Social Media…Emphasis on MEEEEEdia: Fatal Flaws of the 21st Century Supermarket Tabloid

Over time I have come to discovery that the flaws in the architecture of all social media platforms are irreparable and can’t be redeemed. As a thoughtful and reflective critic, I have no choice but place social media on the figurative supermarket tabloid rack where the National Enquirer and Weekly World News reside. 

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—even LinkedIn are all media doomed because of one major fundamental flaw: they presume that the individual should be able to choose the information they encounter and that those same individuals should be able to selfishly screen out the information that makes them uncomfortable and fundamentally question their lives, their beliefs, and even their place in the world. It is really ideas that disturb us, that make us uncomfortable that make us reflective and introspective. Without them, we unquestionably follow doctrine and demagogues, and become entangled in the webs of propaganda spun by authoritarian quacks.

Social media…which should really be spelled….social MEEEEEEEDIA, unfortunately has been responsible for much of polarization and partisan divide that exists in our country. It is a technology that allows individuals to live comfortably in alternative universes and in worlds of alternative facts. It also assumes too much, that those who inhabit their milieus know the difference.

Neil Postman somewhat prophetically captured this fatal flaw in social media way back in 1988 when he wrote: 

“Just as the language itself creates culture in its own image, each new medium of communication re-creates or modifies culture in its image; and it is extreme naïveté to believe that a medium of communication or, indeed, any technology is merely a tool, a way of doing.” Neil Postman, Conscientious Objections

We were, I was, naive to believe that social media was or ever would be, “Just a tool, a way of connecting.” It has “re-created” and “modified” our culture in its image, which is a culture where my own beliefs, biases, prejudices, and nonsense constantly validated. The “Me” in social media’s architecture has cultivated a society where what I believe is true and everything else and everyone else on on highways to hell. As a tool for connecting individuals with others, social media has failed colossally.

It is time to stop calling “social media” simply at “tool” with just a communicative purpose. With its algorithms and architecture, it is designed most exclusively as a propaganda tool (which in my thinking is simply a more harsh but correct characterization of the term “marketing”), and is not just a tool to disseminate information. It shoves only the information its users wish to see, only the most propagandistic ideas into the minds of its users. And, add the fact that one can “pay” to promote your posts, and you have the ability to promote ideas, not because they are beneficial or right or just or worthwhile, but because you have financial means to affect the minds of others.

One can only take a look at some of my past blog posts and see that I once believe the stories social media sites used to promote themselves as tools for individuals to connect. But I was wrong. Social media platforms are fatally constructed as they are. They are disinformation and malinformation machines and anyone using them now needs to keep all such sites figuratively located on the supermarket tabloid rack next to the National Enquirer when it comes to what you read therein. 

Interesting Inforgraphic: The Use of Social Media in School

I think this infographic makes a solid argument for making use of social media in schools. I hope you find is as interesting as I did.

The Use of Social Media in Schools infographic by obizmedia.

Transparent School Leadership: Engaging Social Media as a Strategy

At the NCTIES Conference this week in Raleigh, North Carolina, my presentation was "Transparent School Leadership: Managing Your School or District's Online Reputation." The basic premise of the entire presentation was based on these assumptions about school leadership and the engagement of social media.

• School leaders no longer have a choice of whether to engage in the use of social media if they are going to communicate in a 21st century manner. Our stakeholders increasingly demand that our communication be interactive and multi-way rather than one-way. 
• School leaders who continue to ignore social media are also missing out on its power. The reason social media can be used for good or ill is because it is a powerful communication medium. If school leaders choose to ignore it, they fail to capitalize on one of the most powerful communication tools in the 21st century.
• School leaders need to make their social media and communication strategy deliberate and sustained. That includes making social media an integrated part of the school district's communication strategy. No more treating social media channels as an "after-thought." Twenty-first century transparent school leadership requires that social media be an integral component of how we communicate to our communities.
• School leaders must become knowledgeable of not just the tools of social media, but also social media strategy in general. Business gets it when it comes to social media. They are engaging in deliberate social media campaigns to tell their stories and schools---school districts need to do so as well. This means school leaders need to become knowledgeable of social media as a communication craft.

Being a transparent school leader in the 21st century means using all the tools at our disposal, including social media. It means learning to capitalize on social media's power and complementing our school or district communication strategy with modern multi-way communication tools.

Here's my presentation to the NCTIES 2013 Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.

5 Ways School Leaders Can Immediately Capture the Power of Social Media

“Customer engagement means trusting, listening, and learning from your stakeholder communities, and responding to their comments with quality content in an honest, authentic manner.” Andy Beal and Judy Strauss, Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online

The conventional way many administrators use social media is as a “21st century announcement system.” Using it in this manner is certainly worthwhile, but that is using only one facet of social media. It is also designed to connect and foster multi-way communication. It is a means to carry on a conversation, and simply using it to announce your next open house or the latest basketball scores ignores this connection-fostering aspect of social media.

As a school leader, if you want to grow and move to using social media as it is designed, here’s some things you might want to do today to use social media as a multi-way conversational device.

• Don’t just send messages; invite your school community into an online conversation. Post something that invites your stakeholders into a conversation. Take a poll, post an opinion, get feedback on a schedule change, or have your parents share memories of what school was like for them. If you’re just using social media to “send messages” you miss the whole point of the technology: it’s about the conversations.
• Give your school community the information they want, not what you think they should have. With social media we have one of the most powerful information-dispensing systems in the history of mankind, and we want to try to control the information flow. Find out today what kinds of information your constituents want and give it to them. Give them the content they want to have, not what you think they want.
• Make your social media use a “sustained communication effort” not just one of the those added things you do. To really capture the power of social media, use it in a sustained manner. Post provocatively and thoughtfully and do so each day. To get the most of social media, use it in sustained manner, not as an afterthought.
• Use multiple social media platforms. This only makes sense. Use Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and Google + to get the widest audience possible. Don’t limit your school or district social media use to one tool. Make your educational social media efforts a quality marketing effort using multiple tools.
• Don’t throw out the traditional media. Social media and traditional media can complement one another. A good old-fashioned press release well-placed then promoted through social media can get a lot of attention. Making use of both media types is a 21st century communication strategy.

While you can certainly use social media to make announcements, its real power lies in the connections and relationships it fosters. Make an effort to expand how you use it today.

7 Steps to Optimize Your Social Media Presence as an Educator

In his book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, David Meerman Scott perhaps captures why a number of us so heavily engage in using social media:

“ It’s fun to blog and tweet, and it makes you feel good to get your ideas out into the world.”

It is fun to blog and tweet, and there is satisfaction that comes from “getting your ideas out there.” But for me real satisfaction comes from making “connections” with other educators and growing my personal learning network. This real satisfaction  also comes from developing an “online presence” that authentically represents who I am. Making personal network connections to learn and interact with other educators is both personally and professionally satisfying, and this is best done when we do so as real people.

Making the most of  social media presence for most educators means one thing: growing and maintaining a strong, vibrant network of other educators. The best way to do this is to optimize your social media presence as an educator. Optimizing your presence, as I see it, is a process of becoming a real person, a real educator on the web. It is announcing to the cyberworld, “I am an educator, and I have something to share!” There are some things you can begin to do now to make the most of social media by becoming an authentic, real person with whom others want to connect.

Here are seven steps to optimizing your presence as an educator on social networks.

1. Just as if you're writing a book or a journal article, when engaging in social media use, know your audience. When engaging in social media for the purpose of connecting and growing your personal learning network, know who want to connect with and make their interests, needs, and wants a consideration in the content your share over those networks. In other words, the content of your Tweets, Facebook posts, Google+ posts, and blog posts do matter if you want to connect with other educators. Posting about what you learned during your last project-based learning workshop might get you connected with another teacher, but posting about your reactions to last night’s Superbowl may connect you with fellow pro-football enthusiasts. Know who want to connect with, and make that the focus of your social media content efforts.

2. Be a “thought leader” as Scott suggests in his book, The Rules for Marketing and PR. If you want to engage fellow educators, provide them with information that is valuable and interesting to them. If you want to engage fly-fishing enthusiasts, post information valuable and interesting to fly fisherman. Be willing to share your ideas and thoughts through the media. Yes, it does make you feel a bit vulnerable, but is that not what leadership is sometimes about? Be a thought leader in the area of education and share your area of expertise.

3. Be real and transparent. Authentic personal learning network connections happen between real people, not people hiding behind fake Twitter names or Facebook profiles. By being who you are on social networks, you don’t risk making others angry and wanting to disconnect with you should they find out you’re a phony. Being real means sharing your experiences. It means being the person and educator in cyberspace that inhabits your classroom or your office. No one likes a phony. Being transparent means not overinflating who you are. It means not hiding anything. Being real and transparent in social media channels makes others feel as if they are conversing with another real person, because they are.

4. Share links and resources. Educators love links and are always "on the prowl" for ideas to make their classroom and teaching run smoother, or their schools operate more effectively. When you find an excellent resource to share, send out the link on Twitter, on Facebook, and Google+.  When you are reading a particularly engaging book, share out quotes, especially thought-provoking ones. I keep my curating tools on standby all the time in order to capture these resources pouring constantly to me from Twitter. If you want to connect and grow your personal learning network, share links and other resources with other educators.

5. Participate in online social media discussions. This means joining a Twitter Chat such as #edchat, #satchat, or #ncadmin. There are quite a few of these occurring during a week’s time. You can probably find one in your main area of educational interest too. Participating in a chat means more than lurking. It means sharing out your thoughts on the topic of discussion. It means engaging a conversation where what you say is limited to 140 characters or less, which means your words are as valuable as gold. Choose them wisely. If you want to connect and grow your personal learning network and optimize your social media educator presence, engage in online discussions with other educators using social media.

6. Make it easy for others to contact you. If both of you connect through Twitter, direct messaging makes it easy. If they can’t contact with you that way, provide an email address on your blog or web page. If you want to authentically connect with other educators, you have to make it easy for them to do so. Providing an email address through which others may contact you might mean you'll get a bunch of junk email, but it is well-worth it. You can delete and dump those junk emails, but if other educators can't connect with you directly, it's hard to have an online presence.

7. Make it easy for other educators to find you. Cross-link all of your social media accounts to your blogs, web site, and other social media accounts. Playing hide-n-seek in cyberspace only frustrates others who are trying to connect with you. They are not going to work hard trying to find you. Use your social media accounts and web presence to make it easy for other educators to find you by cross-linking everything.

It is fun to Tweet, blog, and post on Facebook. And I do get a great deal of satisfaction from “getting my ideas out there.” The greater satisfaction for me, however, comes from connecting and sharing with other educators. I can do that more effectively if I have optimized my personal and professional social media presence. Optimizing your social media presence as an educator is no more than making yourself available and being who you are in cyberspace.

3 Principles to Guide Your Social Media Debut

"While principals and superintendents are rearranging their organizational charts and agonizing over budget proposals, important conversations about their schools are being held all around them. These conversations used to take place at the grocery store, around the swimming pool in the summer, and at community events; now they take place on the web---on the neighborhood digital bulletin boards, on Twitter, in blogs, and on YouTube."   Kitty Porterfield and Meg Carnes, Why Social Media Matters: School Communication in the Digital Age

I am amazed that in my conversations with other administrators and teachers, there are those who still refuse to engage in using social media. As Porterfield and Carnes point out, school leaders are working hard on their budgets, their policies, and meetings, and many of them are oblivious to the conversation that goes on Cyberspace about their schools and districts. According to Porterfield and Carnes,"It is more than foolish for school leaders to pretend that education is somehow untouched by this new media; it is negligent, and it reinforces the image that many Americans have of schools and school leaders---that leaders keep their eyes on the rear-view mirror as they run our schools, and that our schools are just not in step with the times." There are administrators who still refuse to engage in connecting through social media. They see it as a nuisance, and fight to keep it out of their schools, even though it is impossible to do so.

For those school administrators and teachers who are thinking about making their "Social Media Debut," here's three simple principles to get your started.

1.  Choose multiple tools for your "social media toolkit." You need to consider using tools like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and blogs. Multiple tools means being able to engage your constituents and other educators on multiple levels and in multiple ways.

• Twitter gives you the ability to get information out quickly and concisely.
• Facebook has the most users, so it gives you the largest audience. You can also share out photos and other media on your school or district Facebook page.
• Blogs give you the ability to post a variety of content and engage others in a conversation about that content.
• Google+ allows for the dissemination of a variety of content. Like Facebook, users can post photos and other media. It allows users to use "circles" to sort audiences.
• LinkedIn allows users to connect professionally with others.

2. Make your home web site homebase for information. As Porterfield and Carnes point out, your web site "should focus on service and the product it provides is information." Use social media tools to direct constituents and others back to your web site. Monitor your web site for traffic to gauge the effectiveness of your promotional efforts. Your web site's purpose should not simply be to have a presence. It should function as information central about your school or district.

3. Use social media, not as a cyber-announcement system, but as a means to engage others in conversations. To use social media as simply a way to make announcements ignores one of its fundamental qualities: it allows for multi-way conversations. Use social media to engage others and get feedback.

Twenty-first century school leaders and educators who still resist social media and getting connected, seem to think they can ignore the conversation about their schools in cyberspace. Keeping social media out is impossible. Ignoring and hoping it will go away is looking backward. It is time for school leaders and educators who have yet to connect to make their social media debut!

5 Keys to Effective Social Media Strategy for Schools and School Districts

Should schools and school districts have a "social media strategy" like business and industry? In the corporate world, social media has moved from being a novelty to a deliberate strategy to engage the public. It seems like schools and school districts mostly do social media as an add on, where someone in the central office "just happens" to post announcements to Facebook or Twitter. But if schools were going to be more deliberate about their social media strategy, what would they do? According to Brad Friedman, in a recent post called "5 Must-Haves for Social Media Management," companies are "bringing in whole teams of specialists to craft effective social media strategies and manage their multiplying numbers of social media accounts." In education, with our austere budgets, hiring a whole team of specialists to craft a social media strategy won't happen any time soon. In fact, though some social media experts might argue otherwise, I am not entirely sure schools and school districts need the heavy-duty social media strategy that companies need, at least not yet. But we can learn a great deal from those experts and apply it to our situation as non-profit educational establishments.

When it comes to social media strategy, I think we really have to begin with the question of "What can social media do for us?" And we should also ask the question, "Is it the most effective way to accomplish what we are trying to accomplish?" If it is being used as a simple communication tool, is that the best way to communicate our message? One of the main characteristics of social media is that it is a "multi-way" connection medium. Users can engage to multi-way communication with constituents. School administrators are often unskilled in this kind of engagement, and very often either uncomfortable or even unwilling to engage in a multi-way conversation that social media offers. There's a "desire for control" of the conversation or its outcomes which is an anathema to social media thinking altogether.

Taking Friedman's ideas regarding 5 keys for social media management and applying them to schools requires adjusting them a bit, and transforming them so that they fit the needs of a school or district. If school districts are going to engage in social media in the manner in which it is designed, which means engaging in its use as a multi-way medium, then here's 5 keys to effectively managing a school or district's social media strategy.

1. Have deliberate plan on when and how your school or district will use social media. In his post, Friedman talks about the need for businesses to maximize scheduling of their messages through social media. The time of day and day of the week a social media message is sent does matter. When it is received by constituents will determine the message's effectiveness. This is true in business, and I suspect it is true with schools and districts too. My own experience has taught me that a message posted on our school Facebook page tends to get more "likes" and comments if I post early in the mornings, before 6:30 AM than in the middle of the day. Also, a message posted over the weekend is likely to get the same level of attention as early mornings. Why is that? I suspect many of our students and their parents, look over their Facebook timeline first thing in the mornings to see what they received over night, and on the weekends they simply have more time to follow their messages. I have no studies to prove such, but it does make sense. A school or district would do well to plan when is the most effective times to get the word out through social media. They also would do well to think about how they will deliver that message. Will it be through Facebook, Twitter. Google +? In addition, schools and school districts need to plan to use social media tools like Facebook, not just as a digital intercom on which to make announcements, but also as a way to engage constituents in a multi-way conversation.

2. Know your constituents and know the kinds of content they want and need. There are the obvious kinds of content for social media: announcements, photos, etc. But if a school or district tunes in and listens to its constituents, they will get an accurate idea regarding what kind of content they want and expect. School districts should use social media to also engage constituents in conversations about how they are doing. Why not post proposed schedule changes on Facebook and allow students and parents comment on them? More importantly, respond to their comments to show you as a school or district are listening. Listening in social media is as important as posting.

3. Use the tools at hand to monitor the social media and web stream to listen to what constituents and others are saying about your school or district. Tools like Ice Rocket and Addictomatic are two free web tools school leaders can use to see what others are saying about their organizations. Google Alerts is another. Using social media and other tools to listen to the conversation about your school or district is important in the 21st century, and to make an effective social media strategy.

4. Collaborate with other school and district leaders and develop a genuine social media strategy and plan for your organization. It is great to hear that school leaders are now wading into social media use with their Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts, but perhaps it's time to get serious about using the medium. Maybe it is time to earnestly develop a social media plan and actually consider social media campaigns to promote what the school or district is doing. Making the most of social media means perhaps using it the way businesses are: they are using it to promote their brand. It's time for schools to do the same.

5. Monitor the effectiveness of your school or district's social media strategy by tracking and analyzing statistics regarding its use. Using tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, and web site view data should not be just done by businesses. As schools wade further into social media use, and also spend more resources on social media strategy, monitoring the effectiveness of that use is important. If your school or district spends hours setting up and maintaining a web site, and no one is visiting that site, that is hardly effective use of resources. School leaders must begin to use the tools available to track and analyze the effectiveness of their social media use.

As our schools move deeper into the 21st century, school leaders must rethink social media's place in the school or district. Many still see it as a fad or a nusiance, and fight to keep it out, as if that were possible. Perhaps it is time for schools and districts to begin thinking in terms of having an effective social media strategy instead.

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3 Steps to Managing Your School or District's Online Reputation

In their book, Radically Transparent: Monitoring and Managing Reputations Online, authors Andy Beal and Judy Strauss entitle one chapter "You Don't Own Your Company's Reputation."

That idea is equally true for schools and districts and should remind twenty-first century school leaders that they "don't own their school or school district's reputation either." It is so easy for administrators to still engage in trying to protect the reputation of their schools, because that is the conventional thinking. But with the advent of social media and self-publishing ability of the web in general, protecting your school or district's reputation becomes an exercise in futility. Instead, 21st century school leaders must shift their thinking from protecting their school or district's reputation to managing that reputation. Trying to control the conversation about your organization is impossible in the digital age.

What are some beginning steps toward "managing a school or district's online reputation?" Taking the advice of Beal and Strauss, here are some starting points to consider.

1. Begin with internal stakeholders. Since you can't really control what people say about you in social media and online anymore, you start your reputation management with those who really know you: your students, teachers, parents, and other employees. Enlist them as advocates. Get them to help you get the word out. They can also alert you to negative talk on social media, so that you can work to get the information out there that tells your side of things.

2. Monitor the web to see what people are saying about your school or district. Set up Google Alerts to catch when someone publishes something about your school. This simple tool will immediately alert you by email when someone posts something about your school on a blog, website or news article.

3. Be transparent: be honest. Managing your online reputation isn't about posting a false information to cover up the negatives about your school or district. It is about making sure what is being said is accurate, and that your side of the story is being told. It is also about proactively listening to what people's beef is about your school, and honestly responding to them. Finally, it's about just being honest and not hiding things.

These three starting points are a good place to start for school leaders who want to begin managing their school or district's reputation rather than trying to protect it. As Beal and Strauss indicate regarding companies, 21st century school leaders must realize they no longer own our school's reputation either, and must move their thinking to managing that reputation rather than protecting or controlling it.

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RockMelt: Web Browser and Social Media Tool for Administrators and Other Educators

RockMelt is a Web Browser for educators and others who want to blend their Web reading and social media sharing into a seamless combination. It is relatively easy to use and even offers some of the same customization features found in Chrome.

This week, I decided to take some time and really work with the browser.  Here’s some features I have found interesting and most useful.

• It is very similar to Google Chrome, my usual browser of choice. This is not surprising since it is based on Google's Chromium. As an experienced Chrome user, this has meant that I had little difficulty getting accustomed to RockMelt.  Everything is Chrome. If you are a Chrome user, RockMelt is familiar. In some ways, it looks like and functions as a customized version of Chrome, optimized for social media.
• Users can still download and use favorite Chrome extensions. RockMelt allows users to install and use Chrome extensions, though users may have to use short-cut keys to access those extensions. For example, Evernote’s Clearly extension is one of my Chrome favorites. I installed it in RockMelt, but it does not install a toolbar button. Instead of this, I have to press CTRL+ALT+Right Arrow to activate Clearly.
• Posting to Facebook and Twitter is as easy as clicking on a single button. Also, the share button means I can easily share out something from the web. RockMelt is built for sharing. This feature alone makes it the way to go if you are always sharing things from the Web.
• The Apps give users quick access to favorite sites and alllow quick sharing through social networks. Using the icons on the right-hand side of the browser interface by clicking on them, I can preview headlines from these selected sites, and click to load the full article or share it from that window.

RockMelt Screenshot with Twitter Pop-Up Notification Box

RockMelt is certainly not a browser for everyone, but it might be the Web browser for the educator who wants to be connected to social media networks just a bit more seamlessly. To read about and download RockMelt, check out their web site. It’s free.