Why Your School District Needs To Be On Social Media

I often get asked, "Why does a school district need social media?"

Here's your answer, and some behind the scenes analytics. Just one video (see below) of our very impressive Arcadia High School Marching Band from the Rose Parade (which I shot with my iPhone with no post production or editing), has already been viewed 26,000 times and has reached 68,000 people's Facebook timeline. There are hundreds of positive comments from proud alums, parents, students and community members. Read the comments, and you will know why social media is important.

Social media is an invaluable resource to help highlight and recognize our incredibly talented students and staff. To share with the world what makes Arcadia Unified unique, and why people should continue to support our students and staff. Again, this is just one single post of dozens from the past few days.

This week our Facebook page alone (we also have Twitter, Instagram, Weibo, and Youtube which also reaches thousands) reached nearly 200,000 people. That's almost four times the population of the city of Arcadia, and more than 20 times the student population of our entire school district of about 9,600 students. How else could we reach that many people with a few clicks on the phone?

The Facebook live video from the band's rehearsal last week has nearly 1,000 likes and 200 comments which are all positive. The somewhat shaky video that I shot as a last second "why not" with my iPhone as I tried to keep up with the band marching up and down Campus Drive, has already been viewed more than 17,000 times. If you want a quick glimpse of what community pride looks like, take 40 seconds and scroll through the comments. How can we afford not to have social media?

This is why we spend time and resources on social media. Our Digital Communications Internship program (DCI) has also helped immensely to post more content from games, concerts, events, etc. from all throughout our district. This past year we have never posted more, and it's because of our dedicated DCI students. This allows us to highlight more of our students and staff, which in turn brings more people to like the Arcadia Unified School District page, and then when we do post again, it reaches more people. Tip- get help with your social media.  

Social media, if nothing else, helps boost school and community pride, and we are lucky to have a lot of pride here in Arcadia. I do admit I have the easiest and best job because it's beyond easy to find remarkable things being done by our students and staff in AUSD to post about. But anyone could walk on any school campus in the country and within an hour find at least five awesome things that will bring a smile to your face, and those things are all worth posting on social media.

Doesn’t it take a lot of time and energy to posts all these things? A little, but not much, and it’s well worth the time. With the phone app, it just takes a photo or two and a quick caption. Once I started our social media pages three years ago, our principals and teachers were great contributors. Tip- Ask for submissions, they will come pouring in. Then soon our parents and community wanted to know how their team or group can be featured on our Facebook page. Simple, send me a picture or video with a brief description of what it is. People quickly saw the positive responses our posts were getting and were happy to send me pictures from plays, sports games, concerts, for fundraisers, etc. Once you start, people will be happy to help and send in news items and share stories of success. Tip- you don’t need to post every day. There are no rules of how often or how much. Post when you can, and ask for submissions on the page. You will have plenty of content in no time.

Could someone write something bad or negative on your Facebook page? Sure. Just delete it and move on. There will be WAY MORE POSITIVES than negatives. What do you do when your school gets hit by offensive graffiti? You don’t shut down the school because of it. You clean it off, implement new measures to monitor and get back to business. Same exact concept in the digital world and Facebook has excellent security and safety features which make this easy to do. Don’t be scared of social media. Be scared of what you’re missing without it.

One Tweet from the Rose Parade reached 8,500 people. 

Also, a personal and sincere thank you to everyone who likes, shares, and comments on our posts. The interactions truly help with our vision of supporting our students and staff, and even with the Facebook algorithm- it helps our posts be seen and "reached" by more people when there are more likes and comments. Tip- encourage your staff and community to give a few likes and shares, even if it’s not their group or people they know. It will benefit everyone in the future.

Social media should never be your only communication plan, but it needs to be an essential part of it. You can’t afford to miss the joyful comments and celebrations of your students and staff. Your community needs to know what you’re doing and why. Most importantly they need to know about your many successes. My superintendent and I have a little joke about social media, “if it’s not on social media, did it really happen?”

Make it happen, make your community proud, show off your amazingly talented students and staff, create more school and community pride, get in the game, get on social media.