To combat this problem I’ve come up with a schedule, which you can use, to slowly ease yourself into social media use. You’ll soon realize that social media is not only a good idea, but something that will help to greatly improve your small business or school over time.

The following is an example of the schedule of events you might take when attempting to introduce Facebook and Twitter to both your clients or school administrators and the community at large.

• Immediately set up an official Facebook Page for your business or school.

• Assign someone who is well aware of the business or school happenings to be in charge of posting to the Facebook account 1-3 times per week.

• Run the Facebook Page for 2 weeks without telling anyone about it. During this time you will train the assigned worker on how to post, what to post, when to post, etc.

• After two weeks you will add links to the Facebook Page on your official website and send out an official press release to the local media.

• You will then run the Facebook Page for 3 months, after which time you will assess whether or not to continue social media communication/promotion with the use of Twitter.

If after the 3-month trial of Facebook you determine that you are indeed headed in the right direction and your community is appreciating the information you are sending out on Facebook, you will continue your social media campaign with the launch of an official Twitter account for your school or business.

• You will create and customize a Twitter account for your business or school.

• You will once again train and supervise a responsible school worker on how to post, what to post, and when to post to Twitter.

• You will run the Twitter account for 2 weeks without telling anyone about it.

• After two weeks you will link from the official website to the Twitter account and send out a press release about your continued use of social media as a communication platform.

• You will continue to supervise the responsible person as you post to both Twitter and Facebook on a regular basis (Twitter at least once a day. Facebook at least 1-3 times per week.)

• Once again, you will run the Twitter account for approximately 3 months, after which time you will assess what can be done to improve your overall social media/Internet presence.

If you can take steps such as these to slowly introduce your clients, school officials and community members to social media use, then I don’t see how you could fail.

Click here to open the Facebook Module Task Sheet.

This is the end of Module 1! Take a minute to click here to ask a question or leave any comments you may think are helpful!

Click here to Continue to Module 2. What Kind Of Content Should You Post?

So, if you understand that more money can come as the result of having more students in your school, the question then becomes, “How do you attract more students?”

Based on my experiences, the best way to do this is through the creation of social proof.

Social proof is something one creates in order to prove to others that what he or she says or does is worth paying attention to. In short, it’s a way of building yourself up so that you can sway the actions of a large group of people.

The principle behind social proof is that since most people make the assumption that the people surrounding them possess more knowledge about a particular situation than they do, they will deem the behavior of others as more appropriate or better informed… and therefore, follow in the footsteps of those around them.

Social proof gets people talking about grand brands. Social proof convinces people to buy a particular product. And social proof sways students to attend one school and not another.

The more social proof your school has, the greater your chances of attracting new students.

In order to attract more students and make more money, however, you need to create an ever-increasing amount of social proof around your school.

Need more money? Get more students.

Need more students? Create social proof.

If you can create enough social proof, you’ll have students begging to attend your school. With enough social proof you’ll have parents clamoring to register their children. And with enough social proof your community will thrive because of the appeal your institution is creating.

Social proof is powerful.

If you understand this, you’re on the right track! But the question then becomes, “How do you create social proof within your community?”

One way to do it is through the use of SOCIAL MEDIA.

What you may not realize about social media sites like Facebook and Twitter is that not only are these tools an excellent way of communicating with the parents, teachers and students in your community… but sites such as these are also one of the best (and fastest) ways of building social proof.

To build social proof with social media, you need to do three things.

1) Increase your follower counts. The more people you have following you on Twitter, subscribing to your RSS feeds, or becoming a fan of yours on Facebook, the more important your school will seem.

2) Get your school’s message to spread online. The more your school’s content is Re-Tweeted, emailed back and forth, voted on, Digged, or StumbledUpon, the more “popular” your school becomes.

3) Have people talking about your school in the real world. When the story you spread about your school is so great that it has people talking about your institution outside of the World Wide Web, then you know you’ve succeeded in generating positive social proof.

The formula looks like this:

• Need more money? Get more students.
• Need more students? Create social proof.
• Need social proof? Harness the power of social media.

Social proof is created by continually proving that your school is an amazing place; that you’re constantly pushing the boundaries; and that your school is doing something special – something others will want to be a part of.

In the video below I walk you through the process of increasing your follower count and improving your school’s online social proof. (Warning: This is a long, but important video. It is nearly 30 minutes in length.)

Download .mov Video – Download .mp3 Audio

The customers, parents, teachers, and students in your community don’t have a lot of time to spare these days, so they take extra precautions when deciding what they spend their time reading and absorbing. That’s why having a headline that grabs their attention is so incredibly important.

The better your headline, the better your chances of…

• Driving your readers back to your website.
• Having others in your community spread the word about you and your business/school.
• Attracting new customers/students.

If you need help writing great headlines, then I’ve got a special gift for you today. My friend Chris Garrett recently released a report containing 102 killer headlines for use in social media…. and you can get it now (for free) to use as you please.

Writing headlines is one of the parts about social media many people struggle with. So, to help you with the dreaded “blank screen of doom” here are 102 tried and tested social media headline templates to download.

102 Headline Formats

Just download this document and fill in the blanks to get a killer headline in seconds.

Click here to open the Facebook Module Task Sheet.

Click here to Continue to Module 3. Letting People Know You’re Using Social Media

Knowing how to use Twitter Search will put you in the top percentile of Twitter users worldwide. Most Twitter users don’t even know that Twitter Search exists – let alone how to use it.

http://search.twitter.com

Thinking about the best way to present Twitter Search to you, I’ve decided that a video is the best way to explain it. In the video below I show you the way I use Twitter search for my various businesses… and then give you some tips and suggestions on how you can use Twitter Search as a powerful communication and marketing tool for your school.

Download .mov Video – Download .mp3 Audio

What do you think? Do you understand how Twitter Search works? Do you see how powerful a tool like this could be to you and your school?

In the subsequent series of articles, I run over a number of things to keep in mind as you continue using Twitter Search as a communication and marketing tool in your school.

Click here to read the next article >>> ]]> http://members.socialmediaschools.com/a-video-introduction-to-twitter-search/feed/ 1 http://members.socialmediaschools.com/who-should-be-managing-your-schools-twitter-account/ http://members.socialmediaschools.com/who-should-be-managing-your-schools-twitter-account/#comments Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:11:56 +0000 Logan http://members.socialmediaschools.com/?p=126 Unlike a Facebook Page or Group, which can be administered by more than one person, a Twitter account is only associated with a single email address… and in theory, is meant to only be used by a single person.

In the case of a school, business or any other type of organization, however, you may wish to give the job of Tweeting to more that one individual.

As I’ve mentioned several times on SocialMediaSchools.com, the new Internet, Web 2.0, social media or whatever you want to call it, is all about transparency. People want to know who they are doing business with. They want to know whom they are talking to. And they want to know that the businesses, schools and organizations that are a part of their lives are not just big faceless corporations.

For this reason, it is important to establish one of the following methods of managing your Twitter account:

The first way you could run your Twitter account is with a single person in your school’s office managing the account and sending out the Tweets on a daily basis. Somewhere on your Twitter profile or on your school’s website (or preferably both), it is important to tell your Twitter followers who it is that is actually sending out the Tweets for your school or business. If it is the head secretary sending them out, let your followers know! If it is the Principal, let your followers know! The Tweets will become so much more authentic and meaningful if they are coming from a real individual, rather than a faceless person in your office.

Does that make sense? I hope so… because this is extremely important!

The second way you might want to manage your school’s Twitter account is a bit more complicated, as it involves several people within your organization all posting to the same Twitter feed. You might have three people in your head office Tweeting to your profile, or you might have every teacher in your school posting to the account – reporting on the daily, weekly, or monthly activities within their various classrooms.

The advantage of running a Twitter account in this way is that the main office’s workload is drastically reduced. Instead of one person shouldering the responsibility for the account, a group or team of people are now all contributing to the content.

This, of course, can cause some problems as well. With multiple people posting to the account, how do you manage and control the content being released? And if something gets posted that shouldn’t have been, how do you fix that problem? How do you track down the poster and remove the offending Tweet?

Well, here is my suggestion:

Whether you have two people managing your school’s Twitter account or every single staff member in the school posting content to the feed, transparency is important and your Twitter followers want need to know who they are hearing from when they read your  Tweets.

To create this transparency, I recommend you create a set of “hashtags”.

Hashtags are words or phrases prefixed with a hash symbol (#) and are used for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets.

In this case, the hashtags you create would be a set of abreviations or initials entered into your Tweets to let your followers know which individuals made which particular tweets.

For example, if my assistant Susan and I were to be managing our Twitter account, we would create a series of hashtags that looked like this: #DA, #SF

Then, when we made a comment to our school’s Twitter account, the Tweet would look something like this:

Volleyball game tonight at the Monte Vista gym. 8PM. See you there! #DA

You’ll note that at the end of the tweet I’ve entered my hastage, indicating that I, Darren Alff, made this particular tweet. If Susan were to post to the school’s Twitter account, her tweet might look something like this:

Congrats to the girls volleyball team on last night’s win. Great game girls! #SF

You see? She’s entered her personal hashtag at the end of the tweet, which lets the school Twitter followers know that it was Susan who made that particular tweet.

Hashtags take a few minutes to set up and organize. And your Twitter users may forget to use them at times, but if you can set up a system of hashtags for those responsible for posting to your Twitter account, the amount of transparency and overall positive feedback you are going to receive will be more than positive.

Note: If you choose to have multiple people managing your Twitter account and you do create a series of hashtags, make sure you post the hashtag information on your organization’s Twitter profile and/or on your official website. Otherwise people won’t know what those initials at the end of each tweet means.

You’ll want to post something like this:

Tweets from (Insert Company/School Name) are made by:

Darren Alff – #DA
Susan Flanders – #SF

See the example below where I’ve places this information in the background of the school’s Twitter profile.

So, those are my suggestions. You either have a single person manage your Twitter account, or you assign a group of people to make the tweets.

Whatever method you choose to use however, you need to let your followers know exactly who it is that is making the tweets.

You can choose to ignore my advice, of course, but I honestly believe that this transparency will help to make your Twitter campaign a huge success… and your customers, parents, teachers, students and community members will appreciate your honesty.

Click here to go to the next Twitter Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

To set up your Twitter account, go to www.twitter.com and click on the “Join Today” button.

Follow the on-screen instructions… and if you need additional help, watch the video above.

Creating your account is very easy and should only take a couple minutes. That said, here are a few things to keep in mind as you create your account.

• Many people/schools have the same name. Therefore, you may find that when trying to register your Twitter username, that the name your seeking is already taken. If this is the case, you are going to have to get creative and come up with an alternative username. For example, try abbreviations as I have done for my username at http://www.twitter.com/smschools.
• If, for some reason, you are not yet ready to use Twitter, I suggest you go ahead and create a Twitter account anyway. As Twitter becomes more and more popular, more and more usernames will become unavailable. If you find that the username for your business/school is available, go ahead and register that username. There are already people and businesses selling Twitter usernames, just like they do for website domain names and other online properties, so be sure to grab your username as soon as you possibly can.
• In addition to grabbing the username for your organization, you may also want to go ahead and register a Twitter account for yourself using your own personal name, if it isn’t already taken.
• Finally, when entering the email address that is to be associated with your Twitter account, I recommend entering an email address that does not belong to a single individual person, but instead, belongs to the organization as a whole. For example, instead of registering your Twitter account with susanflanders@unionhighschool.com, you would register the account with the generic contact@unionhighschool.com. This way, if Susan were to ever leave, it would be effortless for anyone else to take over the account and the Twitter responsibilities.

The entire set up process should take just a matter of minutes. After your finished, click here and learn how to customize your Twitter profile with your logo, mission statement, website, and colors.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

In this article, we are going to set up your Facebook Profile. If you’ve already set up a Facebook Profile for yourself, you can go ahead and skip this tutorial. This may be a good time to review what’s already in your own Profile.

Whomever is going to be managing your business’/school’s Facebook Pages and/or Groups need to set up a Profile. This means that if you are going to be the one managing your school’s Pages/Groups, you must first set up a Facebook Profile.

Setting Up Your Profile:

To start, open your web browser and go to: www.facebook.com

On the right you will see a form asking you to “Sign Up”. Once there, enter your full name, email address and desired password into the boxes provided for you. It’s probably a good idea to write this information down somewhere (especially the email address and password) so that you have the info to reference in the future.

Underneath, you will then enter your sex and birth date. If you are nervous about listing your birthday information online, don’t worry. This information is for security purposes only and you can choose later as to whether or not you want your birthday information displayed on your Profile. My profile, for example, shows that my birthday is October 14th, but it doesn’t say which year. For now, just enter your birth date and click the “Sign Up” button underneath.

You’ll then be asked to enter a security code. This is to ensure you are indeed a real person registering for an account and not computer software programmed to automatically create Facebook Profiles with fictitious names. Follow the on-screen instructions and press “Sign Up”.

After entering the correct security code, you will be directed to a page that says, “Confirm Your Email Address”.

Now it’s time to go check your email for a message from Facebook. It may take a few minutes for this email to arrive. But once it does, open the email up and click on the confirmation link inside.

When you click the confirmation link in the email, you will then be directed back to the Facebook website where you should find a screen asking whether or not you’d like to find new Facebook friends using your email address. I usually skip this step because I don’t want to give out my email and password information, nor do I want Facebook emailing everyone in my email directory and telling them I just signed up for a Facebook account. Instead, I’ll find my Facebook friends more organically through the methods I’ll discuss in future articles. For now, I recommend just clicking “Skip this step” in the bottom right hand corner of the screen.

Step 2 is to enter your education and career information. You will want to enter the name of the high school you graduated from and select the year in which you graduated. You will do the same for your college by first selecting the name of the college or university and then selecting the year that you graduated.

The third box on this page asks for your company information. This is where you want to enter the name of the business/school you are currently working for. Enter this information and then click “Save”.

You will then be directed to a page with a bunch of tiny Profile pictures on it. Based on the school and company information you entered in the previous step, Facebook makes a suggestion as to who you may or may not know on Facebook. If you see anyone on the list that you know and that you’d like to become friends with, go ahead and click on their photo. After you’ve found everyone you know, click “Add as Friends”. This will send a message to these individuals’ asking whether or not they know you… and whether or not they would like to become your friends.

The third and final step is to enter the name of your local network. This is where you want to enter the city that you (and your business/school) are currently located in. By joining a network, you will better be able to find and connect with people in your immediate locale. So go ahead and enter the name of your city and state and then click “Join”.

After that, you’ll be directed to a page asking you whether you would like to find friends by manually typing in their names or whether you would like to beef up your profile. What you want to do is click on the link to “View and edit your profile”. We will discuss how to further customize your profile in the next module!

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com

In the video above I walk you through the process of creating a Facebook Page.

In order to create a Facebook Page, you first have to create a Facebook Profile. If you have not yet created a Profile for yourself, please go back and do that now. You will not be able to create a Facebook Page without first creating a Facebook Profile.

To create a Page for your business or school, go to: www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

You’ll first be asked to place your Page in a category. In most cases, you want to put yourself under “Local” (Unless your business has a greater market range) and the sub-category “Education” for schools or the most appropriate for your business.

Then type in the name of your school or business and the required security code.

You’ll then be asked to verify that you are indeed an authorized individual from your organization. Check the box provided to verify the fact that you are an official representative.

Then click, “Create Page”

After the Page has been created, you will then want to go through the steps, just like we did when we set up your personal profile, and fill out your organization’s new Page with its contact information, mission statement, official website, and finally, your logo. Watch the video above to see how to enter all of this information.

IMPORTANT: The last thing you should do after creating your Page is to become a Fan of the Page. There is a button on your Page that says, “Like”. It is important at this point that you press this button and become a Fan of your Page. This will link your Facebook Profile to your Page and it will make it much easier for you to go back and edit and update your new Facebook Page.

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!

Before you can set up your Facebook account(s), it is important to understand the difference between Facebook Profiles, Pages and Groups.

Facebook Profiles:

• The Profile is the basic unit of Facebook.
• Every Facebook user must create a Profile when they register for Facebook.
• You can only have one Profile.
• You can not create a Profile for your business/school/organization.
• When you post to your Profile, the information you post is not automatically posted to your Facebook Page or Group.
• You can not have more than 5,000 friends through your Profile.
• You must have a Facebook Profile in order to create a Facebook Page or Group.

Facebook Pages:

Facebook Groups:

Click here to go to the next Facebook Module.

Send all questions to contact@socialmediaschools.com and we will respond within 24 hours!