How to Expand Your School’s Online Reach using Facebook, Blogs and Twitter

Let’s Start with Some Questions How do you stay connected today with your former students and parents? How do you share information about the accomplishments of your current students and the new successes of your school? Are you fostering a sense of community among former students, alumni, family, friends a donors? Are you happy with your school community’s support of your school through their annual giving?

Picture This World You create an announcement using a simple blog tool about an upcoming Homecoming event. The blog tool posts the announcement to a website used by your alumni. You also add to the website pictures from last year’s Homecoming event to bring attention to your announcement. You then send a short message to your alumni that their website has been updated with Homecoming information. Your alumni go to the website and see the Homecoming pictures and announcement. While visiting the site, alumni add some of their own pictures of Homecoming from last year. Pi

Picture this World continued... Some alumni comment on the website that they plan to attend this year’s event and ask who else is coming. While reviewing the homecoming announcement, alumni see another entry you posted about a new fundraising campaign. They click on the posting and a new web page opens. The page includes a video on the campaign and a Donate Online link. The alumni views the page, clicks on the link and makes a credit card donation. Pi

That World is Social Media! W ORD P RESS

Blogs Blogs provide an informal way to share information and announcements. They are typically posted on your school’s website and may contain categories such as Alumni, Parents, Events, etc. Use the Alumni category of your blog to build your online community and interest among your alumni. –Feature “Then and Now” articles on prominent alumni. –Discuss accomplishments of your current students and successes of your school. People want to be a part of a winning team. –Promote social events among alumni. –Inform them of upcoming fundraising campaigns and how you are investing their gifts to improve the school. Then update your Facebook fan page with links to each new blog post. Pi

WordPress WordPress is the largest self-hosted blogging tool and publishing platform in the world, used on millions of sites. It’s free. Features include: –Search engine-friendly structure –Comment management –Spam protection –Full user registration system Many website content management solutions have built in blog functionality. Check with your webmaster. To download WordPress, go to and select the Download menu item. Pi W ORD P RESS

Flickr Flickr is an online photo-sharing tool owned by Yahoo! with 51 million registered members and 6 billion hosted images. The service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they imbed in blogs and social media. Features include: –Enables users to upload, tag and comment on their photos and other users photos. –Provides the ability to search photo tags and display the images. To download, go to where you will first be prompted to create a Yahoo! account or log into an account that you already have. Invest in Flickr Pro for $25. Pi

YouTube You Tube is the World’s most popular and highly visited online video community, averaging 69 million visitors per month. It provides a free service that allows you to easily post, edit and store video on your “YouTube Channel”. You can then link the video to your website, blog or Facebook account. To create a YouTube Channel, go to The username you select will become your YouTube vanity URL, such as It cannot be changed in the future so reserve wisely! Pi

Twitter Twitter is an online micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets", and images. It’s great for sending short messages to the accounts of your “followers”. You can use Twitter to notify your followers of new blog posts or Facebook updates. To create an account, go to and fill out the online form. Pi

Facebook Facebook is the world’s leading social networking site, with more than 750 million active users. Approximately 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day. Your Facebook “Fan” page will serve as the foundation of your alumni’s online community. WordPress, Flickr and YouTube create or store content that is linked to the Facebook page, and Twitter directs traffic to the Facebook page. The goal of the page is to encourage your online community to interact with one another and remain connected and invested in your school. Pi

Facebook continued... To create a Facebook “Fan” page: –Go to –Select “+ Create Page”. –Select Local Business of Place. –Choose a category of Education and fill out the fields provided. –For your Facebook Page name, spell out the complete name of your school to optimize search engine results. –If you are going to have a unique page for alumni, append the school name with “alumni”. –You cannot change the name of your Facebook Page later, so make sure that you do it right the first time. Pi

Is Facebook good or bad for educators? Wary about how social media is affecting your students and changing your classroom? We recommend you read 7 Ways Educators Can Use Facebook. This guide explains seven ways to use Facebook effectively for teaching and learning. To access the guide, go to: Pi

For Facebook Guidance Useful guidelines at - Resourceswww.facebook.com/marketing Pi

Review of Social Media Tools The school used WordPress to create the blog post containing the Homecoming Announcement. The school published the blog post on their website, in a Category called “Alumni”. The school included a link to the blog post on the school’s Facebook “Fan” Page. The school stored Homecoming pictures in flickr, and then posted the pictures to the Facebook Fan Page to complement the announcement. Pi

Review of Social Media Tools The school used Twitter to send the brief message to alumni that the Facebook Fan Page had been updated with the Homecoming Announcement post. The school created in YouTube the video promoting their fundraising campaign, and posted a link to the video in their Facebook Fan Page so alumni would see it as well. School Alumni who “liked” the school’s Fan Page view the Facebook page and make posts of their own, including comments and their own pictures. The school also posted a link in Facebook to an Online Giving page, which is key to your fundraising strategy. Pi

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