ELT Marketing: Social Media Trends Language Schools Need to Know
ELT Marketing: Social Media Trends Language Schools Need to Know
Gina Rodriguez In this article, I’ll walk you through the most important social media trends relevant to ELT Marketing that language schools need to know to avoid wasting time and resources with outdated tactics.
If you’ve been feeling like your school’s posts just aren’t reaching as many followers and non-followers as it used to,or worse, that nobody’s engaging, it’s not your fault! Social media algorithms keep changing and social media users are changing the way they behave on the platforms, too. But here’s the good news: these shifts offer new opportunities for language schools willing to adapt to the new social media trends.
The insights shared in this blog post come from the latest Hootsuite 2025 Social Trends Report, my own experience, and conversations with marketers in other sectors.
Curious to know what’s trending and how to adapt the new social media trends to ELT marketing?
Table of Contents
- How to increase the organic reach rate?
- Entertaining content is the latest Social Media Trend
- Why Being Authentic on Social Media will Help your Language School Marketing
- How to Grow your Social Media Presence with Outbound Engagement
- AI Tools Can Simplify your Social Media Workflow
- Final Thoughts: Making the most of Social Media Trends for ELT Marketing
How to increase the organic reach rate?
Organic reach is the number of followers who see a post done without paid promotion. Due to content saturation and algorithm changes the organic reach rate has declined and on average the organic reach reate is around 2% to 4% depending on the platform and even the time of the year!
Posting organically on a page with very few followers, say 80 or even 200, and expecting to enrol students is almost like giving a speech in an empty room. Why? Because only around 2% -4% of your followers will actually see your organic posts.
For this reason, if your page is small, your first priority should be growth. Use a mix of strategic content and sponsored posts to get in front of new eyes.
About me: Hi, I’m Gina Rodriguez. I’m a qualified Digital Marketing Specialist and I work as a Social Media Strategist & Consultant for the language education sector . I have 25+ years experience in the English Language Teaching (ELT) industry and have covered various roles from EFL teacher, teacher trainer to Sales & Marketing Consultant in educational publishing.
How I help language schools: I help language schools and independent language professionals build an engaging social media presence through training, consultancy and tailored social media strategies.
If you have a page with thousands of followers the chances are that you get the same low organic visibility. In this case again, I do recommend adding ads to the organic posts especially towards the enrolment period.
There are a few free tactics you can use too. For example, at the moment Instagram is testing a feature called “Reels Trial” that allows you to push a Reel to non-followers only organically. That’s a golden opportunity for schools to reach new potential students and parents especially when there’s a small budget for ads.
When looking to grow your page or recruit new students, posting “just for the sake of posting something” is no longer effective (actually, it has never been effective!). In these situations, what you need is a strategy with clear goals and a structured content plan that reflects your school’s strengths, your audience’s needs, and the format that each platform prefers.
👉 Even a simple plan will give you better results than random posting.
Entertaining content is the latest Social Media Trend
No-one is on social media to be sold something. The reason why you and me are on social media is to learn something new or simply to be entertained or to have a good laugh.
The days of long, text-heavy posts are gone. Today’s users want to be entertained, even when they’re learning.
In practice it means fun content, storytelling, compelling visuals, or interactive elements like polls and engagment stickers.
This aligns with what Hootsuite calls “creative disruption.” It’s about breaking out of your brand box to create fun, unexpected, or visually engaging content that stops the scroll. In the language education sector a good example of “creative disruption” is Duolingo on TikTok and Instagram.
What language schools can do on social media:
- Turn language tips into funny Reels
- Share quick cultural facts in stories and use engagment stickers.
- Use trending music, humour, or storytelling to keep posts engaging
👉 You don’t need to dance on TikTok, but you do need to be creative.
Why Being Authentic on Social Media will Help your Language School Marketing
Audiences are done with curated perfection. They want to see the real people behind your brand. That’s great news for language schools, where the human touch is your biggest strength.
“Audiences will demand more authenticity. Platforms will double down on real conversations. And brands that fail to adapt will struggle to scale their engagement and growth. The marketers who win won’t be the ones posting the most, but the ones making data-driven decisions.”
Photos from your classroom, a candid video testimonial from a parent, or a teacher sharing a teaching tip in selfie mode will feel real and authentic and this is what builds trust. Remember: No trust, no enrolments!
For language schools, authenticity starts with real visual content. That means regularly capturing and storing genuine photos and videos that highlight what makes your language school special. Your uniqueness may be friendly teachers, strong classroom management, modern teaching equipment or accreditations. Whatever it is, make sure you have the right photos and videos to show it on social media!
In Post Smarter, Enrol Faster: A Quick Guide for Language Schools, you’ll discover how to identify your unique selling points (USPs) and transform them into content and visuals that drive enrolments and build trust with your audience—perfect for social selling!
Once you’ve identified your strengths (Download Post Smarter, Enrol Faster to help you do this) , you need to think about how you can regularly gather more and better visual content in your visual content library.
What language schools could do:
- Ask your staff to take 1 photo/video a week
- Set up a monthly “content day”
- Encourage students or parents to contribute visual testimonials
The goal is to build a library of visual assets that reflect your school’s identity and that’s ready to use whenever you need them for your social media and not only! Think of your website, flyers, newsletter and posters!
How to Grow your Social Media Presence with Outbound Engagement
The quick answer is via outbound engagement.
The Outbound Engagement Trend: Brands drop in on creators’ comments to pick up new audiences
According to Hootsuite, more brands are reaching new audiences by commenting on other people’s posts—not just waiting for people to come to them.
The Outbound Engagement Trend: Brands drop in on creators’ comments to pick up new audiences
This is especially powerful for schools in smaller communities or niche sectors.
How language schools can apply these social media trends in ELT Marketing
- Leave meaningful comments on posts from local businesses that are complementary to your language services i.e have the same client but are not competing with you.
- Interact with accounts where potential students will be e.g a Travelling page
- Interact with student content (when appropriate)
👉 Use your business account to be seen outside your own feed.
There’s less trust in big influencers and more trust in smaller creators or micro-influencers. These along with user-generated content are working better on social media. You can check the stats in the 2025 Social Media Trends in Education Report by Hootsuite .
Parents and students want to hear from real people—not polished spokesmodels. That’s why User-Generated Content (UGC) and micro-influencer partnerships are so effective.
What language schools can do:
- Encourage students or parents to share a post about your school and then reshare it on your page
- Engage your staff in sharing your content
- Offer students positions like social media interns so that they gain work practice and create great content for you.
- Hire content creators with a strong social media presence, who will experience your courses and in exchange they will create content for you.
👉 Your community is your best marketing team.
AI Tools Can Simplify your Social Media Workflow
AI is not just for tech startups anymore. From caption generators to image tools, AI is a fantastic asset for educators and school marketers who want to create more and better content, faster. You can Simplify Your Language School’s Social Media Posts Creation with AI in many different ways such as:
What to do:
- Use AI to brainstorm post ideas or rephrase course updates
- Try image-generation functionality to create memes, fun photos or graphic posts like the one above created with Napkin
- Use AI to repurpose content
👉 AI won’t replace you unless you know how to use it!
Final Thoughts: Making the most of Social Media Trends for ELT Marketing
Social media is evolving and language schools that keep up with social media trends and use them strategically will see better results from their social media posts.
So let me recap:
- Strategy over posting and praying
- Short, fun, creative content over info dumps
- Real stories over polished posts
- Commenting on other accounts over expecting people to comment on yours
- Share the load of visual content over stock photos and videos
- And …stop giving speeches to empty rooms. Start growing your page and reaching beyond your current followers with a structured strategy.
You don’t need to do everything at once. Pick one or two of these social media trends, try them out, and observe the results in your ELT marketing.
And if you’d like help building your strategy or figuring out what works for your audience, I’d love to support you. Book a discovery call with me.
