Why It’s Smart To Link To Other Websites

Have you ever heard that it was bad to link to other websites? That by doing so you were essentially sending your readers away from your own website, off to another place where they may never return from?

Keeping website readers on your own site incredibly important. The longer they stay on your site, the more information they receive, the more likely you are to produce a sale (gain a new student), and the better your overall conversion rates will be.

But linking out to another website and sending traffic away from your own site is not always a bad idea. In fact, in some cases, it’s an excellent strategy for growing your school’s online presence.

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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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Act Quickly Or Perish – Good Advice For Schools

Yesterday I released my highly anticipated Social Media Schools Education & Technology Manifesto. In preparation for the manifesto’s launch I wrote about the report here on SocialMediaSchools.com, sent a blast out to my email subscribers using Aweber and notified my followers on Twitter and Facebook. 

About fifteen minutes after the report was released I got a message from Bill, one of my email newsletter subscribers, telling me there was a mistake with the link at the end of the report. 

“Oh no!” I thought. “I just sent that report out to EVERYONE!!! What am I going to do?” 

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How To Social Media Videos For School Administrators – Coming Soon!

We’ve got some exciting news!

SocialMediaSchools.com is currently working to create a series of how-to videos that will give school administrators a step-by-step break down of how to set up social media profiles and use social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter to connect with, educate, and inspire their teachers, students, parents, staff and community members. 

These training videos are expected to be finished by the end of May 2009 and we are rushing to get them done in time for you to integrate into your school system before the start of the 2009-2010 school year.

We believe it is imperative that we get this information out there as soon as humanly possible because we know that social media is going to play a significant role in the education system over the coming months and years.

Our plan for these videos is to answer all the major questions you might have in regards to creating, using, and moderating a social networking account.  
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