Is your school on Facebook and looking to grow your parent following and engagement? Then understanding the content that resonates with your target audience (parents and/or pupils) is key.
A quick way to get insight into what’s working is to use a (not so well known) tool to watch other schools that are Facebook superstars — i.e. they’re receiving a lot of engagement with their posts and their following is rapidly growing.
If your school has a Facebook Business Page with more than 100 Likes you can use their ‘Pages to Watch‘ tool to uncover competitors:
⭐ page Likes
⭐ number of posts
⭐ engagement
⭐ top performing content
I would never suggest that you copy a competitor school, however, if you’re targetting the same audience then getting insight into what’s working for them can only benefit your own social strategy.
Watching Competitor Schools on Facebook
Step 1
The first step is to establish if you do indeed have a Facebook Business page. The easiest way to determine that is to look if your pages has a ‘Like’ button. If it’s a Business page it will, otherwise, you will see an ‘Add Friend’ button. If your school isn’t set up as a Business page I’d recommend changing that as there are several benefits to doing so (which I won’t get into at the moment).
Step 2
Select ‘Insights’ from your top menu and ‘Overview’ from your side menu.
Step 3
Once on Overview scroll to the bottom of the page. There (if you have more than 100 Likes) you’ll see your ‘Pages to Watch’ tool. Simply click ‘Add Pages’ and search for your competitors.
Here you’ll find your watched schools Likes, Posts and Engagement for the past week. Not only can you watch competitor schools, but you can benchmark yourself against them as well.
Step 4
To view your competitors’ top posts, click ‘Posts’ on the left menu, and then select ‘Top Posts from Pages You Watch’. Simply click on the posts to view them in more detail. It’s that easy!
Remember, these insights are to help guide your own social strategy. Each school has their own unique story to tell; learn from the success of your competitors and tweak your own content accordingly.