Using Social media to increase awareness of our school.

[tj2419]

Hi

 

We are wanting to introduce a social media strategy at our school. Start effectively using facebook twitter and instagram to start putting good news stories and updates out into the community.

 

A number of schools in our area use them well posting lots of interesting updates that makes the school look really exciting.

 

Just wondering if anyone else uses them? and if you could answer the following.

 

• How do you use it? Just broadcast information or communicate with parents?
  
• How many people have access to the accounts?
  
• Who are they? Job role?
  
• Do posts have to get approved or are they trusted to post what they deem appropriate?
  
• Do you have a strategy / policy in place for it? If so can you share it?
  
• Are you able to share any stats to show engagement with it? e.g. https://analytics.twitter.com/
  

 

Thanks

[JRowley]

I'm also interested in how people go about this, it's an area we are lacking in.

[FragglePete]

We've been using Facebook and several twitter accounts for a couple of years now. It's proved very popular with parents and it's been a great way of keeping our 'community' up to date with what is going on. It allows us to keep the school website as the place purely for information about the school, policies, etc.

 

The biggest pros so far have been:

 

• Unlimited photo storage for events
  
• Teachers on trips can update the page to let parents know if they are on time to return, arrived safely, etc. Useful as well for posting updates, photos, etc of the longer residential trips abroad.
  
• Announcements of events and activities which get pushed to people who follow the school page
  
• Can offer a level of response to comments that get made
  
• Monitored by several people
  
• Best platform for announcing closures due to Snow Days, etc when the school website can't cope with the demand.
  

 

Cons have been:

 

• Dubious comments made by disgruntled students, parents, etc - we deal with students if required, we can offer comments to parents (but don't get drawn into online debates while posting as the school) and just delete and block as necessary. We only allow comments on our posts. To be honest, we don't get that many bad experiences as we used too.
  
• Ensuring those staff who can post to it abide by ground rules about what to post and how to post. We keep it limited to a small handful and give access as needed - but they always post as the school, never from a personal account.
  

 

Overall, it's been good - it need monitoring, but it's easier than looking after the school website.

 

Pete

Edited June 26, 2015 by FragglePete

[tj2419]

@FragglePete Hi thanks for sharing your experiences. Do you have a set of ground rules you are able to share?

 

Thanks

[FragglePete]

Generally I just remind them that the posts are seen primarily by parents. Always posts as the school, not from their personal account. Check for spelling; parents love picking up grammar and spelling mistakes! Been mindful of the pictures posted as well; showing the teachers sitting in a café in Paris each with a large glass of beer in front of them does not send a great message about how well their kids are being looked after on the school trip. And as I said before, we're careful on which teacher we give access too.

 

Pete

[unixman_again]

We have "official" college twitter and facebook accounts (which I run) and an unknown number of faculty accounts, which they run themselves. Our goal for the main account is one post per day, which sounds easy, but getting stuff to post is nigh on impossible. It comes in spurts. At the mo, there is a big push to use social media more and so I am getting loads of stuff to post. In a couple of weeks it will all die down again. Experience has shown it is much better to post consistently. When we tweet, it automatically goes onto our facebook page. It also appears on our website. We do not allow people to write on our wall. We use if for the same things as FragglePete

 

Recently I went on this half day course Social Media | MustardTraining which I think was excellent. I have loads of ideas to improve the use of social media and we had a meeting about this earlier in the week, which was all going swimmingly until the subject of money came up - it then all went very quiet, lots of umming and ahhing, and nothing will happen. Except I'm still expected to improve the use of social media.

 

So we can post consistently and better manage brainstorms, I want to invest a whole 700 pennies a month in Hootsuite, which let you manage all of your social media in one place, lets you schedule postings, etc. They said this might happen next year. We could have done with this in place this week. We have next years students in and I've been given a series of tweets to go out during the day at specific times. Easy, except I'm also taking student id photos, providing IT support and being my usual omnipresent self.

 

Sorry this has turned into a rant - I'm off for a ginger nut and a calm down...

[truebluesteve]

We have a Twitter account but its so tightly controlled its pretty much useless - we might as well send an email out to parents! The process of getting a tweet approved is almost Pythonesque in its bureaucracy! I can't imagine a teacher being allowed to post onto Facebook (even if we had a page!)

 

There is this obsession with 'reputational risk' which is getting in the way of a sensible social media policy and I think we are failing to make the most of what could be very useful tools. I hope your school are a bit more forward thinking and open minded!

[chris_uk]

Twitter Stats below.

 

We have had a school twitter account since the huge snow storms in 2010. It worked out as a better way of communicating with parents that the school was open or closed and what timetable we would be using. Access is limited, we only have three people who have access to the account. HT, me (Network Manager) and our Reprographics lady.

 

We also have a Facebook page and an Instagram account. Facebook gets different content than Twitter, more photos will be uploaded to Facebook than Twitter. Any staff who go on trips are expected to text updates. Most recently we've had trips for Ski Trip - #WHSSKI15, South Africa #whssa15 and a Fifa football trip #whsfifa2015. All get an individual hash that that the parents can search for. For the big trips, South Africa and the Ski Trip they are expected to do more with communicating with parents. The Ski Trip upload videos every day. The South Africa trip does a daily blog with pictures and text.

 

We've paid for advertising on Facebook as well. Happy to share some stats privately for anybody interested in that.

 

/u/tj2419 - Sent you a PM with some other information.

Chris

[jmak]

I'm keen to get this going for our school as well. I know that some schools block comments and would need to do this to get it approved - my intention would be to replace the "noticeboard" feature of our website homepage with an embedded feed from either Facebook or Twitter. I'd also intend to link the twitter account to the facebook account, so that parents have the choice of which platform to follow.

 

Any input on the best way to block comments would be welcome - I don't have time to monitor and delete and there isn't anyone else.

 

Thanks

[clockend25]

We have a main twitter account that is primarily managed by the principal, and then separate accounts for different faculties etc, which can then be funelled through the main one as we see fit. Our social media presence pretty much lay dormant until the new principal started about a year ago. We've gained about 650 followers in a year and it's now at the forefront of our attempts to promote the Academy.