“I have plenty of ideas for social media but we have little time for it”

Does this sound familiar?

One of the most frequent comments about social media that I hear from customers is exactly that. Understandably, if you don’t have a social media manager at your school, managing the social media accounts on top of everything else happening at the school can be hard because marketing a language school on social media successfully requires time.

You need time for planning, gathering assets, creating graphics, engaging, tweaking the strategy and checking results just to mention a few of the tasks. Considering how important social media has become in the promotion of language services or your own personal brand, it’s evident that having a poor social media presence due to a lack of time is, to say the least, counterproductive.

However, if you use some time-saving strategies together with tools that will help you create and share content more consistently then promoting your language school on social media can be done without taking up too much time of your busy schedule. In this way you will maintain a social media presence that represents you, helps you gain credibility and attracts potential students.

 “If I had more time, I’d be able to post more on social media”

Which one is you?

1. You suddenly realized you haven’t posted anything for some days so you post a random pic or video without any clear objective.

2. You go on social media for inspiration and after an hour you’re still scrolling without an idea of what to post.

Both situations happen not because of lack of time, but because the little time available is poorly used! Let’s change that now!

None of the situations described above will help you get real results from social media which is what you need. We are all very busy so instead of thinking “If I had more time, I’d…”, think “I’ll do the best I can with the time I have”.

Are you ready for the shift of mindset? If so, read on. If not, you may stop reading this article now 🙂

This shift of perspective together with some key strategies and clever tools will help you get a lot more out of the little time you have.

First of all, what you need to do after blocking time for social media is to PLAN and strategize. This may sound time-consuming but it’s actually an investment of time that will save you hours in the long run because there are fewer trial-and-error situations and less guesswork.

Having a plan that includes your objectives (e.g. visibility of a new course, reaching parents of teens, etc) is like your compass. Also, plan your metrics and what assets you need. Once that is clear and in place, it will be a lot easier to get social media posts done because the plan is ready so when a free slot comes up you will know exactly what to do just by following your tailored plan. A plan will help you create strategic posts more quickly and keep you focused and away from wandering around networks and wasting precious time looking for random inspo.

Another reason why planning and having objectives is crucial is that our brain is more engaged when it has a specific objective.

Optimizing the use of the little time you have made for social media will allow you to do more and better. In “How do you make (not find) time for social media” I wrote about three important aspects: Mindset, Time Optimization strategies and Time-saving Tools. If you haven’t read it yet, go and have a look as it is a strong lead into this article.

However, in today’s article, I’d like to dive into 3 strategic and easy ways to make the most of the time you have to promote a language school on social media.

1. Use your hard-earned time more efficiently
2. Recycle and Repurpose Content
3. Learn time-saving hacks

1. Use your hard-earned time more efficiently on social media

Let’s agree for language school marketing on social media you need to allocate time otherwise, you’ll be posting on social media and getting poor results.

So to stay focused and do more in less time here are some tools and strategies:

1.a Block Time: Did you know that it takes up to 20 mins to refocus after a distraction? In a world of constant distractions and FOMO (fear of missing out ) the only way to be productive is to block time during which there are no notifications or distractions so that you can walk into your zone of genius and work deeply on your social media.  

1.b Focus: Once time is allocated the secret to make the most out of it is one: focus! To help me focus during the blocked time I use Pomofocus. It’s a free easy-to-use app that allows you to set slots and breaks to keep you on task. You’ll be surprised to see how much it helps to get tasks done.

1.c Batch content, i.e do a series of social media posts all at once. For example, look at your forthcoming month and pick one of your social media content pillars. On average you need one post per pillar a week which is four posts a month so you’ll need to create four posts. Then, set your Pomofocus and start preparing the posts for that chosen pillar and schedule them. This strategy works because you’re focusing on one thing and it’s easier for your brain to become more productive and even creative. Repeat the same procedure for your other pillars. By working in this way, you’ll spend less time creating posts as you go.

2 Repurpose and Recycle Content on Social Media

Get off the hamster wheel of content creation!. If you’re starting from scratch of course you will need to create lots of new content to help you achieve your marketing goals. However, at some point, you’ll find yourself struggling to create new content. Do you really need to be creating new content all the time?

Nope!

There’s a good part of your content that just needs to be recycled and repurposed. This type of content is called evergreen content and you’ll use it again making all the necessary updates to keep it fresh and engaging. On the other hand, there’s a smaller part of content that will be about truly new content. This content will have to do with real-time marketing, announcements, festivities and curation.

Learning to repurpose and recycle saves you tons of time but how do you repurpose social media posts?

2.a Long-form content into short-form content

In practice, it means for instance taking the content of your blog (long-form content) and transforming it into a carousel post on Instagram, a poll on LinkedIn, a live stream on Facebook or a fun video on TikTok. Essentially the content is the same what changes is the format which in turn should be compatible with the social media platform you will be using.

It may even be the same content presented again on the same platform but in a different format.

For example, I did a Reel for showcasing reviews from clients and then I did a carousel using the same graphics. It was exactly the same content but in two different formats on the same network.

2.b Short-form into long-form

With the idea of recycling and repurposing content in mind, remember that you can also repurpose a short piece of content like a social media post into a long piece of content, for example, a live stream, a newsletter, or even a blog post. To do so you will choose a post that had a good engagement rate and repurpose it in a longer format by expanding the topic.

2.c From static to dynamic content

A static graphic post with text on it can be turned into a video in mp4 format by animating the graphics and text and adding music to it. This is possible by adding movement through a tool like Canva to animate every element. The same can be done with a carousel post ( a post formed by three or more posts that you swipe to read) by using each “slide” as a video clip by animating the text and graphics and also adding transition effects between “slides” .

2.d Recycling Photos and Videos for social media

When a photo or video works well why not recycle it?

For example, the same photo of your team can be used again without the background (remove it with Canva or Remove.bg) on a graphic post welcoming students to the new academic year.

Use your best photos again mixed with other photos in a carousel or to create a Reel. You may recycle it after using a filter or cropping it . Photos can also make great backgrounds for graphic posts!

Videos are really versatile as well and allow you to recycle them in different ways. Trim a video and turn it into shorter clips or make still images to create a Reel cover or a graphic post. Use a video testimonial on your social media and then add it to your website and send it via email to students.

3 Use Time-Saving Hacks for Social Media Marketing in ELT

3.a Use chatGPT to Revolutionize your ELT Marketing

You can literally “revolutionize your ELT marketing” by using ChatGPT and you can check how you can prompt ChatGPT and what you can prompt it for social media posts in the blog article I wrote in March. Essentially ChatGPT will accelerate the process of content creation as it can help you brainstorm ideas, come up with various versions of a given copy, improve a copy you’ve written and add compelling hooks and call to action.

It is there for you when you’re stuck with ideas and it can get you out of that mental block.  This means that chatGPT is undeniably an excellent time saver for anyone involved in marketing a language school on social media. However, if you have never used it before you’ll need to invest time to learn to prompt it effectively for good results but after that you can really work faster. Start practising how to prompt chatGPT for better social media marketing by stealing my prompts from here.

3.b Using Canva to save time and energy for social media marketing

Creating content for promoting your language courses can be quite challenging when you don’t have graphic design skills. This is why Canva and other similar platforms are such powerful tools that will help you spend less time creating highly-engaging content to attract more students.

Canva Pro is my best friend when it comes to creating social media posts not only because of the pre-designed templates which help me accelerate the creation of graphics but also for how easy graphic design is with Canva.

Here are 4 time-saving Canva hacks that I LOVE and that you should try:

Resize : Once you create a social media post you can resize it to fit various formats for social media with just one click.

Brand Kit: this allows you to upload your brand colours, logo and fonts saving time in finding the right shade and font to use while you’re designing social media posts.

Copy Page: this is a great functionality of Canva that allows you to duplicate a page and therefore create different versions of that first post without starting from scratch. This is what I use to create the carousels in a couple of minutes.

Bulk Create: this is my favourite hack which helps you create posts in bulk in a question of minutes.  So, imagine you want to create “30 tips for preparing for B2 speaking part”. Get the tips from ChatGPT, and save them on a CVS file.  Then, select a template on Canva that you like and then right-click on the part of the text you want to produce in bulk, upload the CVS file with your list of tips previously generated with ChatGPT and hit connect data and continue. In a matter of seconds you’ll have your 30 posts ready!!

3.c Voice Typing for Social Media Content Creation

Google Docs, Google Keep and WhatsApp have the Voice Typing tool active and ready to help you save time taking notes and annotating ideas. Voice Typing is simply the ability to type by using your voice! Isn’t that amazing? You can type content ideas on the go by simply hitting the mic on Google Keep or WhatsApp Business and use those notes later for your social media copy. This means that you can be walking on the treadmill or cooking and typing notes at the same time. It’s an amazing way to save time.

The beauty of voice typing is that you can transcribe audio from webinars, live streams or YouTube videos straight into Google Docs or even Word on Windows too.

3.d Content Curation for Saving Time on Social Media

Curation is sharing someone else’s content on your platform. This is probably the easiest and fastest way to fill in content gaps in your social media calendar. However, it’s only effective if it’s of value to your students, if it has your own views showcasing your expertise and if it’s relevant to your marketing objectives.

“More than simply re-sharing other people’s content, curation is a way to provide extra value to your followers while highlighting your own industry expertise”. Hootsuite

When you share someone’s social media post make sure you give credit to the source by tagging them. There’s nothing more annoying for a content creator than finding out that their content has been shared without any credits to the source or even worse with the signature or logo cropped.

A language school can easily share content from publishers’ and exam boards’ blogs as well as from online ELT magazines, online newspapers and podcasts.

Conclusion: Maximising Time vs Outsourcing Social Media Management

The time constraints of managing the social media of your language school may seem daunting but by implementing these time-saving strategies and integrating the right tools you’ll be able to make the most of your little precious time to manage your socials. I’ve seen that by blocking time, planning, repurposing and using tools like ChatGPT and Canva you can actually create or maintain an impactful social media presence without sacrificing too much of your teaching time.

Making the time for social media or outsourcing the promotion of your language school on social media will pay off in the long run with stronger brand awareness and credibility helping you intersect and enrol new students.

If despite all these time-saving tools and strategies for your language school promotion on social media you find it challenging to maintain a decent social media presence you may consider outsourcing this responsibility.

Outsourcing social media management to a professional who specializes in ELT marketing can ensure that your language school maintains a strong online presence while you focus on what other key aspects.

If you’re ready to explore the possibility of outsourcing your social media management and want to discuss how I can help, feel free to contact me for a no-obligation discovery call, click here. I’ll be happy to assist you in achieving your social media marketing goals and connecting with more prospective students.

Remember, the key to success lies in maximizing your time, implementing effective strategies, and seeking support when needed. Together, we can create a compelling social media presence for your language school that engages, attracts, and converts prospective students. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me and take the next step toward achieving your marketing objectives by clicking here.