Over the past 18 months, I've realised that I was thinking too narrowly about what we were trying to build.
When we first started building a Headmaster-led presence on Chinese social media, my objective seemed straightforward: help a UK independent school become more visible, attract enquiries and ultimately recruit students.
But looking back, I think I underestimated what we were really creating.
As we continued to share thoughtful, consistent content, something interesting happened. People started finding us in ways I hadn't anticipated.
Parents reached out with highly personal questions about their children; education consultants followed the account because they found the content genuinely useful; schools explored potential collaborations; organisations got in touch with ideas that had nothing to do with recruitment…
None of that was part of the original plan. Gradually, my perspective changed.
I stopped thinking of social media simply as a way of reaching more people and started seeing it as a way of connecting with the right people and building trust over time.
The content still matters enormously. In fact, without valuable content, none of those conversations would ever begin. But content is only the starting point.
The real value comes from listening, responding, showing up consistently and creating the trust that allows meaningful relationships to develop over time.
Perhaps that's the biggest lesson I've learned.
I thought we were building another recruitment channel.
In reality, we were creating the conditions for trust to grow. Everything else — student recruitment, partnerships and new opportunities — followed from there.