Do you have official school Facebook or Twitter accounts?

[Bev]

Do you find them useful? and do you have problems with complaints/abuse on them?

 

I've been asked to look into setting them up, but I am a bit wary as we have a number of parents who like to complain and the thought of trying to deal with complaints in the public forum is a bit concerning.

 

We do have a pretty good website which is regularly updated, and currently send newsletters by email fortnightly.

[hardtailstar]

Could you not send info to parents saying any complaints need to be sent into the school office and not through social media?

[sonofsanta]

We have an official Twitter feed, almost by accident: I set it up one snow day when the website was down (again) and it later got official blessing and used more regularly.

 

Actually works pretty well - we don't get complaints into it, but if we did I suspect the answer would be "Please can you email your concerns to [email protected] and we'll forward them on to the appropriate staff member" because dirty laundry shouldn't be aired publicly. It is useful for reminding people about parents evenings, plays etc. or for celebrating various things and showing off.

 

One of the office ladies deals with it now and all goes smoothly.

[rad]

We have an official Twitter account as @schoolname and the password is known by a few. It is given out to teachers who do school trips, especially trips abroad as parents like to know when they have arrived.

 

I tend to send a tweet out when I do an update on the school website. It works well but I do find pictures get more re-tweets so worth doing.

We have 800+ followers and dont follow anyone, our twitter is fed to our school website, so replying to a mention also shows there. I tend to send a direct message with an email to contact.

[unixman_again]

We have a college FB, where we advertise forthcoming events. We also have a college Twitter where we tweet school closures, progress on the new building, messages to students, etc. We have this mostly because when the college is closed, posting the info on the website causes our poor server to grind to a halt, due to the number of hits. We also have departmental Twitters, setup by the dept heads. One is the IT feed, which is supposed to be used for server outages, but the boss hasn't tweeted for over a year. Finally there is FB and Twitter for admissions. The admissions tweets were a complete waste of time over the last two years, so this year they setup an FB, but they haven't done anything with it. There may also be dept FB's but that is down to the individual depts.

[DaveMurphy]

We have a main college twitter @collegename and each subject area has there own @collegesubject which works pretty well.

 

We also have a main facebook page however subject areas don't really utilise that as they have to create a 2nd facebook profile or use their personal one to access the page.

[pooley]

We have a school Twitter account and a FB account, both are linked so whats posted on one goes on the other. 1 year on and no complaints as yet. Worked well on our Y6 residential to Paris, parents loved seeing photos and getting daily updates.

[rdk]

As above, both FB and Twitter. FB gets used more mainly because the two people with rights to both find it easier to post to FB. We also find that alumni enjoy seeing things like photos from the production and so on. We're making a database of alumni and got more names as soon as FB was set up than from the same form that had been on our website for ages. If I was in a mean mood I'd post something about the kids on FB at 9.00 am and then chase up all the kids who had clicked "like" between 9.00 and 3.00 as they'd be breaking some of our rules.

 

BTW, I have no clear explanation on why FB is blocked in school but yet used by the school for publicity and so on.

[kevin_lane]

just out of interest how do you monitor the tweets I mean surely people can comment @school and say something bad and then that looks bad as image for the school, I have been toying with the idea of creating a FB page and locking it down but I still think our SMT might not go for it due to the fact we are taking it away from our main VLE and also that there might be a conflict of interest in what the school is trying to do and also managing an maintaining the page and where do you stand on putting out images of the pupils e.g sports day etc or any other special events surely you would have had to have had permission from the parents about this for it to go into the general public domain. don't get me wrong im all for moving forward etc and making the school stand out but I think there are many ifs and but and questions that need outlining do any schools have a social media policy in place ?

[DrCheese]

Absolutely - Setting up a facebook page has been one of the best things we've ever done.

 

Before we'd post information & photos on our website. Great, fine. Problem is, unless people go to it they don't see it & how many people really think "oh I'll check my son/daughters school website randomly for photos or information" Almost none.

With facebook, everyone is on it, all the flipping time! We can post & instantly hit a large amount of our user base. If a student or a parent likes a photo or a status, all of their friends/family see it & it's brilliant.

 

As such, we use it as key part of our marketing toolkit nowadays, Our website still exists but it's mostly static content. Everything else is on our facebook.

We also have a twitter & if we have say.. a snowday we post on both as soon as we know. Students/parents see it and share it out, saving the admin staff that managed to get in the hassle of dealing with hundreds of phone calls asking if we're shut or not.

 

So yes, get on social media.

[IrritableTech]

@kevin_lane We don't have many negative comments at all on our twitter. One could argue that having a presence on the network reduces the potential for negative use of it directed at the school. If we see a negative comment, we would send a tweet to the users saying we're sorry they feel like this, please contact us directly at the school so we can resolve the issue. Nobody wants their dirty laundry aired in public, but a quick professional response pointing the user to the correct avenue to report an issue can nip the problem in the bud very quickly.

 

In my experience on twitter, few people search for tweets that mention an account. For someone to see a negative tweet about a school, the third party would need to follow both the school and the person making the complaint.

 

We've bagged a facebook page, but never used it. We should have probably before now. Perhaps this is a platform that might attract more serious complaints, due to the demographic of users. There is a larger parent to pupil ratio I'd argue. I guess if we ever get it off the ground, we will find out.

 

Dealing with complaints isn't very much different on social media as it is in the real world. A parent comes into reception to make a complaint, and they are clearly very upset, generally a senior member of staff will take them off into a private place to ascertain the full facts, then deal with the matter quickly and fully. If you are not on the network used to complain about the school, you'll find it harder to find out about the issue. Which could leave the complaining party feeling like the school isn't interested in their complaint.

 

@DrCheese Using both facebook and twitter, do you gear your output differently? From limited research here, I'd suggest the ratio of pupils to parents is very different on the networks. Pupils like twitter, where as parents, generally, like facebook.

 

Generally I think the positives of social media engagement hugely outweigh the negatives.

[Phildw]

We have an official Twitter account as @schoolname and the password is known by a few. It is given out to teachers who do school trips, especially trips abroad as parents like to know when they have arrived.

 

I tend to send a tweet out when I do an update on the school website. It works well but I do find pictures get more re-tweets so worth doing.

We have 800+ followers and dont follow anyone, our twitter is fed to our school website, so replying to a mention also shows there. I tend to send a direct message with an email to contact.

 

We have a school Twitter account and a FB account, both are linked so whats posted on one goes on the other. 1 year on and no complaints as yet. Worked well on our Y6 residential to Paris, parents loved seeing photos and getting daily updates.

 

Hey guys, can you give me some info on this? Do you use any special plugins or just RSS feeds? Thanks

[Joanne]

Our school has a facebook. New head asked for it. I've got 119 followers in the two months it's been on. People love seeing all the sporting pictures and things that go on in school. Much better and effective than any website!

[Grey-gear]

The school I work at has it's own twitter it managed by the business manager, they find it a useful way to pass information out.

[smidsy]

We set up our FB group about a year ago and it is going from strength to strength. We have a small comment at the top of the group highlighting the proper methods of communication if you have a complaint etc. We have had no negative comments since it has been set up which is brilliant. As already mentioned photos get a lot better reponse than just text.

 

I use the FB to mention when I upload new content to the web site so that I can drag people back to the website where they might find other useful information.

[Phildw]

Does anyone who uses Twitter or Facebook have any special Usage Policy for it's Staff/Students?

@smidsy Can yo utell me what the text you have at the top of your FB group says?

Edited December 1, 2014 by Phildw

[smidsy]

@Phildw we have a social media guidelines document which covers all usage of Twitter / Facebook but nothing that specifically covers our Facebook page. This might be added when the document is reviewed next year.

 

The text that we have at the top of our page is:

 

A warm welcome to our school! If you have any comments / complaints on the content within this page then please use the contact us section on the school website to ensure it reaches the correct people, thank you.

 

We tried to keep it as simple as possible.

[AJWhite1970]

37 twitter accounts managed by myself and the HM with passwords for each department feeds only given to the relevant HOD. Each HOD now has responsibility for their feeds in their JD's and appraisal tasks. Sounds complex but works really well as the departments use it as the news feeds in their departmental webpages. Also big kudos to our PE team who are all massive twits and cover every match of every sport live. Parents absolutly love the information flow especially for foreign trips where staff tweet once a day with pictures and news as well as travel plans, arrival times etc.

 

To start with the HM took some convincing of my plans, now he is the biggest supporter and leads from the very top

[AdamzB]

Neither here. SMT are in the mind that it will open the school to public criticism from parents with an axe to grind and also that Teachers should be teaching, not spending time posting messages to the interent.

[Phildw]

@Phildw we have a social media guidelines document which covers all usage of Twitter / Facebook but nothing that specifically covers our Facebook page. This might be added when the document is reviewed next year.

 

The text that we have at the top of our page is:

 

A warm welcome to our school! If you have any comments / complaints on the content within this page then please use the contact us section on the school website to ensure it reaches the correct people, thank you.

 

We tried to keep it as simple as possible.

 

Thanks for the info smidsy. Could you send me that guidlines doc for my Head to look at?

[northeast_technician]

for those with twitter pages, do you follow anyone?

[elsiegee40]

for those with twitter pages, do you follow anyone?

No

 

 

Short answer is too few characters

[sonofsanta]

Couple of local bus companies, couple of local papers, that's about it. They're the people we're likely to retweet.

[northeast_technician]

was thinking about following other schools, local paper etc but just wanted thoughts to see what others where doing

[Joanne]

Been e-mailed by the head about a company who can set you up on Facebook and page posts can only be liked and not commented on. We haven't had any bad messages... just reviews with people ranting. I've disabled reviews today by changing the category that the page is in to other: community.

 

Looking deeper, I've found the only way to disable comments is to add an extensive blocked word list within settings. Am I assuming this is how said company do this? Seems a bit cheeky to charge schools to do something so simple!

 

Anyone else heard about people doing that?