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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5 Aspects of Social Media Leadership for School Administrators and Other Educators

Twenty-first century school leaders need to become masters of social media leadership. Those who don't, or those who dismiss it as a fad, are failing in one of the major responsibilities of being a 21st century educational leader. What does being a social media leader look like? Here's some items to consider:

• Being a social media leader means you see the technology of social media as a way to invite stakeholders into conversations, not as an announcement system. By default, this one also means you have to act with courage. Using social media in this manner means greater transparency with what is happening in your school. It also means greater involvement in your school community. The courage comes in when others comment on how your doing or how your school is doing.
• Being a social media leader means you don't just use social media to tell your parents and community what you think they want to know: you tell them the kinds of information they want to have. The old communication model would be sitting at your desk, carefully deciding what you want your parents to know. The new communication model means you need to communicate out to your public the information a 21st century audience demands. That sometimes means communicating things you are a bit uncomfortable with.
• Being a social media leader means using it to provide 21st century connections with your parents and community. Twenty-first century connections are two-way, not one way connections. For example, newsletters or posting a video of your graduation on your web site is one way communication. Posting an announcement or video on Facebook with comments activated invites two-way. But make sure you have clear guidelines on what is acceptable comments and not acceptable.
• Being a social media leader means understanding social media in the manner suggest by authors Kitty Porterfield and Meg Carnes in their book Why Social Media Matters: School Communication in the Digital Age: Social media is a "process not a product." It isn't something you engage in on Fridays at 4 PM. It requires time and investment to be effective. Engaging in social media is ongoing, not a one-time event.
• Finally, being a social media leader means using it to create an environment of collaboration. It involves creating a place where all opinions are valued. In other words, using social media to create a sense of shared responsbility for the entire school or district. You can't always to expect to invite your parents to collaborate on your terms. They also have desires and aspirations for their schools. Social media is an opportunity to foster that kind of thinking more, and social media leaders do it well.

If you as a school leader or educator wonder why you are failing to engage others in your social media, it might be that you are not demonstrating 21st century social media leadership. To to that, you need to change your perspective of communicating with your parents and community. That perspective needs to now include the idea that one-way communication is 20th century. Social media is a multi-way media to engage others in a conversation, not just talk at them.

4 Social Media Listening Strategies for 21st Century School Leaders

In their book Why Social Media Matters: School Communication in the Digital Age authors Kitty Porterfield and Meg Carnes argue that for school leaders to use social media effectively, they not only use it to communicate out information, they must also engage in listening to what stakeholders are saying.

"Listening online gives leaders insight into their communities in a way that face-to-face meetings and surveys do not."

It is through social media that people sometimes reveal their true feelings. If they do not think you are listening, they may say things quite unlike those occasions when they think you are. Using social media to listen to what your stakeholders are saying is another way for you to get in touch with what they really want. To do that, Porterfield and Carnes suggest establishing a listening strategy for your school or district. So how does one establish this? Here's some suggestions I've paraphrased from their book, Why Social Media Matters: School Communication in the Digital Age.

• Decide how much time will be spent listening. Will it be once a day? Once a Week? Portfield and Carnes suggest that school leaders need to listen to their school or district's social media channels at least once a day. If a crisis occurs, obviously it will be necessary to listen more often. For example, during a contentious school board decision or during a well-publicized event involving a staff member or student, listening to social media channels needs to be much more often than once a day.
• Designate personnel who will do the listening and report back to administration. These individuals are charged with the task of listening to your social media channels. Large districts can perhaps charge their communications teams with these tasks. Small districts may have to select current district staff to serve on a listening team.
• Portferfield and Carnes suggest developing a "Social Media Collection Tool" to report out what was found from listening. This gives the district or school a physical record of what others are saying on social media sites. School leaders need to have a record of what conversations are occuring about their schools or districts, and this tool satisfies that need.
• Develop a plan on how the school or district will respond to what is heard on social media. School leaders need to evaluate the influence level of those engaging in conversations on social media. Answers to such questions as the following are also important: How will you respond to inaccurate or incomplete information being shared about your school or organization? What offical media channels will you use in your response if you decide to do so?

The perception that most school leaders seem to have of social media is a tool for making announcements to their stakeholders rather than a means to engage that same group in larger conversations about how we're doing our jobs. It is imperative that 21st century school leaders establish a social media listening strategy for their school or district in age where people are talking about us through social media whether we're listening or not.


Next Up: Social Media Listening Tools for 21st Century School Leaders