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Social Media Marketing
CONTENT MARKETING
North Point Schools is a private, accredited K–12 school in Calgary operating across two campuses (Richmond and Currie) with a genuinely distinct educational philosophy. It runs separate schools for boys and girls in the junior years (boys from Kindergarten to Grade 9 at Richmond; girls from Kindergarten to Grade 9 at Currie), bringing them together in a co-educational high school. Underlying every program is the 5R character framework (Respectful, Resourceful, Resilient, Relentless, Responsible) and a belief that boys and girls learn differently, and thrive when taught accordingly.
The school’s strengths are real and specific: STEM and robotics education starting from Grade 3, hands-on science learning, serious outdoor education, a culture of sport that includes volleyball, basketball, ice hockey, and pickleball, and a deeply personalised student experience that shows up in parent testimonials again and again.
The gap was in how the school communicated these strengths to the world beyond its existing parent community. When we came on board, North Point’s primary communication channel was a newsletter. It reached the families already enrolled. It did almost nothing for the families who hadn’t found the school yet or for building the kind of warm, visible community presence that makes parents choose a school before they have even booked a tour.
In Alberta, roughly 90% of children attend government-funded public schools. Private schools like North Point compete for the remaining families – those who actively choose to pay fees for something they believe will serve their children better. That decision is never impulsive. Parents research, compare, and observe months before they enrol their child. They look for evidence of culture and community, not just academic outcomes. They want to see what a school actually feels like – the sport, the events, the students, the energy.
A newsletter, however well-written, can’t show you that. Social media can.
North Point had excellent content to work with – remarkable students, meaningful events, genuine character-building moments happening every week. The challenge was to capture that life and share it with the kind of consistency and creative sharpness that would make prospective parents feel, before ever setting foot on campus, that this was a community they wanted to be part of.
Three specific goals shaped the brief:
Understanding the Audience Before Creating for Them
The first step was mapping who we were actually talking to. North Point’s parent base skews toward families who are values-driven, education-conscious, and looking for a school that treats their child as an individual rather than a number in a system. They care about character development as much as academics. They respond to authenticity. And these aren’t the parents who are moved by glossy institutional messaging; they are moved by seeing real students, real moments, and real teachers who clearly care.
That audience insight shaped every content decision that followed.
Students as the Hero
The most effective social media for schools doesn’t promote the institution. It features the people inside it. We built a content framework where students were consistently at the centre: their experiments, their sporting moments, their leadership at events, their voices on issues that matter.
The Girls’ International Day campaign is a strong example. Rather than writing a post about the school’s commitment to girls’ education, we put the girls themselves in front of the camera – students from different year groups speaking directly about why girls matter, why their education matters, and what they wanted to achieve. The response across Calgary was immediate and warm. The comment sections were filled with positive engagement from parents and community members who were moved by the content. It outperformed almost everything else published on the channel at the time.
Pre, During and Post: Making Every Event Count Three Times
One of the clearest strategic decisions was building a 3-phase content structure around every major school event – pre-event awareness, live coverage, and post-event storytelling.
This matters for a specific reason. A school event that isn’t amplified on social media effectively doesn’t exist for anyone outside the immediate participants. Events like a walkathon, a science fair, or a sports tournament are rich moments of community and character. Without a content strategy around them, they generate no visibility, no engagement, and no warmth for prospective families who might have been moved by them.
The Business Fair is the clearest proof of this approach working at its best. When the school’s principal, Brent, and a teacher were featured in a segment on a Canadian news channel ahead of the annual Business Fair, we had an hour-long interview to work with and about 24 hours before the event began. We turned it into a polished reel, posted it before the fair opened, and it became the highest organic engagement post in the school’s entire social media history. A television appearance that might have reached a limited audience became a social media moment that spread through Calgary’s parent and education community.
The Open House Campaigns: Social Media as Admissions Engine
Open Houses (events where prospective parents tour the campus, meet staff, and get a genuine feel for the school) are the most commercially important events on North Point’s calendar. A family that attends an Open House and connects with what they see is very likely to enrol. The job of social media was to fill those rooms.
We built dedicated campaign structures around each Open House: awareness content in the weeks before (showcasing the specific things prospective parents care most about – STEM labs, outdoor education, the 5R culture, student testimonials), clear event promotion as the date approached, and post-event content showing the energy of the day itself.
By March 2025, one year into the engagement, the school’s Head of School, Brent, reported that Open House footfall had reached its highest level ever recorded. He was direct about it: the community built on social media over the previous year had played a significant role in bringing those families through the door.
20 Posts Per Month: Volume with Intent
Moving a school from a newsletter-first communication model to an active social presence required both volume and consistency. We established a cadence of 20 posts per month across platforms, a meaningful step up from what had existed before.
The platform split reflected the audience: Facebook for the primary parent community (where parent conversations about schools happen most actively in Canada), and Instagram for a slightly younger prospective parent demographic and for visual content that showcased the school’s daily life in the most engaging way.
Content categories were rotated deliberately: event coverage, student spotlights, STEM and outdoor education features, sports and athletics, character and 5R moments, community milestones, and seasonal campaigns around key cultural and educational moments.
Most schools treat social media as a notice board – a place to announce events and share photos. That approach generates low engagement and does almost nothing for admissions. The schools that build real community on social media treat it differently: as a place to show what the school actually feels like, to let students speak, to celebrate the moments that define the culture, and to make prospective families feel a sense of belonging before they've ever visited. That's the shift we built for this school. And the open house results showed it was working.
Want to build a social media presence that actually drives enrolment for your school? Call us at 9910203445 or write to sales@justwords.in.
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