Here's how to use social media to reassure parents and keep them up-to-date with their child's school trip.
Social media is a very useful, free tool for school trips, and more and more teachers are deciding to use it as part of their school trip.
Why use social media for your school trip?
Social media is a great way to communicate quickly with students and parents at all stages of your school trip.
Here are just some of the reasons to use social media for your school trip:
- To announce or launch your school trip.
- To communicate important information and deadlines to students and parents before the school trip.
- To issue last-minute reminders to students and/or parents.
- To keep in touch with parents regarding how the school trip is going.
- To update parents on estimated time of arrival on return to school.
Sending their children on a school trip abroad without them, potentially for the very first time, is a nerve-wracking experience for any parent.
Using social media to keep them up-to-date with how the trip is going can really help to allay their fears. You can let them know what the plan for each day is, and post pictures of their children having lots of fun!
And it’s really useful in the run-up to your school trip too. You can remind parents of deposit payment deadlines, parents’ evening arrangements and even remind them of the time and place they need to drop their children off for the trip.
And you can use your social media to communicate with the students too. If you’ve been to the destination before, you can post past photos to get them excited about the trip. And you can remind them of some of the exciting places they’ll get to visit.
And you can share interesting articles about the places they’re going to visit, to start deepening their understanding before you travel.
You can even use social media to remind them what to pack!
What social media should I choose?
The two social media channels most familiar to parents are likely to be Facebook and Twitter. Twitter's great for posting short updates and pictures, while Facebook is handy for longer posts.
Instagram has also started to gain in popularity for school trips too. You can really control the content on your Instagram page, although you will need to use linktree or similar if you want to be able to link to any websites from your Instagram account.
Should I set up an account for the trip?
The decision to use the school's established accounts, or to set up accounts specific to your department or even the trip, is up to you.
If you're using Facebook or Instagram, it's probably easier to use the main school account that parents may already be familiar with.
If you're going to use Twitter, many of our groups do prefer to use a department account, or set up an account specific to the trip – you just need to provide parents with your Twitter handle (e.g. @HalsburyTravel) before you go so that they can find you!
When should I start posting about the trip?
As we’ve said, social media is a great way to keep in contact with parents during your school trip.
But it’s also a great way to communicate in the lead up to the school trip, to remind them about payment deadlines, or to ask them to remember to provide you with dietary requirements etc.
Really, when you start posting about your school trip is entirely up to you and how you wish to use social media on your account. We’ve noticed more and more teachers are starting earlier, in order to use social media as another way of communicating with parents through the planning process, to communicate important information.
And more and more teachers are also using social media earlier in their school trip journey to communicate with their students, to get them excited about the trip and to share interesting information about the places they’ll visit.
Join us!
Here at Halsbury, we're big fans of social media! Make sure you tag us in your trip photos/posts – we'd love to see how you're getting on on your trip!
And remember to tag your updates with @HalsburyTravel to enter our termly social media competition - there's a £30 Amazon voucher to be won!
Win a £30 Amazon voucher!
Our school travel experts often spend months helping you to plan your school trips and they absolutely love seeing your social media posts when you’re out on your trips.
So, each term, we’re offering a £30 Amazon voucher for the best social media post that tags us – @HalsburyTravel!