As a teacher, you may have already found a plethora of large groups and education pages to participate in to get resources and discuss ideas in and around education. Some of them are run by commercial companies like Twinkl and 2Simple, but they`re usually there on Facebook to help and support rather than just trying to sell you. They also provide a place where multiple schools and teachers using their products can share ideas on how to use them and links to good resources you may have missed. It can be helpful to have an additional administrator for your group to manage and « manage » the group. A kind of « backup » for professional groups or paid groups, it is highly recommended to have multiple administrators, because if the single admin gets their account closed, deleted or blocked for any reason, the Facebook group is left with no one to manage it and practically kills them. That`s not a big point with the teacher/class Facebook groups, because if lessons are thrown out of FB, there`s not much to worry about anyway. However, you could argue that the other administrator could continue to run the group. For your class group, an additional admin could be your spouse as a backup, or maybe you have an active roommate who knows Facebook well and can actually help you and your group. Whatever the reason, it`s easy to assign admin privileges to someone. If you liked this article, you might also be interested in our guide to Twitter in schools. Hi Kyle. A group can be managed by a Page or a person (individual profile).

You can find more information here www.facebook.com/help/337881706729661 or here whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Facebook-page Basically, a Page is a publicly accessible entity where the people who own, manage and control the Page are hidden from the public. While your individual profile (also known as « person ») is not. Facebook events are an easy way to get the word out about your school. Essentially virtual invitations, Facebook events can reach anyone on the platform and grow as more users notice they are participating. Even during the social distancing caused by the pandemic, schools have found unique strategies to bring their communities together virtually by advertising on Facebook. Facebook prefers user-to-user content to content from a company, which means users see more content from their friends and family than from schools. There`s no doubt that there`s a lot to consider on Facebook to make sure you suspend accounts accordingly. However, there is very little reason to avoid this altogether. It is much cheaper than many other solutions to the same problem. If communication between home and school is difficult and you`ve tried everything, this may be the answer you`re looking for. Finalsite makes it easy to integrate your social media content, like Facebook, into your website with Finalsite feeds.

With feeds, you can promote content you already post on Facebook on your website and monitor content attracted to your website. If you`d like to learn more about strategies for conquering Facebook updates, or if you`re looking for guides on how to use social media in any part of your overall school marketing strategy, our experts can work with you based on your goals! Twitter is pretty easy to use without having to worry about settings. Tweets can include photos, videos, and short 140-character messages that show what students are doing in class. Anyone can follow the pages. I think this is the safest place for teachers, as many educators use this platform for professional purposes anyway. You can invite parents and students to follow your personal account on Twitter, or you can create a different class account than your personal account. As a Facebook page, you can even use it as an advertising page. Independent schools often already do this well, but public schools and MAT now realize that a boosted Facebook post can be a great way to reach out to local parents and make sure your school is ahead of the curve.

You can choose to make an announcement for your website launch, a virtual tour of the school or a video, or you can simply make an announcement for your next open house. Well, all that said, it must be added that the use of social media certainly comes with some risks and challenges. Since K-12 students are typically minors, privacy is a major concern. Even a harmless message congratulating a student on a performance can cause problems if consent has not been given to share this information publicly. For this reason, schools should never assume that parents (or students themselves) agree to information being posted online. To know how your Facebook posts are performing, you need to use Insights (defined at the beginning of this blog). Here`s real data on the performance of your school`s page in general, as well as the types of followers you have, performance, engagement, reach, and more. In her role as Director of Demand Generation, Kristen is responsible for content strategy and content creation via email, website and social media at Finalsite. With over six years of experience in content strategy and digital marketing, Kristen has worked with clients across the country to develop their inbound strategies. She is a regular speaker at continuing education events for schools and holds a number of certifications from Google, Hubspot, and Hootsuite. A group gives you much more control over who can join the group. You can open the group completely and allow anyone to join, or make it available for people to request access and you can approve it, or even block it completely and send a link to parents in emails so they can request access.

When requesting access, you can apply some questions that they must answer so that you can verify that they are indeed the parents of the school (useful if many have different last names or use maiden names, etc. on Facebook), which can help validate members. So if you`re looking for guidance on how to effectively manage social media channels and protect student privacy, the school district is a good place to start. You need to explain, advertise and promote the group to your parents. You can discuss this early in the open house or during orientation. (My wife does – she has a few slides in her presentation about it) But you should share the details and instructions directly with your parents. You also need to set some basic rules, especially the whole « friendship » part. Before you dive in, you may be wondering: Should my school use Facebook? While this social media platform may seem « old » or « outdated, » it is an important tool for targeting key audiences, including parents, grandparents, and members of the broader community. Learn more in episode 10 of The School Marketing Show – LIVE. The American Board, also known as the American Board for the Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE), shares similar rules on social media for teachers. And like Common Sense, they emphasize the importance of not sharing photos of students without their consent: Access Facebook groups at www.facebook.com/groups/ So how can schools make the most of social media without addressing privacy issues? Here are three steps the school`s social media managers (or anyone posting on official accounts) should follow: Jesuit High School De Smet, for example, recently introduced its new head coach.