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.
Read more
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.
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.
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?
There are a number of good reasons for a school district with good intentions to use Facebook. While I will cover some of these advantages in the paragraphs below, I suspect that as Facebook, the Internet and the online world evolve over the months and years to come, the list of advantages I’ve provided here will continue to grow and grow.
That being said, the biggest advantage of getting your school district on Facebook right away is that by joining Facebook, you will be able to instantly reach your community in a place that they are already actively participanting.
Whether you want to believe it or not, many of your students, parents, teachers, staff and community members are already on Facebook and look to the site as a valuable source of information and insight into the people and organizations that they deem important. By joining these people where they already communicate and interact, you are able to quickly and easily join the discussion and get your message out to the people who need and want it most.
There is a notion amongst many individuals that Facebook (or any other social media website for that matter) is designed primarily for kids… and that the only people that use social media websites are teenagers and young adults. But this simply isn’t the case and if that’s what you’ve heard, you’ve been severely misinformed!
Individuals, businesses and organizations of all shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds are using Facebook to connect with and lead the people they are trying to influence. Author Seth Godin, wine entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong and even the actress Demi Moore have jumped on the social media bandwagon and are using these new online tools to connect with and inspire their community.
Another misconception some have about Facebook and other social media websites is that they are used primarily for the sharing of pornographic or ill natured information that may offend and frighten off new users. But if this is what you’ve heard, you’ve again been given false information.
