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).

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Why Don’t You Have More Friends?

Is social media making you lonely? Do you not have as many friends as you’d like? Got only a handful of fans on Facebook and just a few followers on Twitter?

You might be thinking to yourself, “What am I doing wrong?”

Today I’d like to address that question and maybe, just maybe, make you a few more friends in the process.
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A Lesson For Schools – Social Media Is Like A Party

The video at the end of this article shows Internet marketing guru, Perry Belcher, explaining how he uses social media to attract new clients and make more money.

While the video is targeted at small business owners looking to use social media as a means of increasing sales, there is a lot in the video that schools can use as well.

The main point Perry is making in the video is that you need to treat social media as though it were a party. Each of the various social networking sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, etc) are a different online party. And when you go to a party, you don’t want to show up and immediately start talking about yourself.

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Which Online Tools Should Schools Be Using?

The Internet has brought a wave of new tools for schools and education systems alike to use as they communicate, educate and inspire their communities. In fact, there are so many new tools now, it’s a bit overwhelming. There’s Twitter and Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Plurk and more. There’s email newsletters, RSS feeds, websites and blogs. And that’s not to mention StumbleUpon, Digg or Squidoo. The list goes on, but you get the point. There are a lot of free online tools at your disposal. The question now is, which ones should you be using?

Here’s my answer: ALL OF THEM!

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Schools Using Social Media To Communicate And Educate

When it comes to schools using social media, there are two main areas of discussion.

1. The first is that of communication; where social media is used as a tool for school administrators to communicate with parents, teachers, students and community members. In turn, these new online tools are also used as a way for parents, teachers, students and community members to voice their views and opinions back to school administrators and education officials.
2. The second area of discussion is that of education, where social media is taught and used in the classroom as a platform for sharing, learning, and growing.

The first area of concern (communication) is a no-brainer. Of course your school should be using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr to keep in touch and communicate with the people in your “tribe”. Social media sites such as these are a great tool for school officials to have. The tools are free, easy to use, can be run by a single person within your organization, and best of all – your parents, teachers and students are already using these services.

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What Is Social Networking?

In our last video post we answered the question, “What Is Social Media?” But today we’re going to discuss the term “Social Networking” and how it relates to you and your school. 

And once again, we’re going to use an easy-to-understand video made by the good folks at Common Craft to explain exactly what social networking is. So sit back and enjoy! 

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