Leadership Institute Session Review- Digital Storytelling with Social Media

Last week FLC hosted its 10^th annual Leadership Institute, where speakers came to share their knowledge with representatives from various literacy-based organizations from around the state of Florida. On Friday of this two-day event, Annie Schmidt and I presented on using social media to help expand your digital storytelling efforts. For those of you who were there, thanks for attending, and for those that weren’t, here’s a brief review of what was covered.

Social media isn’t like traditional marketing. Instead of the typical one-way marketing scheme where you share content with others in hopes that they will be interested enough to reach out to your organization to join your cause, social media works best when you engage in a conversation with your audience. The hit rate for the traditional type of interaction is far from ideal. Luckily, social media has transformed the way organizations can use marketing and storytelling strategies to better suit their mission.  This transition which social media has made allows for us to engage in real time communications with our community. Knowing this difference is crucial to having success with our social media platforms, whichever they may be.

As stated in mine and Annie’s presentation, social media isn’t about follower count and accumulating “likes” to get a better klout score (yes, in this case with a K, not a C). Social media is about connecting to people. True, social media is used to increase your reach on your target audience, but it all comes down to building and maintaining relationships. Increasing reach is important only to drive traffic to your social media platforms and then subsequently to your website.  Furthermore, what’s most important is that your storytelling is effective so that members of your community become more active with your organization. Whether that means volunteers becoming annual donors or donors becoming advocates, getting followers to take that next step is key.

Once you realize the fundamental goals of social media, it’s time to choose a platform, or platforms, which will best serve you and your community. Questions to consider are:

• Who am I targeting, and what is my audience’s demographic(s)?
• What content do I want to share with my community?
• Has my organization already established a presence on social media, and if so on which sites?
• What’s the best medium to help effectively tell my organization’s story?

There are many different social platforms to choose from. The most common are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube, and WordPress; each of these has its pros and cons. The trick is finding out which site is right for you. For help in making this decision, please look at Digital Storytelling with Social Media where you can see the Prezi which we used at the Leadership Institute.

Kim Gates: What’s new and exciting in the world of online technologies?

The Internet is home to millions & millions of sites: some with educational value and some without it.  Some sites purport to have everything from ways to connect to old friends and colleagues, to ways to find the secret of youth!  How do you know what’s valuable & what’s not?  How do you stay up-to-date with emerging sites, and is ‘newer’ always ‘better?’

While not necessarily “new,” Twitter is a great way to stay connected to reputable organizations like Florida Literacy Coalition, ACE of Florida, FL TechNet, GED Testing Service, and more!  (Not quite sure what Twitter is or what a “tweet” means?  Check out this short Common Craft video explanation!)  While you don’t need to be a member to view various tweats, membership is free & allows you to select who you want to “follow” (which means those organizations’ messages come directly to you & you don’t need to go searching for them).  Twitter is also a great way to connect to your colleagues (both in & out of the state), your current students, and even potential students!  Think of it as allowing you to see & be seen all within 140 characters at a pop!

What would you (or your students) prefer: reading about how to do something or seeing & hearing about how to do it via video?  Khan Academy is amazing!  Their website boasts “With a library of over 2,700 videos covering everything from arithmetic to physics, finance, and history and 238 practice exercises, we’re on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.”  My favorite part is the math!  Everything from arithmetic to developmental math to  pre-algebra and more can be found there for free!  (In case you’re wondering, Khan Academy has received donations from The Gates Foundation and won Google’s Project 10¹⁰⁰ of ideas to change the world.)

Do you ever wish you could participate in professional development without actually having to go somewhere to do it?  To borrow part of the Florida Virtual School’s motto, what if professional development could be “any time, any place?”  The good news is that it can be!  Florida TechNet’s Moodle site has free one hour modules.  There’s something for everyone: administrators and instructors!  Topics include ABE, GED, ESOL, LD, Learning Technologies, Corrections, Literacy, and more!

While these sites may not be ‘new’ to the Internet, hopefully they are ‘new’ to you!  Explore them and enjoy them!!

Dear Facebook Friends, Please LIKE Us! Love, FLC

That’s right, FLC is currently transitioning from a Facebook profile page to a fan page.

You might be asking yourself, why would FLC make that change?

The main reason for the switch is to streamline reporting on FLC’s Facebook communications.  Using Facebook Insights (free reporting tool with Facebook Fan Pages) will help FLC to better understand it’s Facebook audience and better analyze the messages posted.

FLC is continuously striving to improve the ways we can distribute resources to literacy organizations and advocates.  We want to know what you like, don’t like, what you need, don’t need, etc… Using the reporting tools allows FLC to hone in on these aspects and cater to audience activity.

FLC’s Blog (that you’re currently reading) has it’s own reporting tool (thank you, WordPress.com – FREE) and relays important stats about visitors, posts and activity.

We also do our best to track our twitter activity (our handle is @FloridaLiteracy – follow us!) with free tools like TweetStats and TweetBeep.  These reports help us to track our tweeting frequency, rate of follower increase and FLC mentions.

Reporting on FLC’s website is made easy with Google Analytics (free tool) – we are able to track our visitor’s activities, popular pages and most importantly, how website visitors find FLC – through search engines, social media outlets, other literacy sites, etc…

All of these reports help organizations, like FLC, to better analyze and adjust messages to satisfy our audiences.  They also help determine ROI by answering these questions: Are the social media sites worth it?  Are they driving traffic to our “literacy info mecca” (aka: www.FloridaLiteracy.org)?  Are they effective in relaying literacy information, resources and news?  Are our audiences receptive and interactive?  These questions are important to answer when evaluating these types of communication methods.

Does your organization employ any of these tools or others?  If so, tell us what you’ve found!

FLC Session – Open Mic: Bring Your Technology Questions

Have you ever been to a comedy club or a coffee house when they have an “open mic” night?  I love those events because it’s a time when the audience members can participate and determine what happens (in terms of performances). 

Well, the “Open Mic: Bring Your Technology Questions” session at the Florida Literacy Conference will be similar!  At 2 p.m., Wednesday, May 5, you get to determine what topics we cover!  So bring any technology question you have.  It doesn’t matter if it’s big or small! 

Maybe you have always wanted to ask what Twitter is or how you might use YouTube with your students.  Perhaps you’re wondering about wireless networking and why you should password protect your network.  These topics and a million others are all fair game, so come & be a part of a unique, fun, relaxed, and informative session!

If you have a few questions you’d like us to prepare for in advance, feel free to leave them in the comment section below.  Remember that even if you don’t have questions, you can still come to watch, listen and learn!