These are the Days: Lessons in Content Planning

At The Agnon School, a community Jewish day school located in Beachwood, Ohio, we set out to enhance our social media reach and interaction in order to attract additional students to the school. 

One of the first things we did was to conduct a survey of our constituents – primarily our parents and prospective parents – to see what types of social media they were using most frequently.  Through the survey, we discovered that Facebook was most often used.  

As a result, we increased our use of Facebook by posting engaging items on a daily basis each week.  We developed the following weekly schedule:

  • Mondays:  We posted an article of interest written by a national education expert for our target audiences to read (articles were not specific to our school).
  • Tuesdays:  We posted a video or photo album related to activities happening at the school (including special programs or simply everyday learning).
  • Wednesdays:  We posted a fun and/or thought provoking question and parents could respond to the question.
  • Thursdays:  We had “Throwback Thursdays” and posted an alumni photo with an accompanying question or invitation to interact and share.
  • Fridays:  We posted our Head of School Shabbat blog.

We found that student photos sent out on Tuesdays and Thursdays received the most attention.  In addition, photos of people holding signs with key messages regarding fund raising also generated a tremendous amount of attention for our benefit golf outing.

In addition, we pre-posted articles on Mondays to make sure we have regular posts.  In order to increase interest on the other days of the week, we learned through trial and error that Wednesday’s “question of the day” needs to be simple in order to get responses.  We plan on changing the questions for this day to something shorter in order to encourage more responses.  Plus, we plan on giving the Head of School’s blog on Fridays a more attention-getting name.  We are also considering the pros and cons of paid posts.

However, our ultimate goal was to have our followers “like” or “share” all of our weekly posts.  Through this exercise, we discovered that we needed social media ambassadors to engage and support participation.   To achieve the best results, we e-mailed some of our key parent ambassadors and requested that they “like” or “share” our posts.  This worked so well that we decided to create a Social Media Support Committee for the 2014 – 2015 school year.  This committee’s sole job will be to simply “share” Agnon’s Facebook posts.

What’s more, we were introduced to a number of new tools to assess metrics.  We learned a great deal about our posting habits relative to the types of postings that appeal to our audiences and the most optimal posting times.

 

The Agnon School participated in the 2013-14 cohort of the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy, an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2013-14 nationwide cohort of 15 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here with the tag #jdsacademy

Complete the Social Media Self Assessment for your school at http://www.dayschoolacademy.org/assessment

 

Keep Momentum Over the Summer

The Jewish calendar is great for pacing our lives, for embracing the seasons, and appreciating things in their own time.  Summer, however, sometimes feels like it can derail the communications momentum we've worked so hard to build over the year.  Especially in educational organizations where classes don't meet over the summer (and where staff may be only working part time, or not at all), it's important to pay special attention to your summer social media plans.  Thus from our staff, and the wisdom of the crowd!

CONSISTENCY  Maintaining consistency is important both to keep up your ranking so your content will appear in newsfeeds, but it's also important to keep people in the habit of being engaged.  You've worked to get people engaging with your posts — keep it up.  It's also a great way to introduce and integrate new families into your community.   Make a point of posting at least once or twice a week.  Use the scheduling function in Facebook or a third party tool like HootSuite to schedule posts if you need plan ahead.

CONTENT  If you've used the POST planning process to identify the "sweet spot" of content that's both mission centric and of practical value to your audiences, you know how important it is to find the right content.  What do your audiences need over the summer?   Tips for events and opportunities in your local community?  How about ideas of fun summertime care packages to send to camp?  Or links to back to school preparedness? Tova Otis suggested in the JDS Social Media Academy Facebook Group that she posts links to school supply sales in their community.  Even links to fun activities like this list of creative things to do for under $10 or how to make quick kosher dill pickles with your cucumber harvest, other fun things you can find on Pinterest. (Got links to share?  Add them in the comments)

CONTRIBUTIONS  How can you get people participating in your Page even if they are not walking through your door?  How about a photo contest to have people submit a picture of their adventures over the summer, or wearing their school t-shirt in exciting places?  Invite your audience to send a postcard — a real one which you can scan and post online, or a virtual one by posting on your Page.  Do a virtual scavenger hunt.  Promote these invitations both on your page, and through email and other vehicles with links to help them take immediate action.

CONVERSATION  Keep the conversation going.  What questions can you ask that inspire people to speak up ("Where are kids going to camp this summer? What's your favorite ice cream flavor?) or chime in?  Ellen Dietrick asked her community to vote on the color t-shirt for the coming year and got dozens of responses – some serious, some silly!  Remember to be LISTENING as much as TALKING. If you're not in the office make sure you're getting notifications (by email, or on your phone or tablet) so you can monitor and facilitate conversation as people chime in!

How will you keep momentum during the summer?  What kinds of content will you post?  How do you structure your time over the summer to keep momentum?  Share in the comments.  Happy summer!

 

 

Footnotes: Content Generation and Curation

Last week, participants in the Detroit Social Media Academy learned about content generation and curation, a topic at the heart of any effective social media strategy. Above are the slides, and below are some important take-aways for thinking about your own content… Take a peek and let us know what you're up to when it comes to content creation and curation!
  1. Content is a connecting force. Think about the classic Jewish study model of chevruta: two people hover over a text, dissecting it, questioning it, comparing it to other sources and their own lives. In the process, they not only develop a deeper relationship with that text and Jewish tradition, but with one another. The text is the connector. That's what good content can do online, in a way that's broader, public, and potentially more inclusive.
  2. Always start with your goals. You have to know what you're trying to accomplish in order to choose the right content – and, by extension, the kinds of conversations – that will help you and your community get there.
  3. Always remember your audience. The people you are trying to reach have their own self-interest, for better or for worse. Practice empathy. If you can tease out the sweet spot, the overlap between what you want to accomplish and what they want for themselves, you'll be able to choose, develop, and share content that's both meaningful to your audience and relevant to your goals.
  4. Events as opportunities for content generation. Pictures, videos, and quotes are all quick, easy things you can grab at an event and make effective content. Think through what else might work for your event, who will be responsible for capturing it, and how you can share it.
  5. Crowdsourcing for content generation. It's important to be transparent about your intentions, but putting a question or enticing message out on social media, then using the responses as a blog post or as another type of content (collect images or links, turn the responses into a graphic, etc.), is a great way to build community and momentum online AND generate meaningful content.
  6. Blog parties for content creation. Some communities are experimenting with hosting IRL (in real life) parties specifically geared towards sharing and documenting stories. Again, you need to be transparent about your intentions, but getting together a small group (and a few laptops) for some wine, cheese, and storytelling can make for a fun opportunity to both build community on the ground and unearth great stories to share.
  7. Have evergreen/recipe content ready to share anytime. Much of the content we share is event or time specific; but having content that's appropriate anytime is a useful way to keep at the front of your audience's mind more often. That way, when you ask them to attend an event or give a donation, it's not coming out of the blue – they've already been in conversation with you and are ready to listen. Lists, recommendations, interviews, profiles, etc., can all be great options, but think about what might work for your community.
  8. Reframe what you're already doing. Be conscious about what you're sharing (get permission for photos, etc.), but anytime you can capitalize on the things you're already doing, or capture moments in real time (think mobile!), you're putting together an authentic experience for your audience and building trust.
  9. Content curation. A curator is a sense-maker. She's someone who knows what's out there, finds the best of it (again, based on her goals and her community), and puts it together in a way that makes a meaningful experience. This means sharing your voice, explaining key points, asking good questions, being attentive to the responses. It means being very aware of what's available and what might be useful to your community. Finding, framing, and sharing other people's content in a way that speaks to who you are and what your community wants is the real opportunity behind content curation. It's a fun, though sometimes challenging, way to build your reputation online.
  10. Curation begins with listening. Listen for good content shared by others. Listen to your community. Listen for responses and be ready and willing to shift and reset if something isn't working.
  11. Next steps? Time to try something new! Listen, plan, and jump in and have fun!
     

How do you create and find great content to share with your community? What else would you like to know about content generation and curation?

Getting Over the Content Hurdle

In the winter of 2011 Carmel Academy underwent a name change, as well as a rigorous and successful accreditation process. The name change, in particular, was a unique experience – one that required a great deal of forethought, leadership, careful planning and implementation. With a new branding campaign, a stellar accreditation report and the excitement that electrified our school community, we embraced this as an opportunity to also become part of the social media landscape. Coinciding with our new name and look, Carmel launched four social media platforms: a newly redesigned and robust website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a blog.

Carmel’s initial success with these platforms – particularly with Facebook and our website– was mostly attributed to the newness of our brand and the excitement that went along with it.  It soon became apparent that launching the platforms was the easy part. Keeping them updated, meaningful and relevant to our followers, as well as growing our social media audience, was the bigger challenge. With some experience under our belts — that included experimenting with Facebook and Twitter content —  our administrative leadership took on a more strategic focus of providing the type of content that would push our introduction to social media to the next level.

A key challenge – like many schools — was resources. Photos, videos, content takes manpower. Our small communications office quickly realized it needed to tap our outlying resources. Our best source of culling engaging content was from the “people in the trenches” – our creative and hard-working faculty. We began by first asking our faculty to help provide us with the details of classroom activities, unique integrated learning experiences and special events that shape our students’ experiences throughout the year. Very quickly, we no longer needed to seek out information, but our faculty was readily providing it. We also identified several faculty members who enjoyed photography, and tapped them to help photograph events.

We started with our website and the transformation of our web-based newsletter. In September we re-launched our school newsletter with a new name (Kol Carmel), look and content. Our goal was to provide our families with engaging articles, features, photos and video across all grades and subjects. We very quickly saw our readership increase from less than 20 percent a week to over 50 percent each week.

Taking on this major undertaking required a great deal of organization, as well a time commitment. Monthly and weekly editorial calendars are necessary to plan each weekly edition. With the help of staff photographers and details for articles coming in from our faculty, we soon had plenty of content to choose from.  This also gave us the opportunity to share content across platforms. Features and photos for Kol Carmel could easily be re-written as Facebook posts, placed as news on our website homepage, and turned into a tweet. Not all content is shared across the board. We do create content solely for Facebook, Twitter and the website. However, a majority of our content is shared and recycled – making it much easier to post meaningfully and consistently across platforms.

Jumping over the content hurdle has been encouraging for our social media growth. We have seen increased engagement from current families and alumni, a greater following, a marked increase in community interaction on our Facebook page, and a terrific buy-in from our faculty.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

 

 

The Gift of Time and Organization. For Free! It’s Called RSS.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. With a name like that, you’d think it would be so simple. While RSS can seem confusing, it really is so simple, and so valuable. Imagine a single newspaper delivered to your door every morning with articles on your favorite topics by your favorite authors. And nothing else to slog through. Welcome to RSS!

Common Craft, a great little firm from Seattle has produced a fun, short video to help us understand RSS:

I use Google Reader. There are many good readers out there, but I’ll use this as an example. Down the left side are all the “feeds” I subscribe to. When I run across a blog that I like, and want to keep up with, I click the “subscribe” button — commonly shown as this orange icon. That blog is then added to my reader.

Each morning when I sit down at my computer, I open my Google Reader. It shows me all my feeds down the left. I’ve organized them into folders by topic. The bold titles are the feeds with new posts. I can then scan the posts in the main part of the window, and click on any headline to open a new window to go directly to the blog. This way, I don’t have to remember all my favorite blogs, and remember to go to my “favorites” and take the time to check on each one, or waste time if there is no new content. It all comes to me.

I scan my feeds — I don’t read every single post of every single feed. And if over the course of time I find I’m skipping more than I’m reading, I can unsubscribe in one click and remove that feed from my reader.

This is a very useful way of organizing your own reading to keep up with the most amount of high quality and useful information in the least amount of time. It is also useful to know that this is how an increasingly large percentage of your constituents are aggregating and consuming content online. By RSS enabling your content, your readers will be alerted every time you post something new.

I add new feeds to my reader regularly, as I’m turned on to a new blog, or a trusted friend makes a recommendation. By pulling all of the greatest content together, it makes catching up on my reading a real treat — sometimes even a reward after I’ve completed a big task. What’s on your RSS reader?