Presentation for the National Association of Educational Office Professionals, Thursday, March 17, 2016.

1. A Paradigm Shift in School
Communications
EVELYN MCCORMACK, MACK DIGITAL COMMUNICATIONS
MARCH 17, 2016

2. Where You Can Find This Slideshow
www.slideshare.net/evelynmccormack

3. #Hashtag for today
 #naeopsocial
 You can follow the Twitter conversation or
visit it later here:
 https://tagboard.com/NAEOPsocial/274020

4. A Shift in the Paradigm: Companies,
Non-Profit and Jobs are Changing
Community Manager
Social Media Manager
Administrative Assistant
Secretary
The Computer Literate Office Manager

5. What a Social Media Manager
does (sound familiar?)
 Writes “memos”, actually known as posts in the social media world.
 Answers emails and questions posted on Facebook and Twitter.
 Handles most communication, both incoming and outgoing.
 Handles matters with discretion, organization, and reliability.
Represents the boss (the superintendent) and the district.
 Stands at the front line of a school district’s branding and
reputation.
 The more social media channels a district uses, the more people it
needs to do that job.

6. Just the facts, Jack
 Nearly 1.4 billion Facebook users
 47% of all Internet users are on Facebook
 4.5 billion likes generated daily
 Twitter has 284 million active users
 88% of Twitter users are on mobile
 500 million tweets are posted every day
 Instagram has 300 million users
 70 million photos and videos are sent daily
 53% of internet users aged 18-29 use Instagram
 80% of Internet users on Pinterest are female
 70 million users are on Pinterest
 88% purchase a product they pinned

7. Social media use, 10 years

8. Parents on social media

9. On social media, you meet parents where they’re already hanging out.

10. 45 million likes
2.2 million likes

11. 4.4 million likes

12. 12,000+ likes
11,000+ likes

13. Ossining Union Free School District, Ossining, NY
1,748 likes

14.  Your website = one-way conversation
 Your social media site = two-way conversation
 Social media today is not about the tools, but about how we use
those tools
 Online collaboration, information sharing & engagement
transforms monologues into dialogues
 Empowers individuals, provides platform from which to share
opinions, experiences & information
 Anywhere, any time and immediate
 It’s about transparency and listening
 FREE!
 Many districts still block social media sites,
when they should be filtering them.
Why Social Media Matters

15. Harvard social media page
More and more schools, colleges and private schools are now creating “blended”
social media pages that display all their feeds in one place.

16. IAMCPS
Cincinnati Public Schools

17. NMH SOCIAL
Social media feed pages that schools are beginning to build

18. How Districts are Using Facebook
Simple
announcements, but
with an engagement
angle. “Who is
excited?”

19. Drive traffic back to the District website.
Or just post!
Cute kid photos = public engagement

20. The Importance of Multimedia
No better
way to
engage:
photos and
videos.

21. Link back to good news

22. Facebook is always changing
and adapting…
Added slideshows last year.

23. Create/upload albums of photos
related to the same event and
post them on Facebook.
Miles for Smiles fundraiser at
Valhalla Middle School
First Day of School in
Tarrytown UFSD

24. Advocacy & Curation

25.  Social media adoption takes time and understanding.
 Be patient. Even educators need time to learn about
something new.
 Tell your District to reserve its online real estate. Save user
names, then move ahead. (twitter.com/ryecountrydayschool,
facebook.com/ryecountrydayschool,
youtube.com/ryecountrydayschool,
linkedin.com/ryecountryday school)
 Be aware that we are ALL experimenting with social media.
Be open to change.
A step at a time…

26. A few Facebook caveats
 Districts should create a Facebook business page, not a
personal page, not a Facebook group
 The administration and Board of Education should adopt a
simple Terms of Use statement that will apply to all your
District’s social media.
 If your District creates a Facebook page, it should create a
Twitter feed at the same time.
 Districts should avoid creating a Facebook page around one
event, like a crisis, then abandon it. (Hurricane Sandy)

27. Comments=Two-Way Communication
Allow visitors to your page to comment. Social media is a two-
way conversation!
When to delete a comment from a page?
 If a comment depicts some illegal action
 If a comment uses words you wouldn’t want a child to see
 If a comment is completely off topic
 If a comment attacks or insults another user
 If someone is hawking their wares on your page

28. Facebook Insights

29. Using Twitter

30. The high school
The
superintendent

31. Teachers & library media
specialists use Twitter liberally

32. Independent schools and colleges/universities use social media well. They aren’t
complacent because they can’t afford to be. Rye Country Day School on Twitter

34. “More and more, this is how news will be
transmitted: not in the morning paper or
the evening news, but constantly and
instantaneously. Schools can either dive
in now, or struggle to catch up later on.”
– Dorie Clark, Forbes Magazine

35. How to use Twitter
As a personal learning network. Follow people with whom you share interests.

36. Public schools and school officials “curate” interesting information about
education, leadership, Common Core, and scores of other topics by using social
media to spread the word.

37. Share news/updates/alerts
Two words:
Hurricane
Sandy

38. --Boulder Valley
School District, CO,
where massive
floods took place.

39. Networking and Inspiration

40. Twitter Terminology
 Hashtag: Way of organizing your updates for Twitter search
engines. Users start a message with a community-driven hashtag
to enable others to discover relevant posts. One commonly used
hashtag on Twitter is #followfriday where users network by
providing the names of their favorite people to follow on Twitter.
 Retweet: Abbreviated as RT, retweet is used on Twitter to show
you are tweeting something that was posted by another user.
The format is RT @username where username is the Twitter
name of the person you are retweeting.
 @reply: The @reply means a tweet that is directed to another
user in reply to their update.

41. Top Retweets of 2015
Along with
retweets of Harry
Styles of One
Direction.
Top Hashtags of 2015
#JeSuisParis
#JeSuisCharlie
#PrayforParis
#blacklivesmatter

42. Twitter analytics

43. “The value of being connected and transparent is
so high that the road bumps of privacy issues are
much lower in actual experience than people’s
fears.”
~ Reid Hoffman
Founder/Executive Chairman, LinkedIn

44. YouTube for Schools
• Provides schools with access to hundreds of thousands of
educational videos from YouTube EDU
• Videos uploaded by organizations like Stanford U, PBS, TED
Talks, Khan Academy, Steve Spangler Science
• Administrators and teachers can log in and watch any videos
but students can’t log in & can’t watch any video other than
those the school has approved.
• Can customize content available to your school.
Teachers/administrators can create playlists of what can be
watched within your school.
• Set-up requires help from District IT folks.

45. CREATE A CHANNEL
Bellevue, WA, School District

47. How to Use YouTube
 PROMOTE your curriculum, your best teachers,
new buildings, bonds and votes, student
accomplishments, etc.
 BRAND your district
 CLOSE comments HERE ONLY
 This requires TIME, EDITING, and someone with
video experience. Start slowly.
 If you don’t have video staff, use photos from an
event to create an ANIMOTO video.

48. Using Instagram

49. How to Use Instagram
• Used by your students
• All about the mobile device
• Spotlight school activities, recognize student & staff
achievements, announce positive news
• Show sneak peaks and behind-the-scenes looks at
familiar subjects
• Try a hashtag photo contest
• Need to promote more actively.
• Connect Instagram to Twitter & Facebook. Business
page on Instagram has tips.
• Like Twitter, Instagram likes hashtags.

50. Harvard on Instagram – 194,000 followers

51. PARK HILL (MO) SCHOOLS
#TBT Throwback Thursday

52. Maret School

53. #followthefrog

56. Instagram also allows you to post 15-second videos on
your site, all from your mobile device!

57. TEMPLE MADE

58. BUILDING A BRAND AND A CULTURE

60. Evelyn McCormack, 914-703-1982
evelyn.mccormack@gmail.com
http://www.mackdigital.net
Photo credits: poetsforworldpeace.com, marketingsavant.com
Thank You!