On October 15th, I had the opportunity to co-present the “Social Media in the Education Market: New Ways to Build Your Brand” webinar, along with the super-smart and super-talented Sandy Fivecoat of WeAreTeachers. Huge thanks to MDR for hosting the event.
In reviewing the questions posed during the webinar, some of which I didn’t see until the presentations end (there were so many!), I noticed some common themes:
Webinar participants were eager to learn how to respond to negative comments. A CB&A team member wrote about this recently in our Visibility Matters blog, “Dealing With Negative Comments in Social Media – and Calming Your Fears.”
There were also several questions about building brands using social media, a topic addressed in another short post on our blog that may be helpful: “How To: Build Your Brand Using Social Media.”
Another group of questions focused on the number or percentage of educators involved in social networking.
- The preliminary results of a study to be released at the end of October indicate that 62% of the surveyed principals, teachers, and school librarians had joined a social network, and 86% of educators who have joined a social network have joined Facebook. If you’d like me to send you a link to that study when it’s published, just let me know.
- Lightspeed Systems and netTrekker (both CB&A clients) recently released first-year results of a multi-year study, “National Online Survey of District Technology Directors Exploring District Use of Web 2.0 Technologies” (free download, registration required). A white paper coming out soon as a follow up to the survey will contain a literature review of several Web 2.0 studies and provide implications of the research for schools.
Other questioners were interested in finding educators who are using Twitter. That will be the focus of a future posting, but for now, here are a few suggestions to get you started:
- Twitter4Teachers wiki (includes a Principals section)
- Classroom 2.0
- Edutopia
- ISTE Community Ning
- Educator’s Personal Learning Network Ning
- WeAreTeachers (with thanks again to my co-presenter for the webinar, Sandy Fivecoat)
- Twibes. A special shout-out to Iowa. If you visit Twibes, you can find a group of 61 administrators in Iowa that may lead you to similar groups in other states.
Lastly, how much daily time should you devote to social media? The answer depends on your objectives. We know of many highly successful marketers in the education sector who spend no more than 30 minutes a day managing their social networks. Others have a person spending about half of their time involved in social marketing. And many have staff members fully dedicated to social networking. We’ll talk about this more in another future posting.
If you missed the webinar, you can replay it and download the presentation slides.
Thanks to all who participated in the webinar, and especially to those who asked questions so we could continue the learning.