Take a moment to look at your school’s Facebook fan page. There's probably a banner picture of smiling students. Your school’s general updates and accolades fill the feed, exciting prospective parents at the possibilities your academic program could offer for their child.
Is anything missing? Well, not anymore. For the space of about a week, Facebook completely erased reviews for private schools before mysteriously reinstating them.
We got wind of this development from a recent blog posted by Cheshire Academy, remarking on the sudden and abrupt disappearance of their hard-won starred reviews. Hearing the startling news, we immediately looked up other private schools’ Facebook fan pages. Sure enough, all private schools had their reviews taken down, without so much as a single star rating remaining. It was like Dr. Seuss’s Grinch had come to town three weeks too early, stealing Christmas from students instead of the Whos down in Whoville.
From preschools to universities, any school that charged tuition lost its reviews. Public schools, however, like the Boston public school system, retained theirs, as did any other public venue.
We searched for an explanation, but none was to be had. Facebook had just removed the reviews without a word to anyone, nor any remark in the Help center to explain the sudden disappearance.
And then, just as mysteriously, the reviews returned—completely whole and hale, as far as we could tell, without any sort of warning or explanation.
This odd occurrence may be of little note in the grand scheme of things beyond idle curiosity at the inner logic of Facebook’s administrators; the reviews did eventually return, after all. However, the incident serves as a stark reminder that social media—while a powerful platform for engaging future, current, and previous students—is “rented territory,” in a manner of speaking. That is to say, the audiences we cultivate on external sites can be taken away at a whim by the Powers That Be.
We had a taste of the capriciousness of these winds when Facebook killed the organic reach of businesses’ posts in favor of paid advertising earlier this year, essentially destroying unpaid traffic that was the cornerstone of many social media marketing strategies. What had once been a free, organic way to gain attention was now just another advertising platform.
Take heed of this reversal. The audience we have on social media today—and the reputation we’ve built so carefully on third-party sites via reviews and engagement—might be gone tomorrow, for no reason and without warning.
However, there are ways in which you can insulate yourself from sudden change—if you plan ahead correctly.
- Encourage sign-ups to internally controlled lists, like your newsletter subscribers.
- Use social media to drive traffic toward your own website and content, rather than having your school's profile page be the “end all and be all” of your online efforts. Visitors should visit your website for more information, not just visit your social media profile and bounce away.
- Record all reviews, parent comments, and other interactions that may prove useful later into an internal database or Excel spreadsheet. Do not count on the social media profiles as a permanent record of content.
- If a parent shares a glowing review on one website, encourage them to share it on other forums and social media platforms. That way, in case one website takes the reviews down for whatever reason, they’re still available online in other venues.
- Explore new social media platforms carefully, cautiously, and with an eye toward a return on your time investment rather than having the profile just to have it.
Remember, nothing ever stays the same in the shifting tides of the internet, whether that’s the popularity of a platform or a sudden rule change. It’s only on our internal lists and sources that we can truly say we have complete control over the conversation channel.
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for Business Managers Vol. 12 No. 8 Policy Planning for Social Media Meltdowns
The Source for Private School News Vol. 11 No. 5 Start Off the New Year With a Stellar Social Media Plan
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 35 No. 1 Faculty and Staff Use of Social Media: Sample Policy
I&P Vol. 36 No. 5 Conducting a Communications Audit
