>Does your school have a facebook page? Our development/communications folks
>are looking at using facebook for building community.
>
>If your school does this- what are the pitfalls? Monitoring content and ??
>
>Maureen Tumenas
>Berkshire Country Day School
>Lenox, MA
Hi, Maureen and others
I recently wrote an article for Independent School magazine on using social media in the marketing of the independent school. In my research I spoke to over a dozen independent schools as well as social media/marketing experts and here are a few, general
points I found:
1. Go to them, don't make them come to you. Make an alumni or admissions Facebook page so that folks need not take extra time and effort to learn or even find your page elsewhere.
2. Have multiple touch points online. Facebook is great but it's one way. Advancement staff cannot glean e-mail addresses and other demographic information from a Facebook fan page. Start with FB or another sm site but then add lots of great
videos/photos/content to your own site where folks will then later go and hopefully volunteer the data you need.
3. Learn to let go...a lot. Yes, they're talking about your school on Wikipedia, privateschoolreview, and more: good, bad and ugly. Don't interfere in the conversation unless it's libelous or dangerous to your students. After all, if you're doing a good
job and one parent bad mouths you online, then a dozen more should jump to your defense. That's priceless testimony. And, if everyone says your school has this or that problem, maybe it's time to listen to the conversation...they may be right.
4. Give students a chance to share. Several schools had amazing stories of how students online influenced admission decisions repeatedly. Your viewbook is not nearly as important as what students say about your school online. Listen and learn.
5. Start slowly but don't drop the ball. Try one social media site to begin with but make darned sure you keep new content flowing there. If they visit a page that is stale they may never return. You may need to reallocate staff time to ensure that
someone has the resources to focus on new media at your school.
I hope that helps. I'll also be presenting a session on this with more concrete examples and recommendations at the NAIS annual conference in February.
Lorrie
Lorrie Jackson
Director of Communications and Marketing
Lausanne Collegiate School
1381 West Massey Road
Memphis, Tennessee
38120 TN
ljackson@lausanneschool.com
901-474-1003
http://www.lausanneschool.com
skype - Lorrie Jackson
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