At a recent Independent Schools conference, I was talking about social media with a Head of School (not my own) who said dismissively, “Oh, we outsource all our social media.” I didn’t say anything, but inside I just cringed.

Outside social media consulting firms can certainly be valuable for independent schools if you need assistance with crafting a social media strategy. But if you are using an outside consulting firm just to post content for you, essentially pushing press releases or school news on an otherwise static page overseen by someone outside your organization, you are missing the boat! Using social media to build relationships is CRITICAL to schools, and that means active involvement by school administrators, faculty, and staff.

socialmedia-relationships

Many schools think that they are “doing social media” simply by putting promotional content or announcing school events on a school Facebook page once a month. I suppose that doing something that is better than doing nothing, as long as the content is updated regularly. (Having a Facebook page or twitter account with old, out of date content is worse than not having an account at all.) But if you aren’t using social media outlets to build relationships with your constituents, you are missing most of the value!

The Head of our Lower School, Catherine Koos (@ckoos1), first showed me the power of building relationships with a school community on Facebook. She has a school Facebook page under Misses Koos on which she publishes pictures and videos of Lower School events during the school day and actively engages parents in conversation. She uses a Flip camera or her iPhone to upload content to Facebook quickly and easily. Our parents love seeing what their children are doing throughout the day! Several of our Lower School teachers also have class Facebook pages (overseen by a school administrator, and developed using school guidelines) that they use to communicate with their students’ parents (not the students themselves) and extended family members (like grandparents.) They might post pictures of student work, share high points from the day, or post a “thank you” picture of a present given to the class – like a picture of a child reading a book in a bean bag chair donated to the classroom. We also have a school Facebook page with regularly updated content – including pictures and videos of events that are posted on the same day, often within an hour of the actual event – and an alumni Facebook page. Our webmaster manages the school Facebook page but individual teachers and Catherine Koos manage their own pages.
Social media is a great way to:

1. Publicize all the great things happening at your school. Not once a month, but every day!

2. Build relationships with local media outlets. We have networked and built relationships with local reporters through Facebook and Twitter. In addition to promoting our own school events this helps us stay abreast of what other schools in our community are doing.

3. Build relationships with your school and local communities. This includes students, parents, grandparents, neighbors, local businesses and the general public. Independent schools know how important it is to build positive relationships with parents and other the school community members. This builds school loyalty, improves retention, encourages donations, and makes parents feel really good about their decision to send their child to your school. Remember, people are much more likely to donate to an organization to which they feel emotionally connected. Furthermore, Facebook is a great way to connect with geographically distant grandparents and other relatives. My grandson attends an independent school in New Hampshire and while they have a Facebook page they don’t update it very frequently. I live in Florida, and I wish I could see more of what he is doing at school and get to know the school better. Would having a closer relationship with his school make me more likely to donate money? You bet it would!

Don’t view social media as just another checkbox on your marketing “to do” list. Tap the power of social media to build those critical relationships!

Linking its dominance in search to its social media operation gives Google something Facebook and Twitter don’t have. So is it time for businesses to try Google+ ?

Working in the digital marketing industry, it can sometimes feel as if we are slaves to Google.

We use it to judge the effectiveness of search engine optimisation (SEO) for our clients… although why everyone calls it SEO Lord only knows, we should just call it Google Optimisation and be done with it.

We use it to track analytics, to check our email, to search for news, for images, for blogs, for prices of products – we even use it to watch videos – yes, it also owns Youtube.

Given such global dominance, the fact that Facebook is still the world’s number one social network with over 800 million members worldwide is refreshing to say the least.

Unfortunately it seems that Facebook’s days are numbered – simply because Google is forcing people and businesses to sign up to its social network Google+. Not through choice mind you, but because they have to if they don’t want to be left behind.

When it comes to search, social media can play an important role. Besides helping you get quality backlinks, shared content such as blogs, Facebook posts and retweets can help drive traffic to your website, provoke comment and debate and increase the likelihood of your content appearing in search engines.

Google’s “search plus your world” changes however have put an end to all that.

The new changes now automatically populate Google searches with results from Google+ including photos, posts, and profile pages. Google says these changes enable searchers to find both private content shared by friends and overall web content via a single search, yet I’m more inclined to believe it’s a blatant attempt to kill off Facebook and Twitter and continue Google’s global dominance.

“But Google+ isn’t for me!” I hear you cry. “I’m happy with Facebook and Twitter thank you, I’ll stick with these…”

If that sounds like you you’re making a big mistake. Why? In a nutshell, although content from these rival services can still appear among search results – this will only be if it’s specifically relevant to what you’re searching for. Google+ data will now appear regardless of whether or not you’re seeking it.

If you are a business that relies on Google for organic search traffic and sales, personalised search results will become the norm when users are logged into their Google account. Not only will this make it so much harder for businesses to determine their search rankings, it will also make it harder for customers to find them. Throw in the fact that Google+ results will be appearing before public listings and that not all of these results will be relevant and you’ve got a serious headache.

The only solution? Join Google+. Create a brand page and become an active member. Get your brand page into as many influential people’s circles as possible, post keyword-rich status updates often in order to increase your relevance in important searches and do it in a natural non-spammy way.

The SEO industry will undoubtedly have to bend to Google’s command as these aggressive changes have turned the SEO landscape on its head. Sadly, it seems that failure to sign up to Google+ and get a ‘+1’ strategy in place will do more harm than good.

Time for Facebook and Twitter to either up their game and do it quickly or raise the white flag and surrender.

Last week, Google made the announcement that they were going to start including information from their oft-ignored social networking site, Google+, into their search engine results. I didn’t recognize the importance of this situation until a friend emailed me about how excited he was that he had gotten his company onto the first page of Google overnight. After a few minutes I deduced that he was only showing up on the first page because he was naturally in his company’s Google+ circle, and that to the average search engine user he was still pretty much invisible. He then got understandably depressed.

Generally speaking, those of us who work in web marketing have an odd relationship with Google: we’re slaves to the search engine and disdainful of their social networking site, which has somehow managed to go from unknown to forgotten without the usual period of popularity. When it came to Google+, we generally didn’t bother.

Of course, this announcement of a marriage between these two entities should have people stand up and notice, although any real worry is a bit premature. Simply put, Google+ results are not going to matter much until people starts using it. So, SEO is pretty much business as usual, at least for now.

However, now that Google+ is going to start showing up in everybody’s Google searches, there is a definite chance that it could become important. If that day comes, the ramifications could be significant. Here are some of my theorized results of this scenario:

Celebrity Endorsements Become King: Suppose Justin Bieber’s 40,000,000 Facebook fans go over to Google+, and you have a product that fits that demographic perfectly. If you get him to share your page, you’ll suddenly appear on the first page of their Google results even if they never visit Google+ again. In other words, instead of paying Google to get PPC ads, you can pay a celebrity to have the same effect, albeit with a onetime flat fee.
Google+ Will Fuel Its Own Growth: Since having extensive Google+ circles can drastically improve search engine rankings, companies will start doing whatever they can to get as many people into their circles as possible. This could best be accomplished by having content, sales, or, deals only available on Google+, which would drive more people to it, continuing the cycle.
Pay Per Click Advertisers Feel the Pain: Since the Google+ results are going to replace the PPC Sidebar, suddenly you’re going to have to be in the top three to get any clicks on Google itself. This would result in a PPC bidding war. Although, there’s also the chance that having fewer things to click would actually result in a net loss for Google, especially since Google+ doesn’t have advertising yet. Of course, Google has deep pockets and they would have no problem temporarily reducing revenue if it meant that they could get a bit of that Facebook Pie.
Bing/Yahoo Becomes Desperate: Bing and Yahoo, which together make up roughly half the US search volume that Google has alone, are not going to enjoy this situation one bit. Your Facebook likes already affects the results on Bing, but it’s nothing in the way that Google+ does. If this level of personalized search takes off, Bing and Yahoo will have to do something drastic to remain relevant.

With all of this being said, however, it’s important to remember that everything is still up there. Nothing was able to get people to migrate over to Google+ when it first came out, so why should it be any different now? In addition, there is always the possibility that having mostly Google sponsored content in their results could cause a backlash, either among or users or regulators (although I doubt the current political climate would lead to any significant sanctioning). Google became king because its content was impartial and their ethos was “Don’t Be Evil.” If public perception were to turn against Google, then everything they did to promote Google+ could blow up in their faces.

In other words, Google is at a crossroads. It is clear that in five years’ time it won’t be anything like the search engine we see today. The real question, of course, is whether it will completely dominate every aspect of online communications or start a slow decline.

What are your thoughts about Google+? Do you think we’re looking at a transformative moment, or will this all just blow over?

Michael Gillen is an SEO Manager for Fishbat, an online marketing company located in Bohemia, NY.