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.

Just like in your normal life, if you were to show up at a party and only talk about yourself, people would think you were a real jerk! The same is true when using social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But when you go to a party in your normal life, you don’t just talk about yourself, do you? I hope not!

Instead, you show up, you ask people what they’re doing, you compliment what others are wearing, you try and find people who are interested in the same things you are, and you strike up conversation. The same needs to be true when using social networking sites in your school.

When you use Facebook or Twitter to communicate with your parents, teachers, students and community members, you don’t want to ALWAYS be talking about you and your school. Instead, you’ve got to treat your social media use more like a party.

• Use social media to compliment and congratulate people in your community.
• Use social media to profile the accomplishments of your teachers and students.
• Use social media to build up your staff and community members.
• Use social media to ask questions and gather feedback.
• Use social media to find out what your students, parents, teachers and community members really want.

Because social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are free, easy to use, and have millions of current users, many schools see this as an opportunity to pump their community with selfish and meaningless content. But when you start to treat your social media use more like a party, you start to realize just how wrong this approach really is.

Watch the video below to learn more… and after you’ve finished watching it, leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Photo by Art Comments

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 what is really going on…

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.

Sit back and enjoy!

Again, this is a very simple explanation of what social networking is and how it works.

On a social networking site (such as Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn) you find and add “friends” to your network of people. At the same time, your friends are also creating online relationships. Eventually, you will be able to see not only what your friends are doing online, but also what your friends’ friends are doing online. And this opens up a whole new world of opportunity for networking, communication, and the sharing of thoughts and ideas.

We’ll cover social networking in greater detail in future articles, including in depth discussions of each social network, but for now this definition should suffice.

If you have any questions or you have a social networking definition that is better than the one above, feel free to leave a comment below!