The “How-To” of Social Media Tools

13 OCT 2010Gabrielle Pittman, Springside SchoolJoel F. W. Price, Friends’ Central SchoolRachel Welsh, The Shipley School

Housekeeping

Please silence cell phones

WE ARE … Digital Immigrants

• Immigrants and Natives– A digital immigrant - born before the

existence of digital technology and adopted it to some extent later.

– A digital native - born after the general implementation of digital technology, and, as a result, has a familiarity with digital technology such as computers, the Internet, mobile phones and MP3s over their whole lives. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native)

Our First Family Computers

Source: http://www.pcmonitors.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/monochrome-TTL-monitor.jpg

Digital Immigrants

Avoiders, Reluctant Adopters & Eager Adopters– Avoider - minimal amount of technology involved in

their lives and households (Ex: landline and TV).

– Reluctant - often see ways that tech might be needed in their lives, but try to avoid it when possible.

– Eager - have enthusiasm or talent for tech that makes them very similar to Digital Natives. Similarly, not all digital natives are comfortable with tech.

Know Your Constituents!

• Where do they live online?

• Where do you live online?

(Did you just answer the same thing twice?)

What are your statistics telling you? How often are you asking yourself this? Are you creating just to create?

Network Commonalities

• They all bring people together

• Most social networks are designed with for-profit uses in mind, but educational uses emerge and can be very powerful

Two Things You Should Be Using

• Google Alerts– Easy-to-use, daily emails about any/every

topic regarding you or people at your school

• Facebook– Probably the place most of your

constituents are (even the older ones). Try entering your school name in the search box!

Constant Evolution

• Over time, we have seen the creation of apps, notifications, pages, updates, connect, and community pages– Yahoo! releasing

more Facebook integrations (including flickr integration)

Open Your Mind

• You probably do not want to just copy what other schools do (you are unique)!

• Applying a new mindset to social media will benefit you and your constituents.

Learn, Shape, Innovate

• 1. Use the tools first – plork (pronounced “plurk” = play + learn + work)

• 2. Adapt a tool to fit your school

• 3. What will you build for your constituents?

Get Fans via a ContestEmail and results 8 days later

HTML (FBML)

RSS Feed (SocialRSS)

flickr pix (MyFlickr)

“OLD

LOOK,

same

tools”

Source: http://facebook.com/friendscentral

Don’t Discount the Power of Groups

What Do Your Constituents Expect?

• Facebook can be used both proactively and reactively.

• Do you know what gets reactions from your constituents?

Don’t Get Caught - Plan Ahead!

• Event Marketing– Shipley Shops– Casino Night– Alumni Weekend

• Planned stories for each event

• Written in advance• Posted weekly• Each story focused

on a particular aspect of the event

Community Pages

• The launch of these (01 APR 2010) have affected:

– Your Fan Page• Control

– School “Subgroups”• Branding

Beware Community Pages

Beware Community Pages 2

• SourceDescription above from the Wikipedia article The Shipley School, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors here. Community Pages are not affiliated with, or endorsed by, anyone associated with the topic.

Community Pages: Reasons

• Drawing on wikipedia entries, other “mentions” of your school name

• CNN President is more afraid of Facebook than of FOX News, due to the number of users and the type of information exchange

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-social-networking-sites-dominate-sharing-2009-7

Be Flexible

• Sometimes, due to the workflow, you may need to temporarily change the way you communicate:

– flickr posts to a blog and to Facebook– News posts to homepage and Facebook

Springside Takeaways

• Control your name – anything that could be or should be linked in your name, take ownership of it.

• Create partnerships within your school – Tech Department, Teachers, iSite Girls, Alumnae (anyone who knows and loves your school)

• Borrow and Incorporate – Great practices in the classroom, great videos, images from key demographics are what you should be using

• Set clear expectations – This work takes time• Look at “problems” differently – sites update all

the time, use this to your advantage

Friends’ Central Takeaways• Plorking Works!• Social Media School | @smtschool• Inside Facebook• Mashable | @mashable• Stanford University’s Fan Page | @stanford• Alumni Futures | @alumnifutures• Adaptivate | @lizallen

Shipley Takeaways

• Use RSS for news on your Website and feed it to Facebook• If you have more than one news category

feed them all to FB in the same feed using RSS Graffiti            

• Promotional contests work!• Pre-write content and publish it on a schedule• Don’t try to conquer all social media tools at once• Survey your constituencies to find out what social media

they use• Get a plan in writing• Put it on your calendar – “Check Facebook”

Additional Web Resources

• ThePort - http://theport.com/• Social Institute

-http://socialinstitute.org/app/render/go.aspx?xsl=tp_community.xslt

• edSocialMedia - http://edsocialmedia.com/• Socialmention – http://socialmention.com• Hootsuite – http://hootsuite.com

Conference Resources

• Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC)http://nten.org/ntc

• CASE Social Media and Community - http://case.org/Conferences_and_Training/SMC11.html