Presentation at National School Public Relations Association July 2010

1. Sea Change: How Social Media Has
Flattened the Educational Universe
Evelyn McCormack NSPRA 2011

2. The Back Channel:
Today s Meet
Keep the conversation
going at
http://todaysmeet.com/
nspraseachange

3. Today s Wiki:
Let s Keep it Going!
http://socialmediaschoolpr.wikispaces.com

4. What We ll Cover in 60 Minutes
• The Power of Social Media/Good, Bad, Ugly
• YourTools: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and
LinkedIn
• The Second Phase: Connecting Your Social Media
Efforts

5. THE POWER OF SOCIAL MEDIA

6. THE GOOD...

9. Joplin Schools Post-Tornado

10. The Bad...
• If I stab someone,
no one s going to
tell me it s a knife
problem. At the
end of the day
they re just tools.
How we use them
will determine
what happens. --
Peter Shankman,
social media
consultant for
Fortune 500
companies and
NASA.

11. The Ugly....

12. THE STATS

13. Where Are Parents Getting Their
School Information?
• According
to Ipsos North
America s December 2010
poll:
• 57
percent go to Facebook/
Twitter
• 26
percent go to District
website

14. Social Media Tools:
The Short List
News In
News Out
RSS feeds
Facebook
Google alerts
Twitter
Online LinkedIn
subscriptions
eNewsletters
Phone/email alerts

15. Facebook
• 1. Created 2004
• 2. 512 million active users; 250 million log on daily
• 3. 100,000 users age 64+
• 4. 310,000 users between 45–63
• 5.300,000+ businesses now have FB fan pages, including hundreds
of school districts
• 6. 100,000+ have FB on mobile devices
• 7.
Use to drive traffic back to website, post photos, videos, news,
announcements.

16. State Education Departments
Maryland, Kentucky,
California, Arizona,
Massachusetts, Indiana,
Michigan, Arizona, South
Carolina, Georgia, Iowa,
etc.

17. PUBLIC EDUCATION OFFICIALS
Oklahoma State
Superintendent
School
Superintendents of
Alabama

18. Lawrence, Kansas
Candidates for 4J
School Board in
Eugene, Ore.

19. School Districts on FB
Joplin, MO
4,300
followers
Queensbury, NY
948 followers

20. Guilford County, NC
4,700 followers
Edgemont, NY
450 followers

21. Add tabs
1,300 fans, 1 year,
6 months

22. Cross-promote on Facebook

23. Facebook Insights
Number of page
impressions

24. Apps on Facebook
Twitter on Facebook allows
you to post your tweets on
Facebook simultaneously.
The Selective Tweets app allows you to
selectively post tweets on your FB fan
page using #fb. Free to install on fan
pages.

25. Twitter
• 1.Microblogging platform in 140 characters or
less
• 2. Launched 2006
• 3. 106 million registered users
• 4. 65 million tweets per day
• 5. 750 tweets per second
• 6.
Use to post news events, share links
photos

26. State Education Depts. on Twitter
U.S.
Indiana
Michigan
Ohio
Idaho
Michigan
Kentucky
California
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Vermont
Iowa
Colorado
Alabama
Texas Education Agency
Maryland
South Carolina
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
West Virginia
Illinois
Arizona

27. Twitter Apps
Post photos on Twitter.
Install on your mobile
phone.
Seesmic (and other
management tools) allows
you to monitor several
Twitter Facebook accounts
at the same time. Also allows
you to schedule tweets.

28. School Districts on Twitter
Garden City, Long Island
SWBOCES
Park Hill, MO
Duval County Schools, FL

29. Get Listed: Twitter Lists
Lists of tweeters in common – educators,
schools, etc., curated by one person.
Thousands of Twitter Lists exist; to get
listed, simply follow the list. Great for
networking, getting ideas.
@mclobridge/ed-
communications
@schoolpr/
k12schools

30. Twitter Terminology
The Twitter Help Center can assist you with terminology like
#hashtags, @ symbols, and how Twitter works in general.

31. hashtags.org allows you to search for hashtags or track
conversations based on hashtags. This conversation is about
#nspra11.

32. Twitter Anatomy
# of people you follow;
your followers
Suggestions on who you
What s trending/what
might want to follow
people are talking about
The wall

33. Were you there?

35. YouTube
-- Video sharing website
-- Launched 2005, bought by Google in 2006
-- 2 billion+ viewers a day
-- More video uploaded to YouTube in 60 days than all 3 major
networks created in 60 years

36. YouTube
Dublin, CA
Schools
OneDublin
Sioux City SD Schools
SiouxCityCommSchools

37. Wisconsin Department
of Instruction
WisconsinDPI
83,000 video views
Guilford County, NC
Schools
GCSchoolsNC
19,000 video views

38. Build a Channel
Ohio Hi-Point:
70 videos posted
3,600 channel views
12,000 video views
White Plains:
12 videos posted
908 channel views
2,200 video views
1. Turn off comments on your channel and
each video after uploading.
2. On profile page, include district logo,
mission statement, address, website,
contact info.
3. If there is too much concern about
YouTube, Vimeo is a free alternative.

39. The Second Phase: Connecting Our Social Media
Efforts
Linke
Text
Links to social
media
Testimonial videos
from alumni

40. Denver Academy
YouTube videos
on Facebook

41. Featured Video Rotates
White Plains
YouTube tab
Made with: YouTube for Pages app provided by Involver

42. White Plains City Schools Facebook Welcome Page
made using Involver (free)

43. Customized Tabs and Apps for Facebook:
Third-Party Tools
Sites allow you to add free apps,
and have Basic plans that permit
you to add apps to 1 or 2 fan
pages, or limit the number of
apps you use.

44. The Facebook Like Button
The FB like button allows readers
who are on FB to like the article.
My decision to like a
page shows up in my
FB feed

45. Like Button Code
html!
head!
Fill in here with a title for your page, ie,
titleMy Great Web page/title! SWBOCES grad video
/head!
body!
iframe src=
http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=YOUR_URL!
scrolling=no frameborder=0!
style=border:none; width:450px; height:80px/iframe!
/body!
/html!
replace with URL of your webpage

46. The AddThis Button
AddThis gives you html
coding to insert at the
end of information
you ve posted on your
website. People can
click on buttons to
generate more traffic.
Here s what it looks
like:

47. AddThis Choices

48. Connect Your Accounts...
Share your activity with your FB,
Twitter accounts
Go to Account Settings,
choose Activity Sharing

49. Promote Your Social Media

50. Blended Pages
Facebook page link
Blog Feeds
Featured YouTube Video
Twitter Link
I Am CPS, the blended social media page of the
Cincinnati Public Schools

51. At bottom of Ohio Hi-Point website home page. Feeds from
all Ohio Hi-Point s social media sites.

52. Northfield Mount Hermon s NMH Book
NMH blog posts
Facebook
Feed
Flickr photos
Twitter Feed
YouTube Videos

53. Beg, Borrow, Steal...
EdSocialMedia
YouTube Edu
Green Charter Schools
Steal ideas from independent private schools, universities, and charter
schools. They re more proactive on social media than public schools.

54. The New LinkedIn
• 85
percent of human resources people to go
LinkedIn first when looking for a job candidate.
• 85 million members
• 200 countries
• LinkedIn
now has Jobs, Company pages,
Groups, and Questions feature.

55. LinkedIn: Company Pages
Other SWBOCES 1st person to click on edit tab can
employees in my network
begin to edit the company page

56. 1. Go to Overview page
2. Under Company Pages Admins, choose Designated Users Only
3. Choose Publish
4. Add company Twitter blog feeds to the page

57. Caveats Advice
• 1.
Contact Twitter, Facebook, YouTube to report fake accounts,
spam, inappropriate comments.
• 2. Develop social media strategy/policy, if you don t have one.
• 3.
Write disclaimers/guidelines for use and post them on Twitter,
Facebook, YouTube pages.
• 4. Link to disclaimers and guidelines from website home page.
• 5.
Conduct public presentation about how district is using social
media. Preferably, at a school board meeting televised district-
wide.
• 6. Turn off comments on YouTube channel and each video posted

58. News In and Monitoring Tools

59. RSS Feeds Readers
Category
pages
Individual feed boxes, which can
be moved around, deleted,
moved to another category.
Sign up for free iGoogle account and get RSS feeds from
your fave sites

60. Other Feed Readers
Netvibes
My Yahoo

61. RSS
Bottom of NY Times home page
NYTimes Education
Feed
Look for this
symbol

62. google alerts
Sign up to receive email
alerts anytime your
district is mentioned on
the web.
Alerts summary for
White Plains schools
Enter search term in box,
decide frequency, and choose create alert.

63. The Future?
They do the
work for you.

64. Email/phone alert companies are
now offering Facebook and
Twitter integration to help push
out messages, news,
announcements

66. Great Places to Visit
• Our Wiki
• SchoolMessenger s Facebook
101 Guide
• Mashable s Guide to Twitter
• Mashable s Guide to Facebook
• Facebook in Education Guide
• www.slideshare.net/
evelynmccormack

67. Remember...
• Government should be transparent, with
information about agency operations and
decisions available to the public online.
• Government should be participatory, tapping the
collective expertise of the American public in
government decision-making processes.
• Government should be collaborative, using
technology to share cooperate with other -- Barack
agencies, businesses and non-profits, and the Obama s Open
public at large.
Government
Directive

68. Evelyn McCormack
914-592-4203 ext. 3412
emccormack@swboces.org
www.schoolcommunications.com
Twitter: @evelynmccormack