Some people are probably wondering what I plan on talking about during my social media presentation next week. One of the things that I mentioned in my first post was how social media could be very beneficial to school officials, even right here in little ol’ Fluvanna. One of the examples I will talk about happened just a few weeks ago. . .
The Fluvanna County Schools power outage generates discussion
Back on January 22nd, Fluvanna County Schools had to close due to a power outage. Had this happened a few years ago, the local news outlets might have reported the story (news is notoriously slow around here), and then pretty much nothing would have happened. That is not, however, how things happened on January 22nd. . .
The same day that the schools closed, local news station NBC29 reported on the outage. The story they posted on their site is exactly 6 sentences long. That’s it. It was a 30-second story. But it didn’t end there. . .
You see, NBC29 has what has now become a very common feature on their website– the ability for readers to comment on the stories. If you notice, at the end of every NBC29 story is the ability to leave a comment. Well, that is exactly what people did when then read the Fluvanna power outage story. In fact, by Midnight on January 22nd, there were 78 comments on the story. 78! As I am writing this right now, there are 214 comments on the story.
Who says that folks in Fluvanna don’t use social media?
Conversation requires participation
The comments on the story came from parents, residents, even students. It is possible that some of them came from teachers, but since most people who commented were anonymous or used a pseudonym, it is tough to tell. Some of the comments were positive, some of them were negative, some of them were, honestly, pretty ignorant. That really doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that the Fluvanna County schools were talked about 78 times on January 22nd, and NOT ONE of those comments was left by anyone who identified themselves as officials of the school district (not that I could tell, anyway).
The school district missed out on a golden opportunity to be involved in a discussion about an even that was obviously important to residents as it was happening. That’s too bad, because it doesn’t have to be that way.
I’m not saying that the school district chose to ignore the story, or the comments. I doubt that any of the district officials were aware of the discussion. My point is that I was aware of the discussion, and I don’t even have children in the school district. I found out about the discussion because I track “Fluvanna” in my Google alerts. So, if I can find out about a discussion about the school district, then so can the school district; and if I can participate in the discussion, so can the school district.
What you can learn from this example
How and why the school district, residents, and any member of the community can participate in online conversations for their own benefit is exactly what I plan to talk about on the 25th. There are all kinds of discussions going on right now about the issues important to you (or even about you). It is important that you are listening and participating. Come see me on the 25th, and I’ll show you how you can do just that.
