In today’s competitive language education market, language centres are continuously seeking innovative ways to attract new students and connect with them on social media.

Among the various social media tools available, Facebook and Instagram Stories have become game-changers for businesses and they can give a good boost to language school marketing. Stories are ephemeral, engaging, and interactive providing a unique opportunity to establish a connection with potential students and build a strong online presence.

In this article, I will explore why Instagram Stories are relevant and the benefits of using Stories in language school marketing. I will also share ideas for stories on Instagram and Facebook that are easy and quick.

I will also provide ten easy and effective ideas for Stories and six Instagram Stories hacks that you can integrate into the language school’s marketing strategy straightaway!

Why Instagram Stories Are Relevant for Language School Marketing on Social Media

Stories have become an integral part of social media platforms because they are:

1. Attention-grabbing: Stories have a limited lifespan, typically lasting 24 hours, which creates a sense of urgency and encourages users to view content promptly. The ephemeral nature of Stories makes them captivating and encourages users to engage with them before they disappear.
2. Immersive and Authentic: Stories provide a more immersive experience than regular posts. Their full-screen format allows language schools to showcase vibrant visuals, videos, and behind-the-scenes glimpses, offering an authentic and transparent view of the institution.
3. Higher Visibility: Stories are usually featured at the top of users’ feeds, ensuring higher visibility for your content. As users scroll through their social media, they are more likely to notice and click on Stories, providing language schools with a valuable opportunity to connect with potential students.

Key Benefits of Using Stories in Language School Marketing

1. Increased Engagement: Stories’ interactive features like polls, questions, and quizzes encourage active participation from viewers, resulting in higher engagement rates.
2. Brand Building: Consistent and creative use of Stories helps language schools establish a recognizable brand identity and fosters a sense of community among students and prospects.
3. Real-Time Communication: Language schools can use Stories to share timely updates about courses, events, and promotions, keeping their audience informed in real-time.
4. Encouraging Action: Stories can include clear calls-to-action (CTAs), such as “Swipe Up” to sign up for a course or “Send a Message” to enquire for information. Also, you can invite users to click on links sending traffic to your website or blog. By adding links to your website, placement test or newsletter sign-up you make it easy for potential students to get closer to you (aka Convert!)

10 Easy Post Ideas to Use in Stories for Language School Marketing

1. Student Testimonials: Share short video testimonials from happy students, highlighting their language learning journey and success stories.
2. Tutorials: Share “How to “ videos (extremely popular with Millenials). These could be how to log into the platform, how to access their ebook, how to use an answer key and so on.
3. Language Tips and Trivia: Post language tips or fun language trivia to engage with your community and showcase your expertise.
4. Virtual Tours: Provide virtual tours of your language school’s classrooms and facilities, allowing potential students to get a feel of the school.
5. Behind the Scenes: Show the behind-the-scenes process of preparing lessons, professional development sessions, preparing for exam sessions or special events. This will give viewers a sense of the school’s dedication to quality education.
6. Countdown: Use the countdown Sticker to remind followers of enrolment deadlines, exam dates and any important dates for students.
7. Interactive Polls: Conduct polls to gather feedback from followers about language learning preferences, workshop topics, or event ideas.
8. Quizzes: Use the Quiz Sticker to quiz your followers about language topics, cultural information or simply about a popular topic like music, films or books.
9. Student Spotlights: Highlight exceptional student achievements, such as exam results, Uni admission or a job promotion thanks to the language learned with you.
10. Q&A: Use the Question sticker and do an “Ask me anything about X” (e.g. exams, grammar, culture, etc.) This is a great way to engage with your followers.

6 Instagram Stories Hacks for Language School Promotion

1. Create a Sequence

When sharing content on Instagram Stories make sure you divide it into frames. The first one is the lead-in, then your content (this can be one or more frames) and the last frame is the wrap-up.

2. Instagram Stories Size Matters

When it comes to crafting stories for school marketing, paying attention to the size of your content is crucial. It’s essential to resize your content into a vertical position with a 9:16 aspect ratio. By doing so, your Stories will deliver the immersive experience they were originally designed for. While it’s possible to share content of other sizes on Stories, it’s important to note that they might not resonate with viewers in the same impactful way. To ensure your school’s Instagram Stories have the desired effect, always opt for the correct Instagram Story size.

3. Repurpose a Carousel on Instagram Stories

When you create a Carousel you will have a sequence already. For example, say you create a Carousel (series of posts that you swipe through) of the courses offered. Resize the Carousel slides into Stories size (you can do this in one second on Canva) and use them for your Stories.

4. Yes, you can schedule Instagram Stories!

Stories are, by nature, real-time content. However, there’s evergreen content that can be scheduled in advance to go on Stories from Meta Business Suite. (Learn more time-saving tools and strategies for social media by checking this article)

5. Keep Instagram Stories active forever on Highlights

Highlights are those circles on top of your feed and right under your bio and these are created from Stories. Use Highlights strategically to add further information to your profile such as Courses, Testimonials, The Team, The School etc .  When you have Stories that are suitable for your Highlights add them to the right Highlight.

6. Repurpose Instagram Stories on other platforms

Download Instagram Stories and recycle them by uploading the frames to WhatsApp Status and/or to Facebook. All you need to do is to open your Story, tap on the three dots at the bottom on the right-hand side and tap Save. Another option is to tap on the download arrow when you check the Stories insights. Once downloaded the Story will be saved on your camera roll and from there you can upload it to other platforms or share it as a post!

Final Thoughts about Instagram Stories

There’s a lot more you can do on Instagram and Facebook Stories. When Instagram and Facebook Stories are used strategically, they can enhance your language school’s visibility, increase engagement levels and conversion rates.

For this reason, it’s definitely worth incorporating Facebook and Instagram Stories into your language school marketing strategy.

Get started by leveraging the unique features of Stories and implementing these ten easy ideas and the six Instagram Stories hacks I’ve shared in this article.

You can create amazing posts for promoting your language school on Stories using filters, music and the wide selection of creative stickers available.

Ready to gain extra visibility? Let me help you become confident through a personalized hands-on Instagram and Facebook Stories session. Don’t hesitate to book a call with me to put these ideas and hacks into practice and apply other tricks. Become confident,get more done in less time, and discover more tricks to maximize impact.

Drop me a line at hello@grschoolmarketing or fill in the contact form here to book a practical session for more efficient Instagram marketing.