Social media is a fantastic tool to use when running a child care center. Aside from being free and accessible, sharing content on social media platforms can help attract attention to your business and encourage readers to share information about you with their social networks!
While there are many benefits of using social media to grow your business, it’s important to be careful what content you share online, especially since children and families are involved. This can be a tricky line to walk. If you don’t already have accounts going for your child care center, you may have questions about where to start and what to post, luckily, Jackrabbit Care has you covered.

The Importance of Social Media Policies

While social media can be a powerful tool for marketing and establishing a positive reputation, it can also blur the lines between institutional and personal opinions.
Before you set up your child care center to engage in social media activity, make sure you draw up and distribute clear and concise social media policies for both employees and parents. Communicating clear policies will eliminate confusion, give parents control over what gets shared about their children, and make sure that everyone involved with your child care center is behaving appropriately online.

A media release is a must for parents if you want to share images or videos of their children on social media. Make sure that they and your employees understand that you will not post any media of their children online without written consent. 

Employees of your child care center should follow the same standards of behavior online as they would while working in your facility. Make sure no one is posting private information about your facility or media of children that has not been approved for public sharing.

The Top 5 Social Media Posts Your Child Care Center Should Make

Here are the top five things you should be posting on social media to help your child care center establish a knowledgeable presence and keep communication open with families.

1. News and Events

Share your exciting plans for the year with parents by outlining the news and events your child care center has planned. If you have new additions to the classroom or playground coming, special visitors or field trips planned, share some of those details with your followers.

2. Blog Posts

Write blog posts that share helpful facts and information on children’s health, well-being, and development. Blog posts don’t just provide a way to spread the word about your daycare center through sharing, but they also support your search engine optimization, or SEO rankings, which is important if you want to make sure your website is at the top of the search results.

3. Photos and Videos of Daily Activities

Sharing short, high-quality videos and fun pictures of daily activities is a great way to get parents interested in your child care center. Again, always make sure you have parents permission before sharing any images of their children.

4. Reviews

Linking to your Google and Facebook reviews can help build your reputation and provide parents who haven’t left a review easy access to do so. Make sure to thank parents who leave reviews by commenting on them and occasionally share some on your social media accounts.

5. Polls

Engage your audience by asking people to participate in polls on Facebook. This is especially helpful when you’re deciding on a fun activity or field trip, plus it helps parents feel more involved in their child’s activities.

Why Should Your Child Care Center Post on Social Media?

Social Media is an Awesome Tool for Local Business

Social media can be a fantastic tool for businesses in general. Geo-tagging and location-based tweets are simple ways to focus your efforts on people who live near your facility. You can also put money towards advertising in your area to make connections with new families who may be looking for a child care center. Whether you have a large budget or want to stick with the free options, social media is a great and easy way to market your business.

Keep Families Informed

Social media posts are a great way to keep parents informed. You can post updates throughout the day, share lesson plans, meal schedules and any other changes that may be coming up. In order to respect and protect privacy, social media platforms like Facebook shouldn’t be your primary form of communication. Consider setting up a public profile for marketing and using private groups for communicating with families who are currently enrolled.

One of the best reasons for child care centers to post on social media is that most of your target audience is already online. Recent studies have shown that moms with kids under five years old are the most active on social media and establishing a presence on social media is the perfect way to connect with these moms. According to the same studies mentioned above, moms are two times more likely than the rest of the population to comment on social media posts. So, when you create and share content that they find helpful, you can pretty much count on them sharing it with friends and family, which will help spread the word about your child care center.

From getting current parents more involved, to becoming more visible to prospective parents online, with the right content and solid policies in place, being active on social media can work wonders for your child care center.