Module 6. 2 Developing a social media policy

Posted on January 21, 2016 by abond

5 Key points to consider when developing a social media policy relating to employees use of Web 2.0 tools for work and personal use while using the school’s computers, network and time.

When you consider how people communicate with one another, social media is becoming fundamental to personal and now professional dialogues. The distinction between personal and professional use of social media is becoming more blurred. Companies are realising the value of having employees follow and participate in the social media conversations about their brand. Oracle actually encourages its employees to follow the company’s social media channels (Stiles, n.d.).

Schools are different to big corporations in their daily operations but not when it comes to the community conversations about them on social media. Schools should have a social media presence to build their own brand and contribute to those conversations. To ensure the reputation of the school and the safety of the students there should be very clear standards of communication practice around the use of social media. Effective policies represent a school’s intent to deal with all of its community with “trust, transparency, authenticity, integrity and competence” (Johnston, 2015, p. 185).

Here are 5 key factors to consider if your school is creating a social media policy

Involve the people to whom the policy will apply. Create a committee and get a range of people to be involved (Zimmer, 2010). In a school that would include students, parents, teachers, school leadership team and Board of Governors. The range would not only to represent those interest group’s views but it would also most likely represent a range of social media use.

Listen to the community. Ask people about the way they use social media both at home and at school. Find out what people’s expectations are about the personal and public divide in social media (Johnston, 2015, 185). Survey the community, collect information about what people are using and how they use it. (Oxiem Brand Interactions, 2010). Schools have the great resource of parents who may well have knowledge of their own workplace policies.

Review existing school policies that may have impact. Schools will already have a number of policies that relate to this one such as Technology Acceptable Use Policy, Student Safety Policy and Staff Conduct Guidelines. It would be important for the Social Media Policy to reinforce these (Oxiem Brand Interactions, 2010).

Investigate the Social Media policies of other schools and corporations. Ask schools with similar focus to share their policies. Look at corporation policies to see if there is some cross over.

Involve the people to whom the policy will apply. Throughout the process get feedback, consult about philosophy and then once the policy is completed get more feedback. Provide training around the policy for everyone to whom it applies (Johnston, 2015, 179). Regularly review the policy with everyone.

References

Johnston, J. (2015). ‘Loose tweets sink fleets’ and other sage advice: social media governance, policies and guidelines. Public Affairs, 15, 175-187. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pa.1538.

Oxiem Brand Interactions. (2010, March 18). Social media policy for school districts [Slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/oxiem/social-media-policy-for-school-districts?ref=https://interact2.csu.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-636350-dt-content-rid-1452935_1/courses/S-INF506_201590_W_D/module6/6_2_Social_media_networking_policies_organisations.html

Stiles, M. (n.d.). Essentials of an employee social media policy [Blog post]. Retrieved from Oracle Social Spotlight website: https://blogs.oracle.com/socialspotlight/entry/essentials_of_an_employee_social

Zimmer, L. (2010, April 14). Social Media issues and policies for government agencies. [Slides]. Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/guestd39dc835/social-media-policies-for-government-agencies-why-and-how?ref=https://interact2.csu.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-636350-dt-content-rid-1452935_1/courses/S-INF506_201590_W_D/module6/6_2_Social_media_networking_policies_organisations.html

Module 5.3 Developing a social networking strategy for our school library

Posted on January 16, 2016 by abond

Effective social networking takes time and planning (Solomon, 2013, p. 24). It is important to know what you want to achieve with the use of social media. Having measurable goals helps establish the purpose of the use of time and resources in maintaining a presence on social media (Ramsey & Vecchione, 2014, p. 76). Once the goal is established then it is possible to select the best social media tools for the purpose, create some steps to implement the plan and also have a way to measure success.

Istanbul International Community School (IICS) has just over 600 students ages ranging from 3 to 18 years old. It serves an expat community with families from all over the world. The library team has one Teacher Librarian and three assistants. Any social media strategy for the library has to be sustainable and realistic in terms of whom we are trying to reach and the amount of time required developing and maintaining our presence.

Jennifer Gokmen and Amanda Bond

Our school already has a closed Facebook group. This group is for parents and students of the school, alumni and friends of the school. It has a public twitter handle @iics1911. These social media tools are maintained by the school’s marketing team, headed up by Jennifer Gokmen. Jennifer monitors Facebook posts and actively retweets school related tweets. The main audience for the school twitter and Facebook accounts are the parents.

Instead of creating a separate Facebook page and dedicated twitter account I think it is a good idea to participate actively within the existing school accounts. Our library posts can add to the school social media presence while at the same time highlighting our programmes and services. We can be passionate partners in our wider school social media efforts (Ramsey & Vecchione, 2014, p. 78). Also since we will be using our personal twitter handles and Facebook accounts to complete the posts this will help our audience identify the library staff in the school, they will see us as professionals who communicate with pride about our work.

While we do have some parents as library members and regular borrowers we would like to communicate with our parents to show them the programmes and services we provide for our students and their families. The Pew report into parents’ views about libraries found that the majority of parents with children younger than 18 years of age feel that libraries are very important for the children as they develop as readers and researchers (Miller, Zickuhr, Rainie, & Purcell, 2013, p. 2). To have a goal that involves more “buzz about the library” (Solomon, 2013, p. 15) is appropriate. Social media will provide one way to spread news and build relationships (Burkhardt, 2010, p.10) with our parents.

The strategic plan should include the goal, who is involved, an assessment date, action items and how the goal will be measured (Steiner, 2012, p.56). Our social media strategy should include all these things and also have a desired frequency of posting. Below is a draft of a marketing strategy for our library using these ideas and guidelines.

Appendix Draft marketing strategy for IICS library

Goal

Increase parent and colleague awareness of library programmes and services

People involved

Teacher librarian and anyone in the library team who will commit to the goal.

Assessment date

End of the school year – June 2016

Action Items

Post to twitter daily about IICS library during the working week.
Use @iics1911 and #iicsreads #iicslib #love2read and/or #pypchat with each tweet.
Post once a week to Istanbul International Community School closed Facebook group about library matters and include relevant hashtag.
When posting to the library blog tweet using the hashtags above with the link to the blog post.
Retweet and share colleagues’ posts about the library.

Measures

Fill in Google Doc on Monday morning showing tweets, FB posts, retweets, favourites, likes and shares.
Anecdotal evidence from parents and colleagues about things seen on social media
Increased page views on Blog

Time frames

Start 18^th January and evaluate February 29^th (first Monday after the break) and April 25^th (first Monday after Spring break) to check and discuss progress.

References

Burkhardt, A. (2010). Social media: A guide for college and university libraries. College & Research Libraries News, 71(1), 10-24. Retrieved from ProQuest database. (Accession No. ISSN: 00990086)

Miller, C., Zickuhr, K., Rainie, L., & Purcell, K. (2013, May). Parents, children, libraries and reading. Retrieved from http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2013/05/01/parents-children-libraries-and-reading/

Ramsey, E., & Vecchione, A. (2014). Engaging library users through a social media strategy. Journal of Library Innovation, 5(2), 71-82. Retrieved from ProQuest AP Science database.

Solomon, L. (2013). The librarian’s nitty-gritty guide to social media. Chicago: ALA Editions, an imprint of the American Library Association.

Steiner, S. K. (2012). Strategic planning for social media in libraries. London: Facet.

Module 5.2 5 reasons why school libraries should be using social media

Posted on January 12, 2016 by abond

The three library websites I compared were Christchurch City Libraries, Auckland libraries and United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA) an international school in Singapore. I was hoping to compare three school libraries but as I was researching for this post I found many school library websites are behind password protection or are simply a page on the school website with a link to the catalogue.

Andy Burkhardt states that libraries should be using social media to: communicate, respond to feedback, promotions and getting to know their users (2009). Here are some reasons school libraries should be using social media

Build community. One of the great advantages of social media is that it encourages communication, collaboration and the building of community. Both the Christchurch City library website and the Auckland Libraries website have tabs for teens and kids. On the Teens pages there are sections for homework help. Both libraries also have photo sharing tools Flickr for Christchurch and Instagram for Auckland. Both show community events within the library and in other areas. Both libraries have Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Get the message out. All websites have articles, links to events happening within their libraries. Summer reading programmes, seminars, resources. The two public libraries also have ways to tweet or like their posts. This feature helps the message spread even further than the reach of the library website, utilising the friends and followers of their patrons. These extra tools encourage further communication and collaboration (Braxton, 2015).
Access resources. UWCSEA has booking sheets for spaces within the library. They show that teachers and students and parents can book these areas. All the libraries have ways to access the catalogue and e-resources. UWCSEA also has libguides for students and teachers including seminars for deeper learning. Christchurch and Auckland have a way to book a one to one session with a librarian to help with research, computer skills or reading recommendations.
Opportunities for participation. One thing social media and web2.0 offers library patrons is the chance to participate. The public libraries have areas on their websites that enable patrons to recommend books for purchase or give feedback about programmes and services. There are blogs offered that have comments enabled. By adding in the opportunity to get involved the visitors to the website also take ownership of the library itself (LeGarde, 2011).
Getting parents involved and caring about their school library. Barbara Braxton recommended that librarians should target parents, peers and principals when advocating for their libraries (2012). Particularly when it comes to parents, as they can be powerful school library advocates, she recommends being a prominent presence through newsletters, website and social networking (Braxton, 2012). UWCSEA has a sign up area for parent volunteers in the library as a tab on their website.

These are great reasons for school libraries to get involved with social media.

References

Braxton, B. (2012, July 12). Peeing on the job [Blog post]. Retrieved from Blue Skunk Blog: http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2012/7/12/peeing-on-the-job-guest-post-by-barbara-braxton.html

Braxton, B. (2015, July 19). The social media hat [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://500hats.edublogs.org/2015/07/19/the-social-media-hat/

Burkhardt, A. (2009, August 25). Four reasons libraries should be on social media. Retrieved January 11, 2016, from http://andyburkhardt.com/2009/08/25/four-reasons-libraries-should-be-on-social-media/

LeGarde, J. (2011, August 9). 5 things every school library website should have [Blog post]. Retrieved from The adventures of library girl website: http://www.librarygirl.net/2011/08/5-things-every-school-library-website.html