How can you avoid the training dump and run?

During that face-to-face training it all seems so easy. The presenter makes sense, the presentation makes sense, this is something you can do. But then, you go home and the real world converges. It's not as easy, where's that presenter now?

As a trainer and a trainee, I can relate. But it's not feasible for the trainer to visit me on site, is it? or isn't it? Why can't I get in the minute support? In this day of 24/7 internet access I think it is possible. But it does take planning, forethought and support.

Discussion Groups

One way to keep the conversation going, is to create an online discussion group.There are a variety of social media platforms that can be used for this purpose:

Facebook

Using the Groups option, you can create an open or closed discussion group. You can make it hidden, so only folks sent a link can find the group, or make posting only open to invitees but the posts viewable by anyone. Or you can leave the group completely open, anyone can see the group and post to it. 

LinkedIn 

If you are looking for a more professional space, LInkedIn is another useful site to use. Like Facebook, LinkedIn allows users to create discussion groups that can be either open or closed.  

Before You Start

It is important to identify your potential audience, develop a disclaimer and some guidelines. It is important to remind users not to refer to specific people--and to remember that if they are from a small community even a general description might be too specific.

Play

I attended the Massachusetts Early Intervention Consortium's Conference in early May. The MEIC, as it is called, is an exciting opportunity for early intervention professionals  and the parents they work with, to learn together. The key note speaker this year was Nancy Carlsson-Paige (you can read more about her here: http://www.empoweredbyplay.org/blog/). Ms. Carlsson-Paige talked about the importance of unstructured play--pretend play, that is self-directed.

I was there to present a two-day intensive workshop entitled: Social Media Strategies: Using Technology to Support and Inform. While it might seem that these two topics were incongruous, I would argue that Pinterest, one of the most popular social media sites for young mothers, shows that families are creating and sharing ideas about unstructured play.  And to prove it, I want to share some pins from families showing how to reuse those old entertainment centers:

A quick trip to a yard sale or thrift store, some paint, fabric and creativity and for under a $100 you can have a pretend kitchen that can provide hours and hours of imaginative play.

Need a Handy Guide to Social Media Sites?

social media sites

Social media includes web-based and mobile- based technologies, which allow users to create their own content and share the content of others.  Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content." Following is a sampling of social media sites, explanations of the site and when it was launched and suggested users or pages to follow, please note that these lists are not exhaustive.  There are dozens of great social media sites out there, this is just to give you a flavor of what is out there—please explore and be social and share!

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking service and website launched February 2004.  http://www.facebook.com

Facebook page insights explained here: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Page_Insights_en_US.pdf

Pages to Like: EIFA, Early Intervention Parent Leadership Project, National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY), Division for Early Childhood, Center for Early Literacy Learning (CELL), Disability Scoop, Family Voices, Inc, (national and your state’s chapter), Disability.gov, Special Olympics, AMCHP, TACSEI, The Arc of the United States, AAPPD,  Friendship Circle of Michigan, Community Catalyst, PlayAbility Toys, Reach Out and Read, Zero To Three Policy Network, The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), Special Education Advisor, Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults, Helen Keller National Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults,

Google+

Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus, sometimes abbreviated as G+) is a multilingual social networking and identity service owned and operated by Google Inc.  Google+ was launched June 28, 2001.  http://www.plus.google.com/

Groups to Follow: Special Education Advisor, NICHCY,

Linked in

LinkedIn is a professional social networking website.  Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking.  http://www.linked.com/   

Groups to Join: Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), Early Intervention Professionals, Association for Childhood Education International, ZERO TO THREE Policy Network, Parents of Special Kids, Parents Helping Parents, President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities, Early Intervention Therapists,

Pinterest

Pinterest is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections.  Launched in March 2010 it is currently one of the fastest growing social sites. http://www.pinterest.com/. Pinterest requires an invitation at the time of this writing, you can request an invite from someone you know who is already using Pinterest.

Pinners to follow: Pedia Staff on Pinterest, SPDBN, 5m4SN (5 Minutes for Special Needs), Special Needs Homeschooling, Caseywaid, Apraxia KIDS, Rick Smith (aka Noah’s Dad), NICHCY,

Tumblr

Tumblr is a micro-blogging platform and social networking website, owned and operated by Tumblr, Inc.  The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a short-form blog, named a “tumblelog”. Users edit their content from the “dashboard” interface, where the option to post content and review posts of followed blogs appear.  Tumblr was launched on April 27, 2007.  http://tumblr.com

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking service and micro-blogging  service that allows its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”.  Users can group posts together by topic or type by use of hashtags – words or phrases prefixed with a "#" sign. The "@" sign followed by a username is used for mentioning or replying to other users.  To repost a message from another Twitter user, and share it with one's own followers, the retweet function is symbolized by "RT" in the message. Twitter was created in March 2006 and launched that July.  http://twitter.com

Tweeple to follow: EIFAorg, Family Voices of IN, DissemCOP (Dissemination COP), SpecialEdAdvice, aecfkidscount (Kids Count at Annie E. Casey Foundation), NDSC (National DS Congress), DSAInfo (Down Syndrome Association), ASHA, earlyautism, NCWD/Youth, Inclusive_class,  edcocp, EducationNext, DissemCoP, NICHCY, IntervenersDB, OfficeofEdTech, StephenLukeEd

Apps...

Social media apps

Apps, or application software, are computer software created to help the user to perform specific tasks. Application software generally apply in the performance of tasks that benefit the user.

Addthis

AddThis is a widely used social bookmarking service founded in 2006 and owned by Clearspring.  AddThis can be integrated into a website or browser with the use of a web widget. Once added, users can bookmark an item using a variety of services, such as Facebook, MySpace, Google Bookmarks, Pinterest, and Twitter.  http://www.addthis.com/

bitly

Bitly (formerly bit.ly) is a URL shortening and bookmarking service owned by bitly, Inc., a betaworks company.  The bitly URL shortening service is popular on micro-blogging website Twitter because it was the default URL shortening service on the website since May 6, 2009, replacing TinyURL.  http://bit.ly/

Hootsuite

HootSuite is a social media management system for brand management created in 2008. The user interface takes the form of a dashboard, and supports social network integrations for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Foursquare, Mixi, MySpace, Ping.fm, and WordPress.  Additional integrations are available via HootSuite’s App Directory which includes support for Tumblr, Trendspottr, Constant Contact. Digg, Flickr, Get Satisfaction, InboxQ, and YouTube.  http://www.hootsuite.com/

TweetDeck

TweetDeck is a social media dashboard application for management of Twitter and Facebook accounts. Like other Twitter applications it works with the Twitter API to allow users to send and receive tweets and view profiles. http://www.tweetdeck.com/

Twitpic

TwitPic is a website that allows users to easily post pictures to Twitter.  TwitPic is often used by citizen journalists to upload and distribute pictures in near real-time as an event is taking place.  http://twitpic.com/

Tweetchat

Twitter chats, sometimes known as a Twitter party or a tweet chat, happen when a group of people all tweet about the same topic using a specific tag (#) called a hashtag that allows it to be followed on Twitter. The chats are at a specific time and often repeat weekly or bi-weekly or are only at announced times. http://tweetchat.com/

Read more: http://janetfouts.com/how-to-participate-in-a-tweet-chat/#ixzz2JJpeqm3K 

So How Do You Create those graphics?

I am often asked during presentations, how did you create those great graphics?  Well, first I subscribed to Tom Kuhlman's blog over at Articulate: http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/.Tom has tons of posts on how to create your own graphics, using existing graphics. I also like to take a ton of screenshots, this way I can show exactly what I want to my attendees to see on a specific social media platform, without worrying that the site might have changed, or without other distractions or worse, problems with the internet connection.  

But how do you get those screenshots?

There are two quick and easy ways to capture screenshots.

1.  Snipping Tool (Windows 7 only):

 *   Go to the Start Menu, Accessories, Snipping Tool.
 *   Once opened your screen will turn white and you can drag a red rectangle over the desired portion of the screen.
 *   In the window that pops up you can  save your Snip.

2.  Print Screen:

 *   With image you want on the screen hold down the Alt key and press the PrntScrn key. This key is located somewhere on the top right of your keyboard.
 *  Now you can save your picture.

I've got my pic, now what?

I've found that opening up my screenshot in PowerPoint and playing around with cropping the picture, adding shapes, like an arrow or circle or blurring out someone's face in the screenshot helps me to create graphics that show what I want my attendees 

Updating Content on Facebook

Facebook timeline status updates are limited to 420 characters.  In addition to personal timelines, users can create Personal pages or Fanpages for their organizations or buisnesses.

Facebook content can be updated on an hourly, daily or weekly basis.  It is important to remember when you are using Facebook as your page, rather than your personal timeline 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. Alternatively, 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.  when you are posting as the page—remember 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.    Approximately 48 hours after posting, the analytics for your page 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.

Trusted Administrators

Facebook has expanded the ability of users to have more than one person operate a Facebook page. This can be a great way to increase family leadership.  

First Things First

Before handing over the reins to your Facebook Page, it is a good idea to have a written communication plan.  This plan can be quite simple, but should outline the objectives that your organization hopes to achieve by using Facebook. It might be as simple as increasing traffic to your website, or encouraging visitors to take action on a particular activity, or it may be that you are interested in informing others about issues. A good place to start is the SocialFish white paper on social media policies. This white paper really helps users to think about the various levels of awareness and responsibility that different members might have for the organization's social media activities.

Whatever your objective, starting with a plan can guide you as you determine your page's "voice".  It is also important to be explicit with other administrator's about your expectations. Your page probably isn't the place to discuss who you are rooting for in the Super Bowl--unless your page is focused on sports fans--but, using the Super Bowl as a topic you might be able to generate interest in your page.  For instance, if your page is focused on young children with disabilities, asking how families include their child in big family events like a Super Bowl party might be a great way to generate discussion. Or you might want to talk about recent letter  from the US Department of Education regarding the importance of insuring that children with disabilities have access to school sports.

Using a communication plan can help you to schedule your posts and stay consistent with your level of activity.

Now what?

Now that you have your objectives clarified and have a communication plan in place it is time to encourage others to assist with managing the page. It will get messy. This is an opportunity to practice, post and evaluate. Remember, if all of your posts are "safe" or tame, you will not generate much buzz. On the other hand, buzzworthy posts often generate strong opinions.  It will be up to leadership to determine how much controversy is to much. Setting aside time to review posts and discuss how people are deciding what to post and when is a good way to insure that everyone is staying true to the organization's message. Generally, it is a good idea to begin by setting a timetable to review activity, rather than waiting for a misstep to schedule a discussion.

Is there another way to generate activity?

If you aren't ready to turn over the reins, or believe that you might need to spend more time supporting other content creators, there are other ways to increase your reach. One way to increase activity, without sharing administration of your page, is to ask others to share and re-share your content.  You can even create multiple sample posts, that connect with the posts shared on your page and encourage family leaders to share your page to their own timeline.  This can have a two-fold advantage, as it can increase your reach, and it can help model how to  craft an effective post.

How Can You Use Social Media to Develop Leaders?

Social Media really lends itself to developing leaders. Social Media can be used to provide new leaders with an opportunity to develop their communication skills. The instant messaging features of Facebook or the ability to hold a live chat using twitter can provide new leaders with an opportunity to use technology to gather, share experiences, ask questions and develop new skills.

Got Writer's Block?  How To Get that Blogpost Written

When working with new leaders it is often important to provide a recipe. In the Guest blogpost above the family leader was asked to share about her experience attending her first national conference.  The organizers provided her with a list of questions to get her started.  The questions included:  How were you picked to attend the conference?  Did you need to submit an application?  What did you do to get ready to attend the conference (did you meet with other members of your state team before the conference?  Did you have to make your travel arrangements?  How did you handle childcare while you were out of town?  What types of clothing did you pack for the trip).  What did you learn during the conference?  How will you bring that information back to your state?  What didn't you know before heading out town, that you wished you had known?

New Role?  Want to Share?

Another way to expand family leadership skills is to ask family leaders who may have new roles, Chair of a Committee, Chair of a Council, or staff to a committee.  To write a few blog posts about this new experience. This type of blogging can help answer questions for other family leaders.  It can provide a forum to explore changing roles, the complications that arise when a family leader moves into a role or when a family leader is also a provider or professional staff. Sharing these experiences can be helpful to other family leaders, and can create a community of practice.

Expand the Reach of Others

One of the reasons we like to Web 2.0 is how easy it is to share, repackage, and re-share content.  Sometimes the content we find is too complicated or uses legalese, sometimes it is too vague for our purposes. But thanks to the advances available to us we can rework content to suit our needs.  

Don't Forget to Hit the Share Button

We also like to hit that share button on Facebook or the retweet button on twitter. It's the 2013 version of that Breck's commercial: I told someone and she told someone, and so on! With only a few minutes, we have a quick blurb and can quickly share information with our followers that they might not have seen from the original poster.  We can even add our own spin, by writing our own blogpost that explores our thoughts on the topic, link to the original site and share the whole thing via Facebook and Twitter!

Won't Our Followers Be Overwhelmed?

Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your viewpoint, there is so much content floating around on the web that sharing, re-packaging and re-sharing is necessary. In addition, it does take visitors time to view, absorb and act on content.  Thus re-sharing is often a necessary activity on the web.

Start With A Plan

When using social media to inform and support it is important to start with a plan of action. The first thing to do is to decide how frequently you plan on updating your contact. You can simply pull out a calendar and start scheduling your content. It is important to think about how much time it might take to develop that content. You can spend time drafting content beforehand, so that you have content ready for posting.  

Use a Calendar

One way to begin is to use a calendar and review various awareness months. April is Autism awareness, June is Aphasia awareness and October is the Campaign for Healthier Babies. Using these months can help you to plan topics. If you are trying to educate families regarding the Part C or Part B of IDEA system, then using the APR/SPP (Annual Performance Report/State Performance Plan) calendars.  For instance, a blogpost about the importance of family involvement in the development of the Annual Performance Report, would have more impact if it posted in the late Fall/early winter. 

Frequency

Decide how often you can post.  While you write a blog once a month? If you only have 12 ideas for blog posts, than once a month might be the right schedule.  It is definitely preferable to do one post per month, than to upload 12 posts in 12 days, and follow that with nothing.  You might generate some great buzz in those first 12 days, but your followers will be long gone in three months when they realize you don't have anything else to say.  You can also use other social media sites to generate buzz about your posts and to drive people to your blog or website.

What's your endgame?

Finally, it is always important to keep in mind your endgame.  Why are you writing your blog?  What do you want people to do after they've read your post?  Do you want them to contact you?  Are you hoping that they'll take some sort of action? If so, have you helped them to figure out what to do, when to do it and how to do it? If not, you'll have to go back and revise your plan to include reference to your endgame.

Why Branding is Important

Having a consistent color scheme and using consistent fonts and logo is important to your social media plan. The photo above shows a website, blog and Facebook page. Visitors can tell from the strong purple and turquoise borders and the logo that they have found the right site.  Using links that connect directly from one site to the next.

Not Ready to Jump In? 

Even if you are not sure if you want to start using Twitter or YouTube, it is probably a good idea to set up an account now using the name you wish to use, so that you can use your preferred name.  You can also take some time and check out other sites to see who others are following, what they are posting about and how many followers their posts have generated.

Visuals

It is  important to have high quality versions of your organizations logo. There's nothing worse than uploading a poor quality version of your logo.  Some sites, like Twitter and Facebook rely on square profile images, while others, like YouTube work fine with rectangular images. It is also important to know the hexidecimal codes that are used in CSS or HTML that are used to tell your browser what color to display.  Twitter and YouTube both allow users to create their own backgrounds, which can insure that you have a consistent theme across platforms.

Provide Guidance

We've talked about the importance of helping families to be aware of and understand their privacy rights under the law, and how to use the available privacy controls of the different social media sites.

Got a Template?

There's good news, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Great content is already available! You can edit that content to your liking so that you can address your audience. The NICHCY Social Media Policy is a good place to start when developing content to explain to families how they can safeguard the privacy of themselves and their children. NICHCY recognizes one of the most important facets of using web 2.0 to support and inform--share content you've developed, reshare good content that someone else has created (with a citation or attribution) and when necessary make some slight changes to fit your audience! In fact, they even have a great little toolkit called "Steal These Strategies" . On that page they encourage folks to adapt their social media policy, they have examples of Facebook and Twitter posts and they share their dissemination plan with readers. The cost? They simply ask that you share your great strategies with them! (Which is something we've been doing for some time now!).  This member of Congress has a nice social media policy, that explains that she wants to have an opportunity to hear from all of her constituents, that email is what constituents should use if they are looking for an answer, and then she gives some warnings that she will not tolerate  bullying, intimidation, or harassment on her page.

Do I Really Have to Teach People How to Use the 'net?

Unfortunately, dear reader, yes you do! Not everyone understands the subtle communication rules. Some users, simply jump in and start sharing without realizing that there are different levels of sharing. For instance, not everyone realizes that when they post to Facebook they can control (to some extent--but not completely), who see's their posts by clicking on the icon in the share box on the lower righthand side, this allows them to set whether they want a post shared with everyone by clicking on the little world icon, or you can reveal the choices, to decide if you want to share with friends except acquaintances, Only Me, Custom, etc., 

However, and this is an important point, once you've shared something on the internet, even if you've limited who has access, you no longer have control over what happens to what you've shared. Even the gurus of social media sometimes encounter problems with this. Last December, Randy Zuckerberg, sister of that Zuckerberg, posted a picture that she thought was only going to be seen by her close friends. What happened next could happen to anyone:One of her friends, saw the photo and re-shared it, then someone else re-shared and tweeted it--probably because they had added the twitter app to their Facebook page. What happened next could only happen to someone famous: a public temper tantrum. When Randy used twitter to chastise the person who tweeted the post, tech gurus everywhere laughed.They pointed out, correctly, that Facebook has a history of changing privacy settings without warning, that they often revert settings to a "default" or public setting without asking or warning users who have spent time setting their privacy controls. And finally, they reminded Randy that once it's out there it is out there.

What Other Tips Do Users Need?

Many users still need simple reminders that it is not a good idea to post their full birthdate, address or days when their home will be unoccupied on social media sites.  We've talked about these types of posts before here.  Which is why I think it is important to have a social media policy, that way folks aren't surprised when you hide or remove their posts on your page.

Privacy Protections

These days most families of young children with disabilities are using social media to connect with one another. It is important that family leaders and the professionals who provide services and supports to families have discussions about the pros and cons of social media. In fact, it is essential that technical assistance programs get involved in social media and provide families with assistance on how to protect their privacy.

FERPA

Every child who benefits from publicly-funded education services is covered by FERPA or the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act. FERPA limits who can share information and what information they can share about a child and/or family receiving services funded with federal education dollars. Thus children enrolled in early intervention or IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) Part C or birth to three programs are covered by FERPA. Additionally, Parent Training and Information centers and Technical Assistance centers which receive funding under Part D of IDEA have to follow FERPA. 

What About Privacy Settings?

Every social media site, whether Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Vimeo or LinkedIn has its own privacy settings. These settings change over time too!  It is important to help families to figure out how to find and use the privacy controls on different sites.      Facebook, for instance, allows users to designate their Facebook "Friends" as close or acquaintances. In addition, users can decide whether to share their posts with only their friends, or to share posts publicly.  

What happens in Vegas, stays on Facebook, Flickr...

It is important to remind families that once they have shared something on a site, they no longer have control over who see's what they have shared or who can re-share their post, picture or video. Anyone can grab a screenshot, download or forward their information.  And in this day and age, most folks won't simply forward, but they may add their own comments or opinions.  

So, you want me to stay off the internet?

No!  Social media can be an incredible avenue for supporting and informing families with young children with disabilities. It can also create movements for system change.  However, it is important that families understand that they do have rights, and that there are ways to minimize what gets shared and with whom.  Finally, it is essential that we remind families that they are sharing on behalf of someone else.  A minor child.  As that child grows up it is important that families have regular check-ins with their child and discuss how much and with whom information is shared on the internet.  

Word to the wise

I am a self-professed social media diva. I enjoy the ability to share information, to support others and to connect via social media. However, I also make ample use of my privacy settings. On my personal blog, I don't use my children's real names, and instead use fictional nicknames. I also assist others to increase their social media presence. On a recent webinar I was talking about some of the potential pitfalls of social media use and realized that I didn't have any pictorial examples.  So last night I went searching for some examples quickly found a half-dozen Facebook bloopers. 

As you can see I removed any personal information and blurred the photos to protect the innocent. The top one is just hilarious. The poster provides their name, the name of the main guest, the date, time and location and shares the post with EVERYONE--that little globe means anyone can see what has been posted to Facebook  And then there is the description!  This is a no, no for obvious reasons. There are a number of ways to avoid this problem. The original poster could have created a closed group, or a group private message or they could have created an event that required folks to private message the organizer for the location details. 

This one was found on a state department of health page. For some unknown reason State Department of Health pages are rife with these kinds of posts, or worse.  I've seen people post their phone numbers and Social Security #'s looking for a lost Medicaid card--a quick trip to their profile provides their address and birth date and a criminal has all they need to steal their identity! What surprised me was that this state page, and a few others I have found, respond to the posters using the newsfeed. It would be wise for this page, and others experiencing this type of problem, to periodically post a reminder to readers that they should use email or the private message function to share personal questions or concerns.  Additionally, the administrator should remove any posts that provide personal information.

This one is courtesy of a friend. The post was shared only with this friends friends, but that could still be a lot of people. As you can see my friend let everyone know that they were in transit and would be abroad over a holiday weekend. Again, here's where that private message function would be a better bet. Of course, this was how I found out that my friend would be away for the weekend, but I wondered how many other people learned the same thing?  

Have any Facebook No no's to share?

Live Blogging From a Remote Location

One of the things I learned how to do last year was to live blog, from a remote location. First, I just love the sound of it! It's live, but I'm not there! Last year I would log into a webcast every quarter, and watch a live Interagency Coordinating Council meeting and blog about what was happening. I would type up quick notes, add links to relevant regulations or articles, explain abbreviations or add any other tidbits I knew from over 2 decades of following the policy making. 


Today, I put those same skills to work while awaiting the Supreme Court Decision on the Affordable Care Act. I logged into the SCOTUS Blog, opened up a new page in my blog site, got my hootsuite account all ready to go and started tweeting, posting and writing. It was fun to be both "there" and not "there". I was still in my pj's, since the anticipatory discussions started at 5:00am my time. I knew that CNN had called it wrong initially--more on that later--because I was monitoring the SCOTUS blog and I know that those folks spend more time with the Court and understand the nuances of these types of decisions.

Sharing

We've talked about sharing information by reusing and repurposing content that you have found some where else.  Another way to share information is to revise a blog post and submit it for publication somewhere else.


For example, I wrote about my concerns about the effects on a child's brain due anesthesia exposure before age 3 on my personal blog, on this blog and then submitted it for publication on the Special Education Advisor blog, which has a much larger audience than my own. .  

Expanding your Reach

In my last post I wrote about developing a communications plan as part of a membership drive. I took the time to look at my Facebook friends (612) and then I made a list of the Facebook friends of each of the board members who are administrators for the fanpage for the board I sit on. I subtracted our mutual friends, and then added up all of the potential followers we could pick up.

Potential Facebook Followers
Our potential number of followers was 2500!  2500! Wow! Even if we added only 10% of that number to our membership rolls, we could significantly up the number of members. But knowing that we had a potential universe of 2500 new members that isn't enough.

Maximizing Our Reach
We needed specific strategies. After some thought, I came up with a template for all future blog posts. As part of the development of a blogpost, I would also develop a few sample Facebook status updates and a few sample tweets. Each Board member could then be emailed a link to the latest blog post, a copy of the sample status updates and tweets and asked to post to their own pages, other pages they administer and to the timelines of their friends.

Will it Work?
Well, only time will tell. As of this writing I have one-third of the board following the plan, and we've already seen visits to our blog jump exponentially. We clearly need to stick to our plan, and remember that the outcome isn't visits to the blog, it is membership in our organization. 

Creating a Communications Plan

One of the board's I sit on is reevaluating how it is communicating with its membership. To be honest, that makes it sound like we've been communicating. Unfortunately, we've been too busy doing, to communicate. However, we know that we cannot grow or really be successful if we don't stop for a bit and think about how we communicate.

Self-Assessment
We are using our communications campaign as an adjunct to our membership recruitment campaign. Our first step was to survey our current members so that we could have a better idea of who are members are and what they need from the organization. We also asked them if they had interacted with our website, Facebook fanpage, twitter stream or our website. We then looked at our organization's stated mission and compared that to our current membership.


Making a Plan
The next step was to decide on our outcome. Our communications outcome is to increase membership. We needed to decide how we could use our communication strategy to increase membership. Now I'm  not going to give the particulars of our plan, but we decided that we needed a calendar that identified topic areas for each month, then we needed to insure that our information was posted across our different sites. 


Wait we aren't all proficient with social media
We needed to take a step back. It turns out we needed to go over how to do effectively use each of our media sites. We needed to learn how to use the sites as ourselves and as the organization. We needed to prepare primers on how to use each site. We also needed to have a short campaign to show the board how to share information across platforms. 

Sharing Information

We've asserted that Web 2.0 can be used to share information with families in previous posts here, here and here. And as we stated in the Web 2.0  post, one thing to think about is how information that is already out there can be re-purposed.

Repurposed?
Yes, reused, rewritten, reshared. Think of it as upcycling for information. There are great websites out there with tons of well-written information. Here's a sampling of my favorite early intervention websites: NECTAC, NICHCY, and the IDEA Partnership.This is a great website that is geared towards typical child development: Baby Center. And then there are those websites geared towards specific disabilities: NDSS, Autism Speaks, and dozens of others. There's also Pinterest, and Facebook Fanpages, and tons of wonderful blogs, that focus on a specific diagnosis or therapeutic approach.

One thing that can be helpful is to write a webpage or blog posting that deals with a specific issue and link to these other websites to assist families to learn how to research where they can find information when they are advocating on behalf of their child.

An Example, Please?
My son has an orthopedic impairment called Arthrogryposis.  Our community has a website, online forum, and a Facebook group. Recently we've been talking about a new report that links multiple exposures to anesthesia before age 3 to ADHD and learning disabilities. We've had discussions in the past regarding concerns about learning disabilities and inattentaton. Families shared that despite concerns raised by the child's general education teacher about how this was negatively impacting on the child's education, the IEPs for these students contained no goals or supports to address the concern. Families said that the schools informed them that since the students IEP was addressing an orthopedic impairment the focus was on their child's physical impairments and was not intended to address academic issues.  I did some quick research, got a hand finding the correct citations from a friend, and wrote a blog post that showed families where they could find letters from OSEP like this one explaining that IEP Teams should use the child's unique needs to decide what services to provide, not the disability label.  I also found citations that families could use to ask for additional evaluations.

But isn't this stuff already out there?
Yes, but that doesn't mean that people know where to find it or how to put the information to use.  Repurposing, reusing, rewriting and resharing can help families to find information and see how it might be put to use in the real world. 

Social Media Marketing

Let's take a step back.  We started this blog by asserting that web 2.0 could be used to support and inform families of young children with disabilities.  But you may be asking how do people do it?  How do you figure out which media to use? How will you navigate the privacy rights of families while still providing them with the information and support they are seeking?

Outcomes
I believe that the first step is to decide on outcomes.  Do you want to create a space where families can quickly find information about activities?  or applications?  Do you want to provide a place for families to share their questions and tips for one another?  Is your intention to broadcast or discuss?  Your outcomes may change over time, but it is a good idea to start with a few specific outcomes.

Focus
Once you have your outcomes, decide which mediums can help you to meet your outcomes.  If you want families to see how to do something, you might want to use a video sharing site or an image sharing site.  If you want families to share their tips and questions then social networking might be the way to go, or perhaps a wiki.

Outline
The next step is to develop an outline.  What information do you anticipate sharing?  How often will you share information?  Setting realistic expectations for your ability to update information or respond to questions and comments is important.  

Crossposting
To generate a following it is important that you also think about who you will interact with and where you can find more followers.  For example, as I write this blogposting my outline includes posting this to LinkedIn, tweeting it, and to my Facebook page.  My outline includes how I will post to each of these media and when.  It is important to strike a balance between over and underposting and to be mindful of how many of your fans follow you on all of those media.  

Assess
Like all things the outline is not set in stone.  It is something that you have to continually review and revise.  Pinterest wasn't even on my radar a few months ago.  Even once I started using it personally it took some time for me to figure out how best to use it for my purposes.  It is also important to decide when you will simply use the work of others.  The great thing about Web 2.0, is that you can create content simply by sharing the content of others--with attribution of course!