Social Media Community-building
Our Community-Building Communications: Beyond the Numbers
Social media in education offers us a tremendous opportunity to give our communities a way to stay in touch by sharing all that is fun and exciting in our schools’ community.
We each have our own Why for using this powerful communication tool, and it might be different for each of our social media channels — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. It’s the new(ish) form of Word-of-Mouth, and when what you share creates an emotional connection with your followers, they will share it with their network, in real life by talking about it or sharing your post on their social media community.
One of the most common misunderstandings anyone could make is to use our social media one-dimensionally — having only one principal use, to share great things about our schools with a focus on ourselves.
Social media is an incredible way to:
connect with people and develop relationships;
share ideas, knowledge and information;
bridge a communications gap;
and receive instant feedback.
Storytelling & Making Our Sharing More Personal
Being more than a storytelling broadcast tool means that we create points of contact — we craft messages that start conversations, connect with our students, families, faculty, staff, and our community.
In community building, we share our unique voice and our messages are warmly personable (and personal). Whether you’re speaking on behalf of a school account or your own personal professional account, having a personality and a distinct voice will help others connect with you beyond the superficial.
Create Context
One of the best ways to deeply engage your followers is to include context in your messages.
include links and information graphics that give people an opportunity to learn more;
deliver messages that are meaningful and give people a reason to care about you, your school, your story.
Follow Back • Comment • Reply
Following back those who follow you is a great relationship builder. If our purpose is to engage with our school communities and the larger community through our social media, then Following Back is one of the main elements to fostering relationships, encouraging interaction, and building goodwill. Following back sends a message to your new follower that you really do want to build an authentic relationship and connection.
When we use reply and comment to listen and respond we develop community connections. Replying with a personal comment with a human touch continues our story and our identity as friendly, helpful, and welcoming.
Additional Resources