26 Jul Back to School Social Media Trends
As summer winds down, back-to-school season heats up, and retailers begin to accelerate awareness in late July through early August for the second-biggest shopping season of the year. While that may still seem like it’s a good bit away, now is prime time for planning campaigns and key messaging around back to school 2019. As you ready your A-game social media content, take note of these back-to-school social media trends.
BTS, By the Numbers
First, let’s understand just how big of and opportunity Back-to-School really is and why your brand should be planning for it.
- $83 billion
in estimated retails sales for Back-to-School 2018
- An estimated $55 billion of this was back-to-college spending
- 29 million households participating in k – 12 back-to-school shopping
- $510 average total spending by parents
The demand and willingness to spend is there. Now, it’s up to your brand to reach those consumers at the right time with the right messaging.
Lunch Hacks
For parents, back to school means back to packing lunches for their little ones. CPG and food brands have a huge opportunity to provide relevant, engaging content around kids lunch ideas and hacks to inspire parents.
On Instagram, leverage the highly visual nature of the platform, to show how your product fits perfectly into their kid’s lunch, or try out the Instagram Stories questions sticker to ask what recipe their kiddos love more. On Pinterest, share time-saving tips to packing a delicious-yet-healthy midday meal.
#OOTD Inspiration
Both high schoolers and college students look to social media for back-to-school outfit inspiration. On Pinterest, ‘back to school outfits’ and ‘first day of school outfits were the #2 and #5 most-searched terms around back-to-school in 2018, and fashion is one of the top content categories on Instagram. Retail brands can join this conversation by sharing their latest trends for the upcoming season and driving users to key product pages directly from social posts.
For an added layer of personalization, save busy parents some time with simple, stylish tips for refreshing their kids’ wardrobe, like piecing together mix-and-match outfits.
PRO TIP: leverage rich pins on Pinterest and product tags on Facebook and Instagram to make your social content highly shoppable.
Dorm Room Décor
As noted above, back-to-college shopping accounts for the vast majority of total back-to-school sales. Within this category, ideas for decorating college dorm rooms dominate social media. Of the top-8 back-to-college Pinterest searches in 2018, 6 out of 8 were centered around dorm room décor.
Develop social media content that makes it easy for recent high school grads to outfit their dream dorm. Try a Facebook carousel that easily links to all of the products necessary to achieve a room’s look, or take to Instagram Stories to poll users on what their dorm room design style is.
Stay on top of more trends like these as you’re planning for back-to-school and beyond – subscribe to our bi-weekly trends newsletter, Social You Should Know.
