Nothing creates more anxiety in a school social media manager like the fear of missing an important national “day” on your Facebook page.

Wait – what? It is Custodial Workers Recognition Day? And it’s noon and you have an afternoon of meetings…

Darn it! You feel like a failure.

No – you’re not a failure. And today we’re going to share the approach we follow at #SocialSchool4EDU in managing social media for more than 70 school districts across the country. Our hope is that you’ll have a plan for this school year to remove the anxiety, put you in the driver’s seat, and ultimately feel awesome about the work you’re doing to celebrate your school!

Job #1 – Celebrate Your School
Social media is the place to share amazing photos and videos of your students and staff.

Every. Single. Day.

You don’t need a special “day” to say that your principal is awesome.

You don’t need a special “week” to give a shout-out to your bus drivers.

Now, those days and weeks exist, but we’re telling you – if you’re consistently celebrating great things in your school district, you should worry less about those national days.

When we say “consistent,” we mean that you are posting several times per day on your Facebook account. Posting only one or two times per week is not enough to have your stories make it into the Facebook newsfeed of your followers. Not sure what I’m talking about? Click here to learn more.

Mix in photos of both students and staff. Share stories of accomplishments, projects, and events. Some of our most popular posts are student and staff features.

Discuss your strategy
Since it can be tough to keep track of all of the days and weeks out there, you should have a discussion with your leadership team about what days you want to recognize.

One school in Minnesota shared with us that they were just stressed out from having to remember all of the special recognition events throughout the year. Instead, they created an “Appreciation Month.”

During this month, they take time to recognize all of the different staff members that they have at the district – including support staff, volunteers, administrators, teachers – everyone!

This is a great approach! After all, I don’t think that there is a national day to recognize para-professionals that help in the classroom (if I’m wrong, comment below and let me know). I would consider them an extension of our teaching staff, but they don’t carry the title.

So this approach to have a month dedicated to appreciating everyone helps ensure you won’t forget anyone! It’s an option you might want to adopt.

Plan Ahead
If you choose to recognize the special days, weeks, and months on your social media channels, the biggest key is to plan ahead. You should look over the calendar at the start of your year in July and map things out. Then at the start of each quarter, make decisions on how you’ll recognize each event.

To help get you started with the general days and weeks that we tend to recognize for our schools, you can download a one-page PDF here. If you’re interested in getting a detailed calendar for this school year, you might want to consider joining our membership program. All of our members get access to this each year.

We did not include major holidays celebrated across the United States. We figured you had Memorial Day and Thanksgiving covered. We only included the days that can be easily missed until you see an awesome video or photo from another school district!

There you have it – we hope this article helped!

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