Social Networking

Reach Your Audiences with Social Networking

stickmen-graphicWith millions of users actively using Social networks, why shouldn’t music educators try to get their audience’s attention with these great tools?

Social Networking Sites:

Ways Social Media is Changing Our Daily Lives

  • The way we get our news
  • How we start and do business
  • How we meet and stay in touch
  • What things we reveal
  • We things we can influence

Facebook

  • Over 1 billion users
  • Status updates – tell people what you are up to or how you are feeling
  • Your timeline — a list of events, posts, etc.
  • Post photos, videos, links

Facebook Pages

  • A post is authored “from the page” and not from an individual user
  • Your “place” online — can provide your group an identity
  • Post videos, photos, links
  • Great communication tool for students, parents, and other followers

Facebook Groups

  • Online forum; collaborate and communicate more effectively
  • Permissions:
    1. Closed — available for others to see that the group is there, but must have permission to join;
    2. Open — publicly available for all to join, read, and contribute; or
    3. Secret – not visible to anyone but group members
  • School Orchestra and String Teachers, v.2  – a group with over 2500 members.  Dr. Gail Barnes founded this group and it has grown exponentially!

Twitter

Essentially asks the question “What are you doing?”

  • 500+ million registered users
  • Micro-blogging site
  • 140 character limit per “tweet”
  • Tweet – message sent to someone or posted
  • Retweet – when you resend or repost someone else’s message
  • Mentions (@)  – designated to mention someone in a tweet  (@charleslaux)
  • Hashtag (#) – designated as a keyword for searches, etc. (#musedchat)

Creating Short URLS for Twitter or print media

Regular URL: http://schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2012/04/03/famed-fiddler-pulls-strings-for-music-education/?iref=storysearch

Shortened URL:  http://goo.gl/FX2wg

Linking Facebook & Twitter

You can link Facebook to Twitter so that what you post on Facebook automatically goes to Twitter

Considerations for using social media as a public figure

Professionalism

  • Many employers are starting to search the web before hiring
  • Post only what you would post on a public bulletin board or on a post-it note stuck to your forehead!

Protect Yourself

  • Familiarize yourself with Facebook’s privacy settings (always changing!)
  • Don’t friend people you don’t know
  • Don’t friend students
  • Make sure you know exactly who can see your photos
  • Keep your friends from sharing your info
  • Limit the use of applications
  • Protect your location, don’t ever give away the location of your home (home, friends)
  • Don’t overshare

The Future of Social Media

  • Where will all of this go?
  • How much is too much?
  • Privacy issues

Download Presentation Slides (PDF, 4+ MB)