We all hear about “the algorithm”. The mysterious formula and code that is used by social media companies, online retailers, and others, to determine what shows up in someone’s feed. But why does it do what it does? How does it decide what to serve up to you or the people that follow you?
There are plenty of factors that go into that, including the quality and relevance of the content, how well it matches up with other things that grab your attention, or tracking the things that you click.
For school nutrition, featured menu items, images of students enjoying meals, and the cafeteria team engaging with students are great ways to grab attention and drive people to your menu and website.
“It’s more important to post on a regular basis … than it is to have one week when you post 3x/day and then two weeks in a row when you don’t post at all.”
A major factor is the consistency of posting. And that makes sense. Think about it: if someone or something is posting regularly about something that you’ve said you’re interested in, the likelihood of you wanting to see more of that is higher than if someone posts every once in a while.
It’s social media, and being social and part of the conversation is rewarded.
“Social media algorithms favor those who post consistently.”
How Can I Build Consistency?
There are some great tools and tips to help you build a consistent and relevant presence on social media. Let’s look at a few:
Set a Goal and Build Capacity. Perhaps you need to go from one post a month to one post a week; perhaps more. Once you see that you can do something, your capacity grows.
Define Your Content. It can help to think of things in batches. For example, you can do a #MenuMonday post each week during your menu cycle to show featured entrees or salad bars. Then you can add other themed days.
Schedule Posts Ahead of Time. There are some great tools that allow you to schedule posts allowing you to handle several days or weeks of posts at once. This can also free you up for impromptu posts to add to your feed while letting you know your baseline is covered.
Social Media Done For You
• 3 posts per week
• Up to 3 channels
• Designed for School Nutrition
A Few More Tips About Social Media Content for School Nutrition
There are a few other tips to help you on your journey to establish, grow, and build your social media presence, reach, and engagement. These things apply not just to your social media communication but across your school nutrition program.
Remember Your Core Message. We have another blog post that goes into more detail on this (3 Steps to Market Your School Nutrition Program). The main point is that you clarify what you want people to know and think about you and drive that home in your marketing.
Determine Your Content Areas. We do this with our clients. We design 6-7 content areas that we create content around. It’s like a creative road map that provides prompts about what to talk about. It could be menu features, nutrition education, or food trivia. But it takes the guesswork away and lets us focus on creating content.
Include Calls To Action. This gets missed far too often. You want people to take action. Whether it’s viewing your menu, connecting to an article, or taking a survey, you want people to engage. Don't forget to provide links in your posts. That engagement helps feed your content more consistently.
BONUS - Instagram Tip: Instagram, unlike Facebook or Twitter, doesn’t allow for clickable links in posts. That function is driven by the “Linkin bio” feature. Most clients have their nutrition department page as the main link in an Instagram bio.
That’s fine, but what if you want people to go straight to your menu? Or what if you have an article or feature you want people to know about? Fortunately, there are some free, easy-to-use tools to solve that challenge.
We recommend & use LInktr.ee. It has a free option that lets you provide lots of links for your Instagram profile. We don't get anything from them, we just like the service.
“Consistency is your best friend when it comes to social media.”
We hope that this gives you some ideas and inspiration to take control of your social media marketing, or even to start it.
If you’d like to explore having a partner for this, we’d be happy to talk with you about our Social Media For School Nutrition service. It’s a done-for-you plan that ensures you maintain a consistent presence with content designed for school nutrition.
Learn More Today