The Advantages Of Being On Facebook
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.
But even better than the fact that you can reach people within your community on Facebook is the fact that Facebook is a free application that (when managed correctly) can save your school hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars each and every year.
When your school district signs up for Facebook, it won’t cost them a single cent. The service is free to join… and free to use! And believe it or not, posting messages or sending out information to people in your “tribe” is absolutely free! The same can not be said for most other forms of communication.
As I discussed in a previous article, printing up newsletters and mailing home flyers is both time consuming and expensive. Email newsletters too can be time drains and tiring management problems. But with Facebook and the simple click of a mouse, your message can be sent (immediately) to thousand and thousands of people – for free!
With the economy in a lurch and school districts seeking out ways to save money and cut operating costs, now is the best time in history to have such an incredible, interactive and online tool available.
But there is more to Facebook than simple cost-saving incentives. In fact, there is a lot more!
Take for example, the fact that your school district’s Facebook account/profile is a way for your district to interact and receive feedback from your tribe in a way that has never been possible before.
Let’s say that you are considering the current budget crisis and you are looking for a way to cut $500,000 from the budget. After various district meetings, school board officials have decided that they either need to close one of your district schools or they need to reduce teacher salaries by 20% and cut school supply expenses by an additional 20%.
In the past, school districts with a dilemma such as this would hold countless meetings, where time would be wasted and arguments on both sides would be filed. The decision would eat up valuable time and resources… and the end result would likely cost the district untold amounts of money. Yes, the decision itself would cost the school district money!
But now, with Facebook, imagine this: Instead of holding three months worth of meetings to decide how to handle the budget crisis, imagine what would happen if you polled your Facebook users. You would post a message online in which you explained the current dilemma, shared the suggestions of the school board, and then asked the community for their feedback and advice. Imagine what would happen!
What would happen is that 1) you’d get a mess of ideas you never thought of before (some good… and some bad). 2) You’d also find out what the community thinks about the situation and you could determine which way the people were leaning (as in, would they prefer that the district close a school or that the teachers make less money). And finally 3) your tribe, while they may be upset about the budget situation, will respect the school board officials for their final decision because they, at the very least, asked the community for their opinion.
If you have the guts to use Facebook and these new social media tools in this way, the tools can provide you with a platform for change that never existed until now.
But there is more good news about Facebook. In fact, a lot more!
One other advantage to being a part of Facebook is the opportunity for your district and the people in your tribe to interact and share ideas with other school districts, organizations and community groups in your area. As the online world grows, more and more groups (both local and global groups) are being created to connect and inform people of various backgrounds and interests. If you are not a part of (or leading) one of these groups, then you are seriously missing out. And as a school district, you should be leading (or at least listening to) the people in your community.
With Facebook you now have a tool that can quickly and easily enable you to share information, ideas, and support with other local groups. Whether you choose to connect with a community group, a local charity, a sports club, or an after school program, imagine how your district and the people in your community could benefit. The possibilities are surprisingly endless.
And while I could continue with the list of advantages to social media and Facebook forever, I think the last important point to make is that whether you choose to join Facebook or not, your community will find a way to unite and share ideas and information whether you like it or not.
The great (and sometimes scary) thing about Facebook is that anyone (whether they are affiliated with your organization or not) can create an account, a group, or a page in which they are able to control and moderate the information that is posted there.
What this means to you is that when you create a Facebook Group for your school district (I’ll talk more about Groups in a future post), you become the administrator for that group and it is you who gets to control the information that is posted to your page(s). This means that if you receive a negative comment, you have the option of deleting it. If you receive an off-the-cuff idea from one of your community members, you can respond to them personally or choose to respond in front of the group. If you create the group, you get to control the content! And that’s a beautiful thing!
But the scary part is, anyone can create a group… and therefore, if you don’t create a group for your school district (either because you are too lazy, too scared of community outlash, or too worried about the amount of work it may take to moderate such a project), someone else will step in and create the group for you. And as some school districts have already found out, the person that often times steps in is an angry parent, an outraged community member, or a student who feels as though his or her experience in your school was a complete waste of his or her time.
The point I’m trying to make is that you have an opportunity, right now, to create your own online presence and control it in such a way that you deem fit. But if you wait and choose not to act soon, someone else may very well step in and create your group for you. And when this happens you will have no control over what people say, what information is shared, or what type of remarks will spread like wildfire throughout your community.
My recommendation is that you act fast, use Facebook to your advantage, and build your community today!
