My Mustang Convertible and Social Media Common Sense

As a teenager, I had a knack for driving over parking curbs. You know, those short curbs that are supposed to prevent you from driving forward from one parking spot into the next.

I’d get worked up about something, someone and jump into my baby blue ’73 Ford Mustang convertible and punch the gas. The front tires would hop the curb but the low chassis would get stuck. I’d have to rely on the kindness of passers-by to lift the car up and push me back time after time.

I’m sure you were and are far more level-headed than I, but when it comes to social media, sometimes I think we’re rushing in and getting stuck between the wheels. We go to a workshop, read a blog (irony intended) or hear of a competing school’s Facebook page and jump in with both feet. It can’t be that hard, right, if 300 million people around the world are using it?

The challenge is not in mastering the tool, the technology, but mastering its usage. Facebook is easy to learn. Making it work for your school and worth your time and talents is another matter.

Put simply, you’re probably in social media to help your school accomplish one or more of these basic, first order marketing goals:

• Recruit students
• Retain students
• Raise money

Sure, there’s  “school spirit” and “attracting alumni” but, let’s be honest, those in essence drill down to retention and fundraising respectively. So, how are you going to leverage your Facebook and other social media presences to accomplish these goals?

Problem is, social media isn’t the only tool you need to accomplish these goals. Take recruitment. You need social media to spread the word but you need a school website (or traditional print materials) with the online application to close the deal. For fund-raising, you can promote your latest campaign through video and testimonials on social media but for the best data collection and least cost to the school, you’ll want to use your school’s website and traditional print materials to close the deal.

See a pattern? Social media provides the initial sizzle and a way to virally promote your school so that your primary online presence – your school’s website – as well as your traditional print materials can then come in and provide the backbone to recruit, retain and raise money.

So, as you look at content for your social media presence, consider how the content there can work in synergy with what’s online back at your school site or what you have in the viewbook, campaign materials, etc. How can you tease folks into looking elsewhere for more information or how can you use engaging video and more to pass recruitment, retention, fundraising messages to their friends and their friends and so on?

Good luck on your social media journey! And no, I haven’t run over any parking curbs in a while (knock on wood).

–Lorrie J

The Tree in the Forest: Facebook Page Interactions

It can seem so easy to do. Build a Facebook page, put content up and they will come. And perhaps they do. Perhaps parents, students, teachers fan your page, or become members of your group. But, sometime’s that it. And it’s not enough.

If a tree falls in a forest, who’s there to hear it? If you’re posting great content but your fans/members aren’t visiting frequently and, even more concerning, aren’t interacting (commenting/liking/sharing), how much does it matter?

I’ve heard a 90/10 rule on blogging: that 90% of your reader lurk and only 10% will comment. I would guess that the rate of social media interaction should be higher than 10%. After all, crafting a blog comment takes real effort. Clicking “like” takes almost no effort at all.

So, how to get folks to check back and interact on your Facebook presence?

• Tell them to.
  “If you like this video, please be sure to like, comment or share this with a friend.” Give them a call to action right there on the page. Sometimes folks really enjoy what you are uploading but just don’t know what you need them to do.

• Explain in person.
  One-on-one or in a group, explain how viral marketing works and how each parent, teacher, student plays a role in sharing the school’s message. How the simple action of page interaction can help your school big time.

• Upload cool stuff.
  If it snoozes, you lose. Videos of students by students, questions about favorite teachers, pictures of celebrities on campus. High interest, relevant content.

• Develop a secret army.
  Ssssh. I won’t tell if you won’t. Recruit a small subset of folks that promise to like, comment or share stuff off and on for you. They’re the shills in your audience that will start the ball rolling. Honest, if one person likes something, it’s much more likely others will click “like” after that. It just takes one. Just don’t tell anyone I told you about the secret army.

What are tips you’ve found helpful in facilitating interactions on Facebook? We’re all listening!

–Lorrie Jackson

What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

Fireman? Doctor? Teacher?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I wanted to be an astronaut, a scientist and an ambassador at different points in my childhood. Never an educator; I expected that each student would be as cantankerous as myself and that sounded like a lot of work. But here I am, in education and loving the journey.

I hope you haven’t grown up yet and that we never really do. Growing up seems like an endpoint to our journey, not another stop along the road. And really, we never stop growing up.  We ought never to stop learning about our field, learning from others who’ve been down the road before us and sharing our stories with others.

Social media is a great tool for our professional growing-up. It’s not just for marketing or classroom use.  Educators constantly share what they’re learning on these sites and if you’re not listening, maybe it’s time to do so. Here’s what you may be missing:

Read a Good Book Lately?

Find out which colleague has on their LinkedIN update or a LinkedIN group discussion

Made a Connection?

Message a new colleage on Facebook, DM him or her on Twitter or send a message on LinkedIN to keep the ideas going.

What’s the Point?

Seen a national story and discovered an education angle? Tweet your thoughts, blog on them or post them to your Facebook wall.

Say that Again?

Inspired by someone’s profound comments? Retweet them or like/share/comment on them on Facebook.

Of course you could read the books and blogs and news stories on your own and be done with it. But, as Frederick Buechner wrote, “The story of any one of us is in some measure the story of us all.” We are enriched by the personal reflections upon these books and blogs and news stories because we find commonalities between those reflections and our own lives and we want to share that. We want to be part of the stories of others and to invite others into our stories. That’s the hidden value of social media.

There is a side benefit to using social media for growing-up: you’ll gain confidence and competence with the tools. I’ve heard from school staff trying to start a Facebook page, for example, and in our phone call, it’s clear they’ve never been on Facebook for their own personal use. Well, that makes it hard to understand how the site works or what will get users’ attention. Being a more experienced personal user makes you a more expert school user of social media.

Growing up using social media is pretty simple: just share with and listen and respond to the community. Good luck and enjoy the journey. And never, ever fully grow up.

-Lorrie Jackson

Bad PowerPoints and the Pitfalls of Social Media

The 75/25 rule was not a popular one. I taught computer classes and the fifth graders were itching to make the best darned PowerPoint slide shows ever known to the human race. Only problem was, this draconian teacher was making them spend 75% of their classroom on content, on boring text about countries or plants or books. Usually that meant only one class period for the fun stuff: animations, slide transitions, backgrounds, sounds, clip arts. That was plenty. More than plenty.

We’ve all seen what happens without such boundaries. The dreaded PowerPoint run amuck with so much chaos and busyness that the message is lost. Hopefully that lesson has been long learned. Are we faced with the same challenge now with social media? Have we too become the fifth graders?

It’s fun to tinker around with our school’s Facebook page or Twitter profile, to use third party apps like Involver and TwitterFeed and HootSuite. I know I myself am guilty of spending hours playing around with these and other tools. Look, ma. See what I can do. Yes, well, it all can be very pretty. But I’m wondering if we are in danger of losing our path along the way.

Is it time to step back for another 75/25 rule? What’s our online marketing goal(s)? Who is our audience? What message do we want to convey? Then, engage the social media site simply and judiciously. The result should not simply impress us but achieve your goals. Otherwise, why bother, right?

What are your thoughts?

_Lorrie J

Personal vs. School Presence on Facebook

Pull out a camera at your next family reunion and what happens? Possibly one of three reactions:

• Folks acting as if they’re in the Witness Protection Program turning their heads, shielding their faces or ducking into other rooms;
• Folks smiling politely and following your instructions to put their arms around a neighboring relative;
• Folks jumping in front of the lens, competing with each other for the most exposure possible.

Fast forward to Facebook and K-12 schools. When I share ideas at workshops across the U.S. and explain to folks that they need to have a personal presence on Facebook before they can establish a school presence, I hear both groans and glee in the room. School administrators then share their own stories of how they’ve successfully blended or separated their personal and professional presence on Facebook. I’ve been surprised and humbled by the fervor on both sides and learned from both. Both have led me to a rethinking on this topic.

Let’s go back to the camera analogy and name our groups. We have:

• Separatists – folks that value their privacy and take great pains to keep the public and private worlds separate
• Followers – folks that like privacy but also are happy to follow along with society’s expectations when called to do so
• Enthusiasts – folks that see no problems blending/blurring the lines of their private and public lives and in fact thrive in doing so.

As with any categorization, these are broad strokes and there are always exceptions and gradiations. Also, the terms are meant kindly with no favoritism to any particular group. If you think of a better term that feels less value-laden, please let me know.

So, how does this relate to social media marketing within schools? Last week, Duct Tape Marketing gave a lovely, succinct explanation of three possible approaches businesses can use with Facebook. To summarize, they are:

• Facebook Business Account Only - Only available to people without personal accounts, this option is a limited one but great for those for Separatists who are not on Facebook personally. I’ve not yet heard of schools with business accounts but I’m sure they’re out there.
• Use your School’s Page for Public/School Presence, Personal Profile for Private/Personal Presence – This is for the followers, the folks that want to promote their school but still have a space to chat with family and friends.
• Both the School’s Page and your Private/Personal Profile are used for public/private presence - Enthusiasts, and you know ‘em if you aren’t one, cheer for their school on both their school page and their profiles. They’re 24/7 selling their school or promoting their students or sharing their love of their job.

It’s important to note that none of these are better or worse. In some ways, your position at your school may affect how easy or hard it is to adopt a more separatist approach. For example, alumni or marketing or admission folk who are mini-celebrities within the school community have public and private worlds that necessarily collide and fighting that will be hard.

How are you setting up your boundaries on Facebook?

–Lorrie Jackson

Understanding Facebook – Tips for Beginners

Once upon a time there was a beginning and a not-knowing, for all of us. Wherever you may be on the social media journey, at one time, you had to learn the tools from scratch. And for you, that time may be now.

In my presentations across the country, I frequently meet school administrators at this beginning point. They’re eager, they’re motivated but they can sometimes be lost on what’s the first step. I often point them to Facebook as a great place to first stake a school’s social media territory, tell them to follow the steps outlined by Facebook and to keep me posted.

Well, folks often do contact me for more help. Facebook it turns out can be tricky for new users. Many need and want steps to take, tips to remember as they more cautiously build a Facebook presence.

Therefore, here are five simple steps for first time Facebook-ers:

• Start with your Personal profile
  You cannot have a school presence on Facebook until a school staff member has a personal profile on Facebook.  That’s very important and so counter-intuitive to what most of us experience online. So many beginners miss this step then get confused as to why they cannot create a page.If you’re very, very new to Facebook, stop here and spend a few weeks getting to know this site as a person, not a school. Find your family and friends on Facebook, post to your Wall, read the News Feed, and share photos, videos and links.  Get hooked and excited about the media.

  One caution about personal profiles: this is not as common now but in the early days of independent schools on Facebook, a few schools made faux profiles using the school mascot many times (first name Louie, last name Lion, for example). Facebook forbids this approach and can, and has, shut down accounts like this leaving you with no recourse and no way to reclaim connections or content. Keep it real and avoid this fate.

• Create a page
  Facebook, for all its greatness, is not particularly good at navigation and ease-of-use in my book. How do you navigate from your personal profile to creating a page? It’s not simple. So, make it easy and copy and paste this link: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.

  Think carefully when you complete the “Name of Education” field. This is how folks search for your school on Facebook. If your constituents refer to your school by it’s initials (ABC Academy) then call yourself that. If you are just referred to by the first word and not school or academy then use just that first word.

• Add the basics
  Don’t get overwhelmed here. You really can start simple with just:
  • A profile photo – Using a school logo will help emphasize this is the OFFICIAL presence on Facebook for your school
  • School’s Web site
  • Address and phone number
  • Favorite Links – link to NAIS, your alumni page, etc.
  • Campus photos (Facebook is an important recruitment tool)
  • Welcome message on your Wall

That’s it. Keep it basic for now or you’ll end up like me. I’ll keep playing around and adding content and forget to make a page live! That’s not helpful obviously.

• Promote your page
  After you’ve published your page, then you need to tell folks about your page to get the momentum going. Talk about it on your Web site’s news feed, school newsletters, internal e-mail with faculty and students, even your e-mail signature line. Put a link on your Web site somewhere (click here for what’s called a badge, a Facebook picture that you can add to your school’s site and link back to your Facebook page). Copy and paste the URL (http://facebook.com________) onto a file folder label and put that on the back of your business cards, being sure to tell folks it’s there!Tip: Facebook will encourage you to e-mail folks to announce your page. Feel free to use this but understand that e-mail comes from you personally not from the page. If folks reply, they reply to you and your personal profile. Ah, that tricky Facebook!

• Update your page

You’re almost there. Every week, add something new to your page. Photos from the week, questions for folks to answer, something. You can get fancy and use third party tools like Involver to automatically pull content from your Web site, Twitter feed, YouTube account and more, but for the beginner, I’d suggest starting by adding content directly to the Facebook page. This will help build your confidence and competence with the tool

That’s it! You’re now well on your way from not-knowing to much-knowing. Congratulations and good luck on the exciting journey ahead!

–Lorrie Jackson

23 Minutes a Day

23 minutes a day. That’s the average amount of time a user spends on Facebook. That’s important and here’s why.

As an independent school or any organization, we want to engage users online and get them to do something for us: buy our product (recruitment), keep buying our product (retention) or donate to our cause (fund-raising). These marketing goals are really hard if not impossible to achieve on Facebook. You need a place for online applications, donation forms, grades, homework and more. Substantial stuff. That’s our school or corporate Web pages. Chances are though our users aren’t spending 23 minutes each day on our official sites.

So, users want to be one place and we need them to be at another place online. What’s a school to do? Simple. Establish a Facebook page (or group) then engage and steer your audience back to your school’s site. Here’s how:

1. Tease the audience

Famous person on campus? Take lots of pictures and put a few up on your school’s Facebook page. Put a note there that reads, “These are just a few of the great photos from his/her visit. Check out the rest at our www.yourschoolswebsite.com.” Then create a photo slide show on your school’s site and make it easy to find. Be sure to place it near some action you want the user to complete: an online donation form, demographic form for alumni, application for prospective families.

2. Remind them of the good stuff

People love socializing on Facebook but people also need information to function in their daily lives. Your school’s Web site is the best place for that information. Remind users on Facebook to go back to your school’s site for sports scores, teacher pages, alumni class listings, etc.

3. Give them a way to interact

Users want to contribute online; that’s why they’re on Facebook. So, don’t try to be Facebook but instead solicit meaningful input from users on your school’s Web site. Add polls, discussion forms, blogs (with comments enabled) and other collaborative spaces. Ask questions on Facebook that will motivate users to actually click over to your site and contribute.

23 minutes a day. Wow. How are you leveraging Facebook effectively for your school?

–Lorrie

Four Steps Towards Social Media Buy-In at Your School

Want to use social media to market your school but afraid of administrator push-back? Here are some quick tips to help overcome hesitation and concerns:

• Knowledge is power
  Often a headmaster or other administrator may not be familiar with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.? Give them a chance to learn about the tool before pushing for its use. Videos by CommonCraft are a great place to help build familiarity. Or, help that person sign up for a personal profile on Facebook or an account on Twitter and give them a few weeks to learn the technology. Then, building on a basic understanding now, you can talk marketing to alumni, prospective families and general school audience.
• It’s not all or nothing
  Say, “I want to market using Facebook” and often administration hears “I want our students to have free rein on Facebook all day without any boundaries.” Luckily, there is little correlation between an effective marketing campaign using social media and unregulated usage by students. There is plenty of room for schools to dictate how and when students and faculty use social media in the classroom or as part of their jobs AND still have a robust marketing campaign.
• Show success
  So many schools are out in the social media sphere now making a name for themselves. Check out my presentations on SlideShare for screenshots from schools across the country. The schools are widely varied in mission, size and marketing goals but each finds a way to leverage social media and so can you.
• Don’t assume, ask
  At one school, IT staff had to present a proposal for social media marketing to the board of trustees for approval. Uncertain they would get much buy-in, staff asked first if board members were familiar with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. To their surprise, every board member raised their hands. One had a Facebook group for a club he was in. Another had a Twitter account at his company, and on and on. Lesson: administrators (and boards!) may be more familiar than you think with social media. Find out their usage and comfort level before assuming anything.

What has helped you achieve administrative buy-in at your school?

–Lorrie

Friending Students and Other Social Media Policies

I recently shared some ideas on social media to a great group of folks in Ohio (Hi, guys!) and the prevailing question from the audience was: what’s a good policy on friend students on social media sites? It’s a great question although until then I didn’t realize how crucial this topic was becoming for most schools.

A recent study from the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics found that half of the businesses surveyed did NOT have a social media policy – guidelines on the proper use of social media by employees – in place. The problem, says the study authors, is two-prong: employees can say negative things about the company and, assuming the company eventually puts a policy in place, will have a difficult adjustment period learning to abide by the new rules.

For those in schools, these risks are exacerbated by the addition of students, a minor population. How does your school view the online relationship between students and teachers? Should it differ from an offline one? I’ve heard the analogy that friending a student online is like sitting in his or her living room alone with that student: the unequal relationship and your responsibilities through in loco parentis place you in a precarious place.

Still, for some educators and schools, it feels counter-intuitive to mission or to social media not to friend students, as if we were saying we did not want to continue a mentoring relationship online as well as offline. There are no hard and fast rules on friending students but caution should be exercised and administrative teams should discuss this possibility as well as other components to a school’s social media policy including:

• Possible usage of social media as a teaching and learning tool
  Facebook can be used in the classroom but there are also other education-specific alternatives like Ning. Decide what’s the best route for your school.
• Access to social media by employees during work hours
  Parents are watching and if they notice a teacher changing their Facebook status at 10:15 a.m. in the morning, even if during a planning period, does it send a mixed message on the priorities of that educator’s day?
• Friending parents
  Some parents are looking for the inside scoop 24/7. For sanity, sometimes it’s simpler to have a no-parent-friending policy for some schools.
• Online conduct
  Put simply: an educator’s online presence reflects on his or her offline status as an educator. What we say and do online cannot be separated. That joke, picture, status or comment can all reflect on our professionalism. My personal rule is that I never post anything that I would not share to a class full of 5th graders: old enough to appreciate a little humor but it’s still fairly tame and uncontroversial.
• You are the school
  Keep in mind that and a simple Facebook status that says, “Boy, today was rough… I’m ready for the weekend” may alarm a mother. Did you not enjoy teaching? Did you yell at my child? Parents see you as an extension of the school. Always be positive about where you work and what you do for a living. Leave the complaining to a private place with friends and family.

What’s the biggest concern your school has in instituting or enforcing a social media policy? Share with us your story!

–Lorrie

Social Media Adoption Stages and Your School

Business Week’s Corporate Executive Board argued in a post called “The Overlooked Side of Social Media” that while 70% of corporations are using social media, most are simply throwing content  up and not planning their work, working their plan.

Are we falling into the same trap in independent schools? It takes less than two minutes to set up a school’s Twitter profile, five minutes for a Facebook page. It takes hours to consider school mission, marketing goals and develop a social media marketing strategy. Are we taking the time we should?

The article goes on to outline three distinct stages of the social media journey – discovery, experimention and adoption – and offers suggestions at each step.  In summary:

1. Discovery

You’re still learning about social media in general and may not yet have a profile, page or channel online. Now is the time, writes Business Week, to develop a social media policy for your employees to ensure appropriate usage by staff. In the school setting, a policy may include elements such as:

• Appropriate use of social media in the classroom
• Modelling appropriate behavior as an educator both online and offline
• Friending – students/parents/alumni (the challenge of unequal relationships)
• Communicating with other friends your unique situation as an educator 24/7
• Social media access during work hours
• Advantages to using privacy settings on Facebook

2. Experimentation

Now’s the time that schools are establishing their first Facebook pages, Twitter profiles and LinkedIn groups. It’s vital now to put your team in place: who will be the point person for uploading content and monitoring your online presence? Also, begin to track the success or lack thereof of your efforts, suggests Business Week. Use Facebook’s Insights for example to assess page interactions, unique page views and more to determine if your hard work is paying off.

3. Adoption

You are now established and regularly contribute to your several social media presences. The challenges become sustainability and a little looser control. Business Week argues that in the initial phases, administrators should keep a close tabs on an organization’s social media efforts but once successful and stable, it’s time to let the team take over. Continue monitoring traffic however to make sure you’re spending manpower and resources wisely on each site.

So, where does your school stand on the road to social media success? What will it take to move to the next stage in the journey?

–Lorrie Jackson