Here For You Toolkit
Elevate Your Community Ed Story
The MCEA Here for You Toolkit helps community education departments around the state to be able to tell their stories and promote the work they are doing. Whether you’re looking to elevate your social media presence, create more engaging marketing materials, or showcase the people, partnerships, and opportunities that make Community Education special, you’ll find tools to save time, spark ideas, and bring your stories to life.
How to Use This Toolkit
Communications and marketing may not always be a main focus for community education departments, but they are essential to connecting with your community and sharing the impact of your programs. To make things easier, we’ve provided a variety of customizable Canva templates, downloadable files, and helpful best practices to support your marketing efforts. This toolkit is designed to save you time, strengthen your outreach, and help you tell your Community Education story.
That’s Community Ed! Logo
The That’s Community Ed! logo is a powerful way to build recognition, strengthen awareness, and create a unified identity for Community Education across Minnesota. By incorporating this logo into your marketing materials, you’re helping connect your local stories to a larger statewide message that celebrates the impact and value of Community Education.
Make It Your Own!
Download the .svg logo file to customize it with your district’s brand colors. This helps create a consistent, recognizable look that reflects your district’s identity while still supporting a unified Community Education message across Minnesota.
Big impact deserves big visibility. Let’s show your community what Community Education can do!
Graphics Templates
Campaign Best Practices
That's Community Ed! Logo
Campaign Best Practices
A strong marketing campaign starts with a clear message and a consistent approach. Explore these best practices to help you create content that connects with your audience and showcase the value of Community Education in your community.
Content
- Be strategic and create a content calendar to plan and schedule ahead, but be flexible to add posts with any urgent information.
- Show personality. Your district’s brand and voice should be consistent across all of your platforms and communicate your brand values.
- Always use images or videos. Social media platforms are visual mediums that support the use of artwork, photos and video, with some platforms even allowing you to broadcast live and interact with viewers in real-time.
- Use subtitles for videos, especially stories – Did you know that 40% of stories are viewed without sound? If you use the automatic captioning function, make sure to fix any errors before posting.
- Use clear calls to action – e.g. “Register here”
- Be scientific and strategic with your posting by measuring what works with your target audience.
- Look at your popular posts and identify the audience. Then replicate and test the results.
- Post regularly and at the right times. Look at the analytics to see when people are online on that platform.
Engagement
- Think about ways to build your social media audience. Link to your social platforms from your website and other promotional mediums.
- Remember that social media platforms are intended for engagement. They are meant to be two-way communication mediums.
- Create social media guidelines for those who interact with your content and include them in your profile.
- Practice strong customer service skills by following up on people’s messages and comments.
- Do not ignore criticism. Provided they are not inappropriate or in violation of your engagement guidelines, consider responding to messages rather than hiding them; or comment with information on who they can contact for more information.
Facebook
- Practice strong customer service skills by following up on people’s messages and comments.
- Hide comments if they violate your social media policies or guidelines. Err on the side of not hiding comments. Only hide the most egregious comments (i.e., profanity, threats, sensitive information or calling out staff members or students, etc.).
- Set up a profanity filter.
- Take advantage of Facebook videos. Video consumption on Facebook has increased significantly in recent years.
- Facebook has said that video will be the most consumed content on the platform in the near future.
- Facebook Live FB videos are watched three times more than regular videos.
- Keep posts short and specific.
- 40-character posts receive 86% more engagement over others.
- 80-character posts receive 66% more engagement over others.
- Facebook posts asking questions between 100 to 119 characters drive more engagement.
- Know your goals and make sure every post works for your goal.
- Be strategic when posting by following one of the following rules:
- 80-20 Rule:
- 80% of your posts should be used to inform, educate and entertain
- 20% of your posts should be used to promote your brand (identity posts)
- Rule of Thirds:
- One-third of your content should share ideas and stories
- One-third should involve personal interactions with your followers
- One-third should promote your organization and brand
Instagram
- Ensure there are call-to-action buttons on your business profile.
- Keep bios short and sweet, use your bio’s link to promote current events or calls to action.
- Use a Linktree or LinkinBio account as the main link in your profile if you regularly use links to registrations.
- Use stories and play with layouts.
- Share content from others, reshare content you’re tagged in.
- Use fun features like polls and questions to interact with your audience.
- Save highlights to the profile.
- Use hashtags, especially branded, and put them in your bio.
- Have a visually consistent feed, but don’t share the same photos.
- Find and re-share user-generated content, as this gives authenticity and a sense of community.
- Consider using emojis.
- Utilize short links when necessary that people can type into a URL themselves, or add a link in the bio for links that will be featured over time.
Social Media Key Themes
Social media is more than a place to promote programs and share announcements. It’s an opportunity to tell meaningful stories, build connections, and showcase the incredible impact of Community Education. As you create content, focus on three key themes that reflect the heart of the Here for You campaign: Impact, Partnership, and Belonging. These themes provide a foundation for sharing authentic, engaging stories that go beyond what Community Education offers to highlight why it matters. By weaving these messages into your social media strategy, you can strengthen community awareness, inspire engagement, and help more people recognize the value of Community Education.
Impact
The powerful impact that community education programs and people have on children, families, and adults every day in the state and local communities.
Partnership
Community Education partners with K-12 programs other community organizations to meet the needs of children, families, and adults of all ages.
Belonging
Community Education programs create opportunities for children, families, and adults to belong and stay connected by igniting and fueling people’s passions.