While traditional marketing speaks (or screams) AT people “go there, do this, BUY THIS AND THEN BUY THAT”, content marketing is much more of a two way street. It is about providing interesting and valuable content for free, to ensure a really positive client experience, to build trust and a sense of community and ultimately loyalty to your ‘brand’.
Curating content for an organisation’s social media presence is a whole lot of fun and really rewarding, but it is an undertaking that can also be incredibly frustrating and enormously challenging. When that organisation is a school, it comes with a completely new set of trials; not the least being that for 12 weeks of the year, your main focus of your content (the students) are nowhere
to be seen because they are on holidays.
But this isn’t a time to relax and take your foot off the accelerator, in fact quite the opposite is true. How do you keep the momentum going during the school holidays? I am constantly searching for content ideas for schools and I generally come up with a whole lot of blanks. So I decided the time had come to generate my own list. I hope someone out there finds this helpful…
The first few things on the list are no-brainers: holidays.
1. Christmas. Send a Christmas message with a nice, Christmasy image. Send it on Christmas Day. Use a scheduling platform to schedule your post if you don’t want to actually do it yourself.
2. New Year’s Eve message. Build up some excitement about the year that is to come. Reflect back on the year that was.
3. New Year’s Day message. Same as Christmas: send it on the day. Make it full of hope and excitement for this year ahead.
4. Easter. Send an Easter message. Send it on the day. Schedule it if you must.
5. Australia Day. Get your best Aussie on. Wish all your community a very happy Australia Day. Please be sensitive to Indigenous Australians as this can be a time of deep sorrow for them.
6. If you work in a religious school, you should definitely have all the relevant religious days marked out on your content calendar as a matter of first priority.
• Are there any other holidays you can think of that fall during the school holidays?
Set challenges for students to be involved in every day during the holidays and then promote these challenges and remind parents of their existence! Some holiday ‘challenges’ could be:
Read something every day. Your school holiday posts around this could include promotion/reminders of the event.
7. Posing a question such as ‘What are you reading today?’
8. Ask students for feedback on their favourite authors (do this before they go on leave) and create a video.
9. When they return, ask them specific questions about the books they read and create a reading list for the following school holidays.
Other challenges could include:
10. Take a photo of your holiday. Submit your best shot.
11. Design a postcard for somewhere you visited during the holiday (it doesn’t have to be somewhere exotic or far away, the local park would be fine).
12. Calculate how far you travelled on your holidays.
Take your followers ‘behind the scenes’. It may sound mundane but keeping people up to date with what is happening at the school during the holidays is important.
13. Highlight a major cleaning or maintenance project.
14. Share photos of any building or updates taking place.
15. Share images of the school empty and quiet and remind students how much you are looking forward to their return.
Staff. Anyone who has ever worked in a school knows that staff don’t go on holidays in the same way that students do.
16. Share a photo of staff in working during the holidays, commenting on their commitment to the students.
17. Remind families that staff are in at the school, planning and making preparations or meeting.
18. Do a staff profile.
Quotes. A relevant quote with a great graphic.
19. A quote about reading or learning
20. Again, if you work in a religious school, a bible quote that is pertinent to your charism or some particular event or time in your religious calendar.
21. Something fun, and a bit light-hearted, to make people smile.
Sporting or other events. There’s nothing wrong with sharing news that is not necessarily related to your school, but may be of public interest.
22. If the Olympics or Commonwealth Games are on, go for gold! Post inspirational quotes or messages of congratulations!
23. If there is a sporting event such as a grand final, you can ask your followers who they are backing.
24. If there is a team or a person who is even remotely connected to your school participating in a major sporting event, be sure to wish them well.
More and more parents are turning to social media for updates and information. You could include posts such as:
25. Return to school dates
26. Reminders about uniforms
27. Upcoming dates for the following school term
And finally, just for fun, play around with your social media platforms a little. Remind people that you are there. Get nostalgic.
28. Post something about an event that is happening in the local area; a fun run, a charity event, a school holiday special event. Really become a part of the local community. If you promote local events, you may just get a shout out in return.
29. On this day. Have a look at what was happening ‘on this day’ in history. Who was born? What monumental historical event took place? What little fun fact can you find relevant to the day?
30. Throwback Thursday. Such a cool way to tap into the nostalgic souls among us. And it’s fun looking back through old photos too!
So there you have it. 30 ideas to kick off your holiday content creation. Have fun with it! Remember to ALWAYS include an image and keep the community building happening while the holidays are on.
Put It In The Soup 
