Instagram is perhaps one of the most popular social platforms which we all know and love for its focus on the visually aesthetic. Due to such popularity amongst current and prospective families, many schools find themselves in the position where they wish to prioritise Instagram as their main storytelling platform. If this is the case, we are here to help.

Using the Interactive Schools StoryDiamond model, we recommend that schools use dedicated accounts to share curated views of different areas of school life. Examples include accounts for specific subjects, age groups, extracurricular activities, and dedicated alumni accounts. We suggest that these accounts are used by key staff members so that the most authentic tone of voice comes through in the stories shared. Not only do these accounts appeal to a school’s current families and parents by providing an insight into their child’s academic journey, but by illustrating to prospective families where their child may find their place.

Marketers should look to share content on the main school Instagram account that is relevant to, and would entice your prospective audience. This is where you will post most of your Marketing-produced content. Using this account, Marketers should repurpose content that is posted on the teacher-led sub-accounts, that you believe should be repurposed for a wider prospective audience. We recommend doing this via Highlights. Depending on your school’s structure and preference, marketers could either sort these Highlights by subjects or age divisions. When the sub-accounts share grid posts that exemplify the nature or culture of the school, marketers should add these to your Story, and then add them to the relevant Highlight. We will provide you highlight covers that obviously symbolise the subject/age group the highlight is representing that coincides with your school’s brand identity.

Unlike X, for example, where you are able to see all of the posts from your sub-accounts in one place via lists or via X Pro on X Premium, Instagram doesn’t currently have the functionality to view multiple school-branded accounts in one place, so it is important to remember that unless the sub-accounts tag the main school account in their posts, marketers will have to manually and mindfully select content from your sub-accounts to repurpose. We recommend posting original content to your main school account at least once a day and ideally repurposing content from the sub-accounts at least twice a day. It’s also important to remember that only grid posts will pull to your website, posts that are only posted as Stories will not, therefore all content you wish to appear on your Interactive Schools website should be posted as a grid post.

As with any Social Media platform, Instagram is always subject to change regarding its functionalities. Here at Interactive Schools, we will keep you updated via our blogs on how you can adapt this strategy in the future.

If you feel like an Instagram Strategy could be the right path for your school, please reach out to social@interactiveschools.com.

Using Instagram sub-accounts for School's Storytelling