Lived experiences of principals as social media marketers in selected schools in china

Today’s schools all over the globe are on a constant pressure to improve the quality of instructions and services that they provide. Marketing of their programs and activities has become a higher priority for them. To date, the literature on educational marketing has focused on how schools market and promote themselves in the community, how they maintain and enhance their image, and the factors affecting parents and there remains a paucity of research on principals’ patterns of involvement in the marketing and image-building of their schools, and on the potential impact of these new managerial activities on principals’ careers and well-being. Specifically, this study’s objectives were: (1) describe the lived experiences of principals as social media marketers of their schools; (2) identify the essence of the experiences of the principal marketers. This study employed the phenomenological approach to investigate the experiences of the principals as digital marketers. The setting of this study was in Hunan, China. The researcher originally selected 7 private upper secondary schools in the province and mainly utilized two research instruments: interview guide and observation guide. It was found that: (1) Principals recognize and commit to high accountability as social media marketers of their schools;(2) Principals devote themselves to highly engage in social media marketing of their schools;(3) Principals experience a lot of difficulties as social media marketers of their schools; (4) Principals provide programs and trainings in capacitating employees who support them in social media marketing of their schools; and (5) Principals develop their creativity and adaptability in social media marketing of their schools. Based on the summarized findings, the following are concluded: (1) the lived experiences of the principals as social media marketers generated fives themes: Responsibility, Immersion, Challenge, Entrustment, and Growth; and (2) the experiences of the Chinese school principals as primary school marketers highlighted their holistic journey towards their personal, professional, and leadership development, revealing the factors that propel them to take on the marketing duties, and the conflicts which paved the opportunity for growth. Culled from the conclusion, the researcher made the following recommendations: (1) the school principals may engage themselves in training and workshops that focus on technology and digital marketing; (2) the principals may hire a person who is assigned to digital marketing, so they may focus on supervising and monitoring leads and progress; (3) the roles of the school principals may be reviewed in light of the findings for the possibility of updating and revising their job descriptions; (4) Focus Group Meetings participated by the marketing group may be done on a weekly basis to cater to concerns, and to assess the effectiveness of social media marketing implementation; and (5) a follow-up research may be done to quantify the effect of the performance of marketing roles on the academic leadership of school principals.