By Myra McGovern Director of Public Information, NAIS Using Social Media to Cultivate Relationships

 What is social media?  What can social media do for you?  What are the downsides?  Where do you start?  How do you leverage these technologies?  Tough questions. Overview

What is social media?

Social Media Prism

Most frequently used by independent schools  Facebook  Photo sharing (i.e. Flickr)  YouTube  Blogs  LinkedIn  MySpace

Who’s On Facebook? Source: IStrategyLabs

Who’s On Facebook? 119,449,960 people in US 50,616,000 people in US between 30 and 55 8,881,600 people who are in high school 674,440 people who live within 25 miles of Durham, NC 11,140 who live within 25 miles of Charlotte and like “kids” or “children” Source: Facebook Social Ads on 4/27/10.

Who’s on Twitter?  19% of internet users use Twitter.  median age = 31  The more devices someone owns, the more likely they are to use Twitter. Sources:

What can social networking media do for you?

 Connectedness  Relationships  Engagement/ Involvement  Trust/ Authenticity

Admission  Identify prospective families  Help new families connect and learn the culture  Identify the school’s biggest advocates and involve them more closely  Establish a word of mouth campaign

Alumni Affairs  Locate lost alums and reconnect  Keep alums engaged  Help young alums connect to more established alums in the same industries

Communications  Another way to get info to families  Target media that your constituents use  Segment audiences  Showcase your school as a model for learning

Development  Identify donor prospects  Find out what your donors are interested in  Acknowledge or reward donors publicly  Mine the data

Head and Business Office  Put names and faces together—learn all the players  Build community  Determine metrics for different programs  Help parents meet other parents  Encourage volunteerism

What are the downsides?

 Time  Lack of control  Failure to thrive

Where do you start?

Plan strategically  What are your goals (hint: a goal is not “create Facebook page”)  Drive donations? Admissions? Alumni affairs?  Look at your marketing plan—what are you trying to do?  Begin with the end in mind

Start Small  Pilot a small initiative to engage current supporters first. Then expand.  Share photos (if you have releases)  If parents blog about an event at your school, share it on the school’s Facebook page or website  Start an alumni link on LinkedIn

Nurture quality  Quality, not quantity  Get to know your fans  Growing your fan base: Ask your fans to invite people they think should be involved  Establish presence on parent networks  Learn the culture and tenor of an online community before commenting  Use an RSS feed to save time

Measure/ track Unique visitors, frequency of visits, comments, others sharing your content…

Who should oversee it?  Most often PR… or marketing  Often a young staffer. –Young staff might know the technology, but do they know the strategy? –Empower them to learn. Give them strategic goals and creative freedom.

How do you get buy-in?  Tie it to strategy. Make language understandable (lay off the lingo). Tell people the goals and how you will measure your success.  For individual tools (i.e. Facebook)—recruit thought-leaders and influencers to spread the word.  Include address in your signature block  Post photos. Encourage people to comment

Leverage technologies

 Blogs to establish you as expert  Facebook to amplify media relations  Follow reporters—what are their interests? They’ll likely follow you too.  Encourage engagement. You can’t control it.  LISTEN  Springboard- Drive people back to your site—for donations, applications, etc.

What else?

Tough questions  What about using real names?  What if students tag themselves in photos?  What if you learn too much about your students?  Establish boundaries

Additional resources  An Independent School magazine article (winter 2009) “Can You Hear Me Now? Social Marketing and the Social Web” discusses online tools schools are using to “test the waters” of social media to communicate with alumni and others. It also addresses ways to face/embrace unofficial online communication about one’s school. “Can You Hear Me Now? Social Marketing and the Social Web”  At the Independent School Educators Network Ning, you’ll see a running feed of recent Twitter posts by independent schools. This will give you an idea of how some schools are using Twitter to connect with families and alumni.Independent School Educators Network Ning  “Recipes for Success: Independent schools break the mold when it comes to social media” – blog post from communications consultant Michael Stoner links to case studies of innovative social media uses by independent schools. “Recipes for Success: Independent schools break the mold when it comes to social media”

Additional resources  Groundswell : Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies. Book by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. Groundswell : Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.  Twitter, Meet Facebook —podcast (NAIS members) Twitter, Meet Facebook  Strategic Marketing Planning – a how-to document to help you plan (NAIS members) Strategic Marketing Planning  Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. Book by Clay Shirky. Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  Join NAIS at and !