As a Business Manager, your first concerns may have little to do with your school’s social media efforts. You’re more concerned with your school’s budget, employee benefits, facility upgrades, the database, and the millions of other projects your Head has passed down to your office. However, if you’re part of your school’s Risk Management team, then you might want to take another look at social media platforms as a way to keep parents, students, and even faculty and staff connected.
Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are proven to be great resources for marketing your school’s culture and keeping alumni engaged. If you haven’t read one of the dozen articles ISM has published about social media and the marketing benefits, then perhaps you’ve read the reviews and buzz from another source on the Web or from your busy inbox. Regardless, social media has proven itself to be a powerful tool for schools and businesses alike as far as enforcing missions, keeping people connected, and even attracting interest, new students, and faculty members.
But social media platforms have even more value than marketing efforts—they can be great tools for Risk Managers and HR personnel as well. Think for a moment about last season’s winter. How did you relate the news to families and faculty that your school would be closed or having an early dismissal? Did you make hundreds of phone calls, set up a new "away message" on your system's answering service, or update an emergency page on your school’s Web site? Did you send out a massive e-mail? What happened with the people you couldn’t get in touch with?
Now, think for a moment how easy it would be to post a message on your school’s Facebook page or send out a tweet about your school’s early dismissal. You could have contacted potentially hundreds of families in just a few seconds—and received feedback. This is not assuming that Facebook would be the only step you would have to take in order to inform parents of your school’s situation, but it can be a powerful resource to incorporate, and should be considered as part of your plan in the future.
You might doubt that your families use social media heavily enough to receive your important updates. If your school were to be consistent in keeping your information updated and accurate, however, families would become dependent upon using those resources as a way to stay current. But, the truth is, Facebook is now larger than Google, and many organizations are incorporating it as part of their crisis plan.
Here are some great articles that discuss using social media in the event of a crisis:
- How Has Social Media Changed Schools and Businesses
- Five Social Media Must-Haves for Crisis
- What to Expect of Social Media for the Rest of 2011
- How Schools Can Use Facebook to Build an Online Community
Here are a few examples of what type of news makes great social media fodder:
- Teacher and student engagements (awards, celebrations, etc.)
- Upcoming events
- Images of facility upgrades, or in the event of a natural disaster or other tragedy, images of the destruction and progress of reestablishing
- Important notifications/news worthy articles
- Invitations to events
- Job postings/attracting faculty and staff
- Discussion topics/forum questions
- Surveys and polls
