Find Them, Keep Them!

Joel F. W. PriceFriends’ Central School

Webmaster & Information Management

twitter: @jfwp | @friendscentralemail: jprice@friendscentral.orgfan: http://facebook.com/friendscentral

photo by Michael Stoner http://twitpic.com/1fjdjv via

http://twitter.com/mStonerblog/status/12163387684

Know Your Constituents!

• Where do they live online?

• Where do you live online?

(Did you just answer the same thing twice?)

Two Things You Should Be Using

• Google Alerts– Easy-to-use, daily emails about any/every

topic regarding you or people at your school

• Facebook– Probably the place most of your

constituents are (even the older ones). Try entering your school name in the search box!

Network Commonalities

• They all bring people together

• Most social networks are designed with for-profit uses in mind, but educational uses emerge and can be very powerful

Constant Evolution

• Over time, we have seen the creation of apps, notifications, pages, updates, connect, and community pages– Yahoo! releasing more Facebook

integrations (including flickr integration)

Open Your Mind

• You probably do not want to just copy what other schools do (you are unique)!

• Applying a new mindset to social media will benefit you and your constituents.

Try It Out

• See what happens

• Create a new social media experiment– Track it (Google Analytics)– Assess whether it is worthwhile

Where, and Why?

Learn, Shape, Innovate

• 1. Use the tools first – plork (pronounced “plurk” = play + learn + work)

• 2. Adapt tools to fit your school

• 3. What will you build for your constituents?

Fan Pages: Two Ways

• 1: Branded through WhippleHill’s Fan Page Integration

• 2: Using Facebook Apps to syndicate content (Apps I recommend: SocialRSS, My Flickr, FBML)

More on WH + FB Fan Page Integration:http://inside.whipplehill.com/2010/05/26/facebook-fan-page-integration-comes-to-podium/

HTML (FBML)

RSS Feed (SocialRSS)

flickr pix (MyFlickr)

Your Expectations

• You have expectations when using Google, Amazon, or Netflix

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Google.png

What Do Your Constituents Expect?

• Facebook can be used both proactively and reactively.

• Do you know what gets reactions from your constituents?

Community Pages

• The launch of these (01 APR 2010) have already affected:

– Your Fan Page• Control

– School “Subgroups”• Branding

Community Pages, continued

• Drawing on wikipedia entries, other “mentions” of your school name

• CNN President is more afraid of Facebook than of FOX News, due to the number of users and the type of information exchange

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-social-networking-sites-dominate-sharing-2009-7

Social Media Time Allocation

• Consider your current strategy

• Consider your team size and skill set

• In which places could you experiment?

Set Goals, Metrics

• Ideally: you’ll set concrete goals and measurements in order to accurately measure and report successes and failures

• Sometimes: you’ll just put it out there and see what happens, then learn!

Be Flexible

• Sometimes, due to the workflow, you may need to temporarily change the way you communicate:

– Facebook posts to twitter– flickr posts to a blog and to facebook– News posts to homepage and Facebook

Valuable Resources

• Inside Facebook• Mashable• Stanford University’s Fan Page• Alumni Futures• Adaptivate | Webinar Registration• The Value of a Facebook Fan [PDF]• Your Influences (please share!)

Stay Connected

Thanks to Travis Warren and the WhippleHill team!

This slide deck is available on slideshare.Joel F. W. Price | Webmaster & Information Managementjprice@friendscentral.orghttp://friendscentral.orghttp://facebook.com/friendscentral