider first if you don’t have an advertising and content plan. And the childcare provider who follows up first has an 80% higher chance of getting that enrollment.
Best Practices: How to Increase Your Facebook Engagement Rate
1) Determine a Regular Cadence for Posting
It’s tempting to post on social media as much as possible. Sharing information about your centers, classrooms, and curriculum on Facebook is useful, but there’s a sweet spot. You don’t want to overload your audience with information.
With less posting, Buffer increased their engagement on Facebook by 3 times. Previously, they were posting more than 25 posts a day across all channels. Now, Buffer averages 4-5 valuable posts per day. After an initial drop in engagement, these rates significantly increased. By posting in fewer quantities and focusing on quality, they gained more direct engagement from consumers.
Prospective parents are searching for consistent, quality interactions. With fewer low-quality posts and a consistent posting cadence, the quality of your Facebook Page improves. Plus, you develop a pattern that Facebook’s algorithm picks up easier. Meaning you reach more high-quality leads and gain potential parents who are ready to convert. Stick to a consistent time of day, level of content relevancy, and posting time to improve your Facebook engagement rate.
2) Post When Your Prospective Families Are Online
Millennial parents are the first generation to imbed technology into their everyday lives. Craft high-quality Facebook content and align your posting schedule with high traffic times when parents are online. That way, you can interact with more families when it's convenient for them. Your goal is to generate more leads and increase your Facebook engagement rate – through consistent and relevant content that reaches the right parent audience. The best time to post on Facebook is on Wednesday at 11 am and from 1 pm to 2 pm.
Optimal Facebook posting schedule
3) Use Images and Videos to Attract Attention
Facebook is a popular platform because of its visual display of interactive and image-based content. A study conducted by BuzzSumo reveals that in comparison to text-only posts - videos and images increase Facebook engagement rate by more than two times. Plus, prospective parents prefer eye-catching content because it’s easier on the attention span. And when the average attention span is only 2.5 seconds (just 1.7 seconds on mobile), visual content is essential for increasing parent engagement.
Tip: You can easily store your center director’s email signature as a merge variable with childcare software. Doing this ensures your signature is always sent from the correct person.
Example Facebook Page: How They Got It Right
Worried your content is too text-heavy? Take a look at this great Facebook video post from Busy Bees childcare.
Busy Bees Facebook post
Busy Bees childcare posted a high-quality video to showcase an enrollment promotion. The video reflects their brand imagery, colors, and fonts. Their message provides value by engaging parents with a promotional deal that has a clear action.
Plus, the text is brief, straightforward, displays a deadline, and uses emojis that align with their brand colors. Busy Bees video will reach more parents’ feeds and increase audience engagement because of its relevancy.
Tip: It’s helpful to add captions and headers to videos. On average, 93% of Facebook videos are viewed without sound. A brief caption ensures parents can still understand your message, even with the sound off.
4) Stream on Facebook Live to Reach Parents in Real-Time
Facebook Live is a real-time, interactive Facebook feature. It lets you and your staff directly Livestream to prospective families that are actively browsing Facebook for care, insights, and updates. In addition, currently enrolled families can engage with you during a Facebook Live.
Viewers react, share, and comment during the stream. It’s a simple, interactive way to authentically use the power of video to tell people about your childcare business. After every Facebook Live, a recording of the video is published on your Facebook Business Page, so it can be watched again later or shared across social media. Plus, you can promote these Live events in advance on your page so parents can plan to attend.
Check out these interesting Facebook Live topics to increase your engagement...
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Share the behind-the-scenes at one or more of your center locations. Highlight a new building amenity, new teacher, or give a virtual tour.
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Explain or demonstrate how to do something. Show parents how to request a tour or submit a waitlist form.
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Discuss childcare news and weekly tips. Share updates that humanize you and your center.
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Host an FAQ session - answering questions from parents in real-time. Prospective and enrolled families will value your authenticity.
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5) Be A Thought Leader and Industry-Expert
Prospective parents are searching for care with multiple childcare providers. Keep them engaged on social media so you stay top of mind for them.
In the realm of marketing, there’s a communication guideline called ‘The Rule of 7’ that recommends a prospective family needs to hear, see, or read about your childcare program an average of seven times to become likely to enroll their child for care. Engage with a family seven times through social media follow-up and sharing valuable, thought-leading content to increase your likelihood of winning that enrollment by 20%.
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Post authentic stories from your staff’s journey in childcare. Ask willing participants to share why they got started in the industry and what they like most about working at your center. Add humor to your stories to be authentic and build real relationships with parents.
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Touch on trending topics in childcare. Whether it’s the latest children’s books, significant COVID-19 updates, or other hot topics in childcare. This type of thought leadership content is a fantastic way to increase your Facebook engagement.
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Share parenting tips. Post links or ads from your blog or trustworthy external articles.
Learn how to create an engaging Facebook content plan to boost enrollment.
But...Keep it Brief
American adults consume media for 11 hours or more daily. So, it’s important to create quick, digestible posts. Remember, many parents have a shorter attention span because of their busy schedules. For Facebook posts, you ideally want to stay within the range of 50 characters or fewer.
6) Optimize Your Childcare Marketing by Monitoring Analytics
A crucial part of any childcare marketing strategy is monitoring your social media performance. After all, if you’re not keeping track of what works and what doesn’t, you'll miss out on insightful information. Fortunately, Facebook has three in-platform ways to access important data: Facebook Business Suite, Creator Studio, and Facebook Insights.
Facebook Business Suite
As of summer 2021, Facebook Business Suite is an alternative to what was formerly known as Facebook Analytics. Facebook Business Suite is an in-house solution to access data about engagement (reach, impressions, interactions, etc.). You’ll also find data on the demographics of your audience and followers.
Creator Studio
Creator Studio measures new followers, impressions, engagement, loyalty, and provides a viewer breakdown. However, it’s for creators, not necessarily businesses looking to measure childcare-specific engagement metrics.
Facebook Insights
Facebook Insights is primarily for measuring behavioral analytics. It identifies engagement trends (patterns in parent follows, watches, and likes). It’s also beneficial for measuring Facebook ad performance. This helps track your ROI (return on investment) for any invested or paid advertising efforts on Facebook.
Integrate with a Childcare Experience Platform to Achieve Success
To boost your childcare organization's Facebook engagement, remember to:
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Post on Facebook during optimal times.
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Get creative with visual components.
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Share thought-provoking content, rather than only sales-heavy pitches.
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Monitor what's working and what's not within your Facebook marketing efforts.
It’s vital to track how many of your leads are coming from Facebook. In addition to using in-house Facebook analytics tools -use a solution to organize Facebook Lead Ad inquiries and Facebook Messenger conversations in one centralized place. With a Childcare Experience Platform, never lose out on engaging a prospective parent. Automate follow-up to build lasting relationships early on. For more information, check out the In-Depth Guide to Generating More Family Leads with Facebook Marketing.
