With nearly 90% of us using at least one social media platform, it’s a great way to keep students and parents up-to-date with your trip.
What can you use social media for?
Social media's great for:
- Launching your school trip
- Giving students and parents important info before the trip
- Issuing last-minute reminders to students and/or parents (like luggage limits)
- Giving parents updates during the trip (so they can their kids are having a great time)
- Updating parents on your ETA back to school (particularly useful if you get stuck in traffic or make an earlier Channel crossing)
Why use social media for your school trip?
It can be really scary for parents to send their kids abroad without them.
But you can reassure them they’re safe and happy by posting regular updates on social media (saving your phone being inundated with calls checking up on them).
You can use social media to get the kids excited about the trip too. Post photos and videos from past trips or share posts from accounts that are posting about the destination or activities - so they get a flavour of what to expect.
And you can share interesting articles about the places they’re going to visit, to start their learning journey even before you travel.
Social media’s also useful in the run-up to the trip.
You can use it to remind parents of payment deadlines, parents’ evening arrangements and where and when to drop off and collect their kids.
You can even use social media to remind them what to pack.
Which social media should I use?
Honestly, it really depends where your audience is and what you want to share.
X (formerly known as Twitter) is great for short updates. Facebook allows you to write longer posts (if you have time to). And Instagram is great for visual updates if you plan on taking lots of pictures and videos.
Should I set up an account for the trip?
This is totally up to you.
Generally, it’s probably easiest to use the school’s established social media accounts – parents and students are probably already following these.
But if you’re going to run the trip on an annual basis, you could set up a trip-specific account. You could then use this account to show future groups how much fun they’re going to have.
When should I start posting about the trip?
Whenever you’re ready, is the short answer.
The slightly longer answer is that you can start posting as soon as you have something to say about your trip.
And that might be when you’re launching it and getting students signed up, or it might be just before you leave, when you have last-minute info to share.
Join us and win!
We spend months helping you to plan your school trips, so we love seeing your posts when you’re out on your trips – it reminds us why we do what we do.
Each term, we’re giving away a £30 Amazon voucher for the best social media post tagging us.