New Admin Roles for Facebook

Having multiple Admins means that you can share the work of keeping your Facebook page up-to-date.  However, it can also mean more work supervising your admins.  Facebook has made some recent changes to the Admin permissions which should cut down on the time spent supervising your admins!

Now you can assign Admins different roles.  For instance, if one of your staffmembers simply needs data to show how effective your Facebook page is, you can make them an insight analyst.  Another staffer could be an advertiser, they can create ads and see their effectiveness, but they cannot post or delete comments on the page.  


This ability to assign roles can help you to develop expertise, while minimizing risk.  I still see some Facebook pages out there that purport to be organizations that have posts from the page using the pronoun "I".  As the reader, I often wonder who is "I"?  Is that the CEO? Is it the marketing director? Or is it an intern?  As someone interested in using social media to support and inform, I think these new Admin roles will help organizations to be both effective and authentic.

Handouts

Here are the handouts for the Tips, Tactics and Tripwires session at the 33rd Annual Massachusetts Early Intervention Consortium. Here is the Agenda for our Session, Thursday, May 10th, 2012.

We'll start the session with a Self-Assessment. This will enable participants to gauge their awareness of and use of various social media platforms. We'll then discuss various social media platforms, how they work and how people are using them to inform and support families of young children with disabilities. Here is a handout describing some of the Technology Tips we'll be discussing. After lunch we will begin on a group activity using the following Scenarios and Worksheet.

After groups report out participants will have the opportunity to identify their own Outcomes and activities they may embark on after the training. We will use this blogspot as a way to continue to share and support one another as we try different activities.
Finally, participants are asked to complete this Evaluation so that we may use your feedback to make improvements to this workshop.

Stay In Touch

Don't forget to "Like" our Tips, Tactics and Tripwires page here: Tips, Tactics & Tripwires and our company Facebook page here: StrategyWorks.  

Sharing web content that is not already on Facebook, to Facebook

One of the easiest ways to “capture” web content, both hyperlinks and images from other websites and share it to Facebook is to use a browser plug-in.  One plug-in that is easy to use and you can place as a shortcut on your browser tab is: Add This.  You will have an orange-red button with a white plus sign installed on your browser bookmark list.  Once installed in your browser toolbar, you can customize to list the social media sites you use most.   You can then share a webpage via email, to Facebook, twitter, blogger, Pinterest, etc.,  

Now you can easily share any website you find! If you are signed into Facebook and using it as your page, and then use add this to share some content, it will be shared as your page.  If you are signed in as yourself and use add this to share some content, it will be shared as your profile.

Generally, one wants to sprinkle Facebook posts throughout the day, and avoid posting a series of shares at one time.  This annoys your followers and reduces the importance of your posts.  Recent analytic studies show that shares of posts are highest on Saturday mornings. 

Pinning or Adding to Pinterest

At the top of your Pinterest page you will see a header, with the word Add, if you click on that you will see the following window:

 To add a link, just hover over add a pin,

 that will open the following window:

just type or past the link to the site you would like to pin, you'll see the next window, where you can decide where to pin your image:

Then you can give your pin a good description, which will encourage others to repin your pin.

Uploading a Pin

You can also click on the Add button and you will be able to hover over Upload a Pin:

This will allow you to upload an image from your computer. Again, you will see the following window:

just type or past the link to the site you would like to pin, you'll see the next window, where you can decide where to pin your image:

Then you can give your pin a good description, which will encourage others to repin your pin.

Pinterest: Setting up your boards

When you first create a Pinterest profile you begin with some pre-titled boards--shown above.You can rename these boards, or delete them altogether and create your own boards. Below you can see some of the boards I created:

How do you Pinterest?

Above is as screenshot of my Pinterst home page. You can write your own profile, I have chosen a photo of a cactus and a brief description of my lack of design/crafty talents. As you can see I have 21 boards, with 861 pins, 143 folks are following all of my activities, with over 300 folks following my EI Ideas board. The first step is find other users you know, either through email or Facebook. You can then begin pinning, which is what Pinterest is really all about!

Finding others to Follow

If you link your Pinterest site to your email and/or facebook you will be notified whenever a friend joins Pinterest, and you can decide to follow all or some of their boards. The list of potential friends to follow will show up on the lefthand side of your Pinterest dashboard. This sidebar will let you know who has begun following you, or following one of your boards and who has repinned your pins!

Pinterest

Pinterest really comes out of the design world. Users have boards, think inspiration boards or bulletin boards. Onto which they "pin" images. You can follow other users, their individual pins or just repin their finds to your own boards. When you first join you start with some generic boards, onto which you can pin your first finds. You can also create your own boards, with their own names. The fun is watching what is hot and popular (more on that later). I am using some of my boards to collect ideas around early intervention and assistive technology, as you may be able to see here: http://pinterest.com/caseywaid/ei-ideas/

Popular Pins

One can find, that like Alice you drop into a rabbit hole when hanging out on Pinterest, so beware! You can view all pins, or search by categories, you canget lost, nah sucked into viewing loads of boards and pins! 

Once I realized that I wanted to collect pins that reflected images around early intervention and assistive technology I first searched the kids section. There I found many other images from OTs, PTs, and SLPs and teachers. I went back to some of my tried and true websites and started pinning those images as well.  And then I thought, wait a second, I am repinning from others, why not invite those folks to pin to my board?  And you should see how it has exploded, at last count I have up to 300 followers on some of my boards and I'm not doing all of the work!   

Here's a shot of my EI Board, which you can follow here: http://pinterest.com/caseywaid/ei-ideas/

Are you using Pinterest?  If so, I'd like to follow you and read about what you are doing with your boards.

Twitter

Twitter can be updated with content on an hourly, daily, or weekly basis.  You should develop a plan that details the minimum frequency of updates. 

Twitter is very fast moving.  One can interact quickly with large groups of people.  Twitter can also increase your interactions, drive up awareness of your existence.  Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters, though it is a good idea to aim for 120 characters to enable others to retweet or share your post.  Twitter users expect abbreviations and shorthand when tweeting, though it is important to review tweets before posting to insure that they cannot be misinterpreted or misread. 

Twitter hashtags

Twitter uses hashtags to sort and organize tweets.  Here are some current hashtags that are relevant to early intervention:

#B25, #ece, #earlyed, #PartC, #PartCIDEA,  #prek, #parenting, #autism, #assistivetech, #spedchat, #education, #specialneeds, #disabilities, #sped, #at, #cpchat, #edpolicy, #earlychildhood

It is important to note that hashtags are constantly being added/revised.  For instance, a hashtag for this conference might be:  #2012MEIC or #MEIC2012 or even #MEIC12.

Twitter posts are most often retweeted from 8-11am EST and from 1-3pm EST.  Similar to Facebook, it is important to parse out tweets, so that you don’t overload your followers.  However, one can post the same post repeatedly on twitter as the stream moves so fast that repeats are often the only way to be seen.

Hands-free Tweeting

One way to take advantage of what we know about twitter is to use an app to schedule tweets.  There are many out there, three popular apps:  Socialoomph, Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. 

Updating Content on Facebook

Facebook status updates are limited to 420 characters.  Personal pages and Fanpages are available.

Content can be updated on an hourly, daily or weekly basis.  It is important to remember when you are using Facebook as your page that you are posting, not as an individual, but rather as an organization.

How to Use a Facebook Page:

1.       You can switch between yourself and the page by clicking on the arrow next to Home at the top of the page, and saying you want to use Facebook as a page.  You can use Facebook as yourself, and post to your page as yourself.  When you post this way your profile picture will be next to anything you post to your Facebook page.  You can also post as the page—remember when you do this that you are posting as an organization, and please do not use I, me, my, as you are representing the organization as a whole, and folks will not know who is “speaking”.  If you want to post in the first person, then simply post using the link above to access the page without switching to using Facebook as a page.  (When you are using Facebook as the page and you want to return to your own persona, just follow the same directions and click on use as YOURNAME).

2.       48 hours after posting, the analytics will show for admins.  See picture below to see how the analytics show up on the admin view of the page—you need to use Facebook as a page to see the analytics.

Increasing Your Facebook Fans

 Visit your Facebook page.  On that page, look to the top of the page:

1.        Invite Friends

a.       Scroll down until you see Invite Friends

b.      Click on Invite Friends

c.     Identify friends who should join your Facebook page—this could be family leaders, professionals, anyone interested in policies around early intervention, young children, people with disabilities.

d.      Click on the box next to their picture and invite them to like your page.

2.       You can also invite friends via email

Using Email to Connect

Intent

Emails can be sent to your followers as a mass mailing.  Generally,  emails provide information to members, maybe a call to action.   

How-Tos

Emails can be crafted to serve dual purposes.  Emails can be (1) sent out in a mass communication to all members and (2) posted to your blog (we’ll talk about formatting for the blog later).  This will enable you to share information more than once.  It will also mean that visitors to your blog can view some of your past communications.  When writing emails, remember who the “author” is and keep that in mind when using pronouns in the body of the email.

Quirks

When emailing your followers it is a good idea to use service, like constant contact or mailchimp or to  BCC  your followers.   

I’d like to meet you, can I tweet you?

I use the following twitter handles to tweet:

Caseywaid and StrategyWorks

So that we can get to know one another, please respond to one or all of the following questions, and use the hashtag below:

¢ Who are you, why are you here today?

¢ What kind of leader are you? 

¢ What do you want to do?

¢    What do you want to change or accomplish?

#SoMeTips

Increasing your Facebook Reach

Visit your Facebook Page at a minimum of once a week.  When you do, you should:

• Share information from your Page to your own timeline or to your own pages or groups.
• Share information from other groups to your page.
• Share information from your page to other organization's pages or timelines.

When you see an interesting story, you should share it.  If you are using Facebook as your page then the share will show as your Facebook page.  If you are using Facebook as yourself, the share will show as your personal profile. (See above for how to toggle between using Facebook as yourself or the page).

When you hit the share button you’ll see another dialogue box.  You can choose to share to your own timeline, a friend’s timeline, or your fanpage. Here are screenshots so you can see what the drop down menus look like.

If you click on the triangle you’ll see other places to which you can share.

You can share on a friend’s timeline, in a group that you belong to, or on your page.

When you chose one of those options, you can find exactly where you want to share your information.

You can also add your own comments when you share, this will encourage your followers to read the information to see why you think it is important, remember to keep in mind whether you are sharing as your page or as yourself and use the appropriate pronouns.

Sharing to/from the Facebook page

You can share relevant early intervention information to your Facebook page from other pages.