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.

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