4 Major Mistakes Your School Might Be Making With Social Media… And What You Can Do About It
For many school administrators and education officials, the Internet (and especially social media) is an entirely unknown world. However, most school officials know that these new tools need to be put to good use. But the question I’m often asked is, “How exactly?”
For the past two years I’ve been working with schools around the world to tackle this very question… and I’ve created The Social Media Schools Master Course for those schools wishing to quickly and easily start using social media (without making the mistakes so many schools have made in the past).
What mistakes am I talking about exactly? Well, here are four big ones (and their solutions)… in no particular order:
Thinking That Social Media Is Something You Can Set Up Once And Then Forget About
When schools first take to the Internet, many of them do so by creating an official website for their school. This is great! However, many schools take this first step with a “build it and they will come” mentality. They think that simply having a website is enough to attract new students, share important information with their community, and get their news to spread.
Over time, however, these schools realize that running a website takes a lot of work. The job is never done. Not only do you have to create new content for your school’s website, but you’ve also got to let your community know that the content is actually there.
In other words… you not only have to constantly write new content for your site… but you’ve got to market it as well!
The Solution: In order to succeed online (and in the world of social media), you’ve got to understand that this is all an ongoing process. Your school’s website is never finished and neither is your social media use. Just setting up a social media account or two is not enough. Social media is not something you can set and forget.
Success online requires a certain amount of upkeep and a certain amount of regularity. The good news is that the upkeep you do on your social media accounts also attributes to the upkeep you do on your school’s website. So spending a little extra time on social media will actually help to boost your school’s website as well.
Most importantly, knowing that this is all an on-going process from the get-go is an important part of succeeding in the online world. You should know what you are getting yourself into before you take the leap and commit to the use of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. If you jump in, jump in head first and keep on swimming!
Expecting The Results To Be Immediate
Many schools come to social media thinking that they’ll be able to quickly and easily build a community of people willing to subscribe to the information they are putting out. But building your community through social media is a long term commitment and the results are typically far from immediate.
The Solution: Know from the beginning that this will likely be a slow process. Social media doesn’t just take time. It also takes commitment. That means posting regularly and to a schedule. Your community members are more likely to visit your school’s website and interact with you on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter if they know you release new information on a regular basis.
Posting new information at pre-determined times each week can help to establish this rhythm and build a healthy following. But again, it takes time and commitment in order to build a community through the use of social media.
Being Too Commercial, Too Cold, and Too Conservative
Social media is more than just a broadcast tool. The word “social” alone dictates that these new networking tools are to be a dialogue between the individuals within your organization and your community. In addition to putting out good, useful information… it’s important to listen to your community as well. Schools that do nothing more than push out marketing messages ultimately do nothing but disengage their readers and build resentment within their community.
The Solution: Instead of pushing out marketing messages, you should focus on telling your community members how great your school is and how wonderful your parents, teachers and students are. Instead of hiding from negative comments and potential criticism, encourage users to contribute to the online conversation through comments and constructive critiques.
People don’t like interacting with organizations, corporations or machines. People like talking to people. So you need to use social media as a means of letting people find out about you and your school.
Your school’s social media use should focus on different people and the role they perform within your school, rather than the actions of the institution itself. Your social media accounts should profile the people that make your school great.
Expecting Too Much From Your Followers
More often than not, the content schools send out to their community members is just too plain long and too plain boring. Because of its length, the content usually takes considerable commitment to wade through and therefore only reaches a small percentage of its intended populous.
In short, many schools ask too much of their readers.
The solution: With so many information sources now competing for our community’s attention, you need to make sure your school’s content stands out from the crowd.
One way to do this is to make sure that your readers can get the gist of what you are saying by just scanning your content. This can be achieved using a number of techniques:
- Summarize a post at the beginning and in the title. Don’t leave your community guessing as to what the subject is about.
- Be controversial or funny in order to grab your reader’s attention.
- Use headings as a way of pulling readers in and summarizing content.
- Use images to break up the copy and communicate key points.
- Do not feel that all the content you produce online needs to be a long, drawn out essay. Short posts, polls, and discussions can be just as engaging. Anything that is of value to the user is worth posting.
Finally, remember that not all online content need to be textual. Consider sharing videos from school events. Record an audio interview with one of your staff members or new students. Post some photos from recent school events. Just don’t expect your community to read lots of copy.
For more information on the Social Media Schools Master Course and how you can quickly and easily start succeeding in the world of social media at your school, please visit the following web address: http://socialmediaschools.com/resources/
