Nursery World Awards 2019: Initiatives - Online and Social Media:

Each Peach Childcare says its website has benefited the business immensely, bringing more prospective parents to the settings for ‘show rounds’ and new children through the doors.

Each Peach runs a nursery in Hove as well as a Forest School in Newhaven. Both settings are featured on the website.

The website's virtual tour of the nursery is a big hit for new parents as it lets them see inside the setting before they visit.

Parents also report how easy it is to navigate the site, which includes information about the nursery's vision, details about the settings, an image gallery, a biography of owner Kate Peach, links to its social media pages and a promotional YouTube video.

The two settings share an Instagram account, which has 296 followers, and a YouTube channel, but have individual Facebook and Twitter pages, which they post on daily.

This includes anything from photos of what the children have been doing to a ‘sign of the week’ video and ideas for home activities.

Each Peach Childcare also sells its branded T-shirts and cookbook through its Facebook page.

All staff get involved with social media, from coming up with ideas about what to post to collating content. One of the nursery's teachers even got a tree surgeon working over the road to take part in one of their signing videos.

Their resident artist constantly creates new pictures and memes for its social media pages. For Mother's Day, she got the children to hold a board with the sentence, ‘I love my mummy because…’, and the children finished the sentence, which went down brilliantly with parents.

Each Peach Childcare recognises the value of social media as a great marketing tool, using it to promote the settings to prospective customers and posting information about upcoming events.

For example, when it advertised its Forest School sessions for home-educated children on Facebook, the places filled up fast.

Providing constant updates about the Each Peach Spring fête on social media, including which market stalls were going to be there, also proved successful in drawing people to the event and attracting potential new customers.

Each Peach Childcare says not only does social media provide a fantastic way to shout about what it does, but it is also a brilliant way for the children to share, talk and reminisce about their nursery experiences at home with their parents.

Parents Amy and Jon House said Each Peach uses social media very effectively, signposting upcoming events and keeping them ‘in the loop’. They also love spotting pictures of their child enjoying all the different activities on offer.

Going forward, Each Peach Childcare plans to develop its website further to have more visual tools available, including more virtual tours and videos of children doing activities they love. It also wants to include a social media feed on its website and its owner's blog.

With social media, Each Peach's aim is to gain more followers and traffic through to its website.

“I really like the colourful and well-designed website. It's got all the information you need, it is very easy to navigate and links to their social media accounts

– parent

FINALISTS

22 Street Lane Nursery, Leeds

Bright Minds Daycare, Birmingham

Cherubs Nurseries, East Midlands

The Co-operative Childcare, UK-wide

New Beginnings Day Nursery, London

Stramash Social Enterprise, Scotland

CRITERION

Open to early years providers (nurseries, schools, pre-schools and childminders) and services whose website and use of social media is informative, accessible and innovative