Group text thread keeps a scattered team connected

My last blog post demonstrated how easily group texts can lead to miscommunication. But recently, I found some very effective ways to use them.

Recently I helped chaperone my son’s Model U.N. club on its trip to the state conference. Two adults were attempting to keep track of 14 teens scattered all over a bustling university campus at an event with 1,400 attendees. How could we find each other?

I typed each student and chaperone’s cell number into a group text and started a thread. “Please check in on the steps of the student union at noon. — Leslie”

Each person could hit “reply all,” and message the whole group, continuing the thread:
“Our committee is running late. Be there in 10 minutes. – Andrew.”
“Which room is the General Assembly in? — Carina”
“The GA is in Room C-12. – Zane.”
“Proposing a resolution to ban weapons of mass destruction. Need a speaker from the national defense committee to present in support. – Zane”
“I’m on it. Be there soon. – Joey.”
“Don’t forget to bring your pass for tonight’s social. — Josh”

Wow—that was handy! That got me thinking about how this would be useful at work. How about crisis response?

When an incident occurs, usually the team is scattered across the school district, with some at meetings in various schools, some traveling immediately to the incident site, and some remaining at the office. A group text thread set up in advance can be a way to quickly notify everyone simultaneously in a way they will likely pay attention to, and to keep the whole team in the loop as information emerges.

Be sure to run a test to ensure all your numbers work before disaster strikes. At the start of an incident, remind the group to sign each post to clarify who is saying what.

For example:
“Channel 2 is asking about a rumored bomb threat at the high school. What’s happening? – Leslie”
“Calling the principal, and heading there now. – Cindy.”
“Students reported something a student said. Calling a fire drill as a precaution. – Kim”
“Police just arrived. Calling neighboring schools with a heads up. – Kathleen”
“Instigator identified and questioned. Police say threat is not credible. – Cindy”
“Students returning to class. – Kim”
“Working on a letter to parents. Translations needed? – Leslie”
“Spanish & Russian, please. – Kathleen”
“Translation team standing by. – Alex”
“I will brief the Board. – Denice”

No doubt this strategy will also prove useful on our summer vacation. Disneyland, anyone?

Social Media Sessions at NSPRA Seminar Will Take You to the Next Level

I admit it — I’m a nerd. I’m excitedly planning my trip to the 2013 NSPRA Seminar in San Diego and I’ve already printed out the NSPRA Seminar at a Glance document from the NSPRA website and started highlighting the sessions I want to attend.

Even if you’re not as big a nerd as I am, you can benefit from my geekiness. I’ve pulled out all the social media sessions for your consideration. It seems like this year, NSPRA is taking social media past the basics and up to the next level.

Saturday, July 6:

• Pre-seminar workshop: “Rise of the Mobile App: Mobile App Strategy in School Communications” — Cody Cunningham and Terry Morawski

Monday, July 8:

• “Beyond Twitter Basics: Developing an Effective Strategy for Twitter Success” ― Erika Daggett
  
• “Policy Recommendations to Guide Social Media Interactions for Public Educators” ― Stephanie Smith, Ed.D. and Virginia Conover, Ed.D.
• “Social Media for Schools: Diving Beyond ‘Should We?’ Discussions” ― Dustin Senger

Tuesday, July 9:

• “Dynamic, Digital, Mobile School Communication: There’s an App for That!” ― Mary Todoric and Mick Torres
• “Surviving Social Media Scorn: What To Do When Negative News Goes Viral” ― Laurel Heiden and David Richardson

Wednesday, July 10:

• “Facebook Forward – Expanding to Your Schools” ― Lauri Pyatt and Elaine Watkins-Miller
  

Speed at What Price?

One of the most often cited reasons for using social medial channels to share a district’s news is the speed with which messages can be sent. Whether it’s Facebook or Twitter, the near-instantaneous distribution of information from a district central office to students, patrons and the community is a huge advancement for school PR professionals.

One drawback to using these channels, though, is the temptation to skip some of the steps that are part of the process, namely, proofreading and editing. It’s so easy to knock out those 140 characters and hit “send.” It’s so hard to reel them back in when we realize that there is an error that has just been delivered to 10,000 of your best supporters.

Whether because of auto-correct or fat-thumb complex, mistakes and errors are bound to make their way into your messages, especially if you’re working from a mobile device.  The phenomenon is so prevalent that it’s a feature on The Ellen Degeneres Show and has a website dedicated to it.

The message here is to pause a moment, review your text, and then hit “send,” confident in the knowledge that your message will be what people are talking about, not your mistakes.

Getting the troops on board: Social media monitoring

Social media, specifically Twitter, can be a great information tool during a crisis, in more ways than one. You can keep up with developments, get information out quickly and stay in touch throughout a situation. However, with all that is going on in any given crisis, monitoring the air waves may not be top of mind. That is when having assistance – and not necessarily an assistant – comes in handy.

Recently, the Hutto Police Department was dealing with a situation where a homeowner had barricaded himself in his home. Police had blocked a major thoroughfare in our town, so everyone knew something was amiss. Because we collaborate well with the PD, we were aware and watching for a resolution. None of our campuses were in danger, but it’s always best to be safe. As a precaution, administration had campuses limit activity to indoor only and notified parents that some bus routes may be affected by road closures. Mindful that social media would be buzzing, but tasked with writing, calling and texting parents, I wasn’t at a point to monitor my social media feeds. That is, until a parent emailed me a screen shot of a tweet.

The tweet, sent by a user I’d never seen, mentioned “may be my last tweets” “lockdown” and “serious.” The parent even ran down the previous tweets and let me know this person was subbing in our district that day. The police situation was resolved shortly after I received the email, all was well and our students went home safe. But the tweet bothered me enough to look up the user, check the times and figure out the situation. From it all, I learned some critical lessons:

1. Build your troops. Without the email from this parent, I wouldn’t have caught this tweet. I have built close relationships with many parents (in person and on social media), so it was quickly brought to my attention. Make sure parents know how to inform you and that they feel comfortable doing so. Be sure you have developed the relationships that will allow them to assist you.
2. Make sure your staff is on board. If your staff sees anything on social media, they should inform you as well. A quick email with a link, screen shot or details can help you get a hold of a potential social media disaster. Your staff can be built in assistants.
3. Get out the necessary info. In a crisis, if you aren’t informing your staff members of what is going on, they are going to make assumptions and they may post their assumptions on social media. And don’t forget front office staff, subs and coaches. Give them relevant details they need to know and what they should tell parents who call, tweet and post. Let them assist you.
4. Discuss the best information to share. It is never too early to have a conversation with your staff about the importance of what they tweet, post or share during a situation. Their safety, students’ safety or the sanity of a parent may depend on it. Remind them that vague and misleading information only serves to scare parents and make the situation that much more difficult to handle. Instruct them not to send cryptic tweets like this sub did, because the district has a protocol for when and how to notify parents and you will follow it.
5. After action, after action, after action. As in any situation, be sure you follow up after the event to monitor residual effects that might have arisen. Consider it an after-action debrief.

What Does the Upcoming Facebook Redesign Mean for Your District’s Page?

Get ready for the griping from your Facebook friends – another redesign is on its way over the next few weeks.

Facebook is promoting some features that should be good for your district’s page:

• People will be able to look at different feeds, including a “following” feed. This one will show them posts by pages they follow, including yours. This might help you recapture the attention of followers who haven’t looked at your page in a while. If followers engage with your content in this feed, Facebook is more likely to show it to them in their regular feed.
• Your photos, which are usually your most engaging content, will be more prominent.
• When someone likes your page, your cover photo will show up in the post that appears in the feeds of that person’s friends.
• Even the most change-averse folks on Facebook should find this change a bit easier because it will be familiar – the new design looks like the current design of Facebook’s mobile app.

image from Facebook Studio

Work Smarter, Not Harder…Repurpose Content

Working in education, we have all heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder.” It’s easy to talk about, but not always easy to implement. If your district is like ours, your communications department is small and there is usually more work than time, so working smarter is key.

While in college, I learned about the marketing rule of seven: individuals have to see your message at least seven times before they will remember it. I don’t think it is the number that really matters; it is more about the meaning. Individuals need to see your message multiple times in multiple formats to remember it.

In order accomplish this; our district makes a point to repurpose content. Our philosophy is simple: when we write something to put out to our audiences, it has to be used in a least five different places. By doing this, we are saving time and we are reaching our audiences via multiple communication channels.

For example, we might write a short new release about an upcoming play at one of our high schools. We distribute it to the media, we then include the same information on our district website announcements, in the parent e-newsletter, in school e-newsletters, in the staff e-newsletter, on our mobile app, on Facebook, on Twitter and in our monthly youth activities publication. By writing one story and repurposing it, we reach our audiences via 10 communication channels.

Here are some tips on repurposing content:

• Write content so it can be used in multiple formats, exactly as it is or changed only slightly.
• Write content so it is a quick, easy read. Readers want quick, short blurbs they can scan on their mobile devices, not long, complicated reads.
• Stagger the timing of your messages. Sending the same message out via five different communication channels at the same exact time probably isn’t as effective as sending it out in five different ways at staggered times.

Using YouTube to Promote Safety and Security in Schools

Like many districts across the nation, school safety and security has been the topic of conversation in our community for the past couple of months.

We’ve sent letters to families, posted information on our website and provided talking points to all of our administrators, building leaders and key communicators about school safety. But we struggled with how to really show our community everything we have in place to keep their children safe. That is where YouTube and social media entered the picture.

Our department produced the video below in January of 2013, and then we posted it on YouTube in early February. We also shared the video on Facebook, Twitter, on our website and in our e-newsletter. Although we don’t have a staggering number of views so far, we really see this as something we can share with our community again if other school-related safety events happen in the future.

The response from our community has been overwhelmingly positive.

We also showed this video to law enforcement officials from the seven different police departments in our district. The feedback from police officers was positive as well, with them thanking us for helping keep them on the same page in terms of the safety measures our schools have in place.

We have used Facebook and Twitter for many years, but our department is just starting to produce videos and use YouTube as part of our social media toolbox. Right now, our YouTube channel is a work in progress. We’re working to improve it every day and continue to find new ways to connect with our staff, families and community.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I hope you find this video helpful as well as somewhat entertaining. But if possible, please take it easy on the quality of the voiceover guy…