darim online

The opportunity to participate in the Darim Online Social Media Academy is one of the best things to happen to our school. When we started our school Facebook page about a year ago, we used the white paper titled Best Practices for an Admissions-Driven Social Media Strategy as our guide, and had a volunteer help us get started. The postings were sporadic, and did not have much consistency. Since we started the Social Media Academy, we have created an editorial calendar to ensure our posts are consistent with our branding, so that we can tell our story in a fun and compelling way. The result has been amazing. For months, our posts were reaching maybe 100 people, and now with the implementation of  the editorial calendar, each post is reaching between 200-500 people.

With the ultimate goal of driving admissions, it can be difficult to measure success through social media marketing, but I believe this process has given our marketing efforts a boost through planting a seed in the mind of audiences that are not so connected to the school.   It is difficult to know if potential families are paying attention to posts, or if one’s initial encounter with the school through social media is what will get them through the door for a visit.

That being said, we had one of our greatest feelings of success in the last few months, and I believe it can be directly attributed to our participation in the JDS Academy.  I received a message in my email from a family who had seriously considered sending their child to the school a year ago but decided they needed to give free, public school education a try before spending the money on private school.

“I’m checking in again about the application process… This year has been a good one for O. Overall…. I am thrilled for the children at KJDS that their experience is so good, but it honestly pains me when I see your posts about M , and compare it to what O. is doing. The differences are stark. .. Our financial situation hasn’t changed, but there are always choices to be made in life.  So, I’m thinking about this again.   It’s been lovely to hear about all your adventures through Facebook.  I was especially intrigued by your comment about M. evaluating his strengths and weaknesses.  Is that something all the students do every year? Thank you,  M.”

She was responding this this post: 

This experience reinforced to us the power of social media. Now that we have a strong editorial calendar in place, our next goal will be to guide and train parents to be “social media ambassadors” and create more posts that share their children’s experience.

We found another added bonus to our admissions process is keeping connected with families that have applied. It has been interesting to note that as soon as a family tours the school, and is seriously considering enrolling, they often will ‘like’ our school Facebook page.

Miriam Esther Wilhelm is the founding Head of School at the Stanford Eisenberg Knoxville Jewish Day School. She has enjoyed the journey of taking the school from a start up to a growing and thriving Jewish Day School.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.

In the winter of 2011 Carmel Academy underwent a name change, as well as a rigorous and successful accreditation process. The name change, in particular, was a unique experience – one that required a great deal of forethought, leadership, careful planning and implementation. With a new branding campaign, a stellar accreditation report and the excitement that electrified our school community, we embraced this as an opportunity to also become part of the social media landscape. Coinciding with our new name and look, Carmel launched four social media platforms: a newly redesigned and robust website, a Facebook page, a Twitter account and a blog.

Carmel’s initial success with these platforms – particularly with Facebook and our website– was mostly attributed to the newness of our brand and the excitement that went along with it.  It soon became apparent that launching the platforms was the easy part. Keeping them updated, meaningful and relevant to our followers, as well as growing our social media audience, was the bigger challenge. With some experience under our belts -- that included experimenting with Facebook and Twitter content --  our administrative leadership took on a more strategic focus of providing the type of content that would push our introduction to social media to the next level.

A key challenge – like many schools -- was resources. Photos, videos, content takes manpower. Our small communications office quickly realized it needed to tap our outlying resources. Our best source of culling engaging content was from the “people in the trenches” – our creative and hard-working faculty. We began by first asking our faculty to help provide us with the details of classroom activities, unique integrated learning experiences and special events that shape our students’ experiences throughout the year. Very quickly, we no longer needed to seek out information, but our faculty was readily providing it. We also identified several faculty members who enjoyed photography, and tapped them to help photograph events.

We started with our website and the transformation of our web-based newsletter. In September we re-launched our school newsletter with a new name (Kol Carmel), look and content. Our goal was to provide our families with engaging articles, features, photos and video across all grades and subjects. We very quickly saw our readership increase from less than 20 percent a week to over 50 percent each week.

Taking on this major undertaking required a great deal of organization, as well a time commitment. Monthly and weekly editorial calendars are necessary to plan each weekly edition. With the help of staff photographers and details for articles coming in from our faculty, we soon had plenty of content to choose from.  This also gave us the opportunity to share content across platforms. Features and photos for Kol Carmel could easily be re-written as Facebook posts, placed as news on our website homepage, and turned into a tweet. Not all content is shared across the board. We do create content solely for Facebook, Twitter and the website. However, a majority of our content is shared and recycled – making it much easier to post meaningfully and consistently across platforms.

Jumping over the content hurdle has been encouraging for our social media growth. We have seen increased engagement from current families and alumni, a greater following, a marked increase in community interaction on our Facebook page, and a terrific buy-in from our faculty.

The Jewish Day School Social Media Academy is an intensive program designed to help Jewish Day Schools advance their strategic use of social media in areas such as communication, marketing, community building, alumni relations and development. The 2012-13 nationwide cohort of 20 schools was generously supported by The AVI CHAI Foundation.  Each of the schools will be sharing insights from their experience through blog posts here this spring with the tag #jdsacademy

The 2013-14 cohort is currently in formation. If your school or community is interested in more information, please contact Lisa Colton.