darim online

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 full Academy runs throughout the 2012-13 academic year, and includes live events, online training via webinar, and private coaching and consulting for each school. We've selected a cohort of 20 schools to matriculate through an intensive training, coaching and project-based curriculum during the 2012-13 academic year. 

As a two-campus school serving 600 students and their families in the San Francisco Bay Area, we keep our community engaged and informed through a robust website, two packed weekly e-newsletters, class-specific updates and other publications. Yet, as our 50th anniversary approached last year, we wanted to quickly and effectively invite alumni and alumni families – along with the rest of our community – into the celebration (and conversation).

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.

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

Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy is grateful to be participating in the JDS Social Media Academy to advance the social media initiatives of our school. Hillel's Facebook page has been updated with a new image congruent with the current branding of the school. Extensive efforts are underway to reach out to our current parent body, generations of Hillel alumni, and the greater Hillel community of supporters to create a culture whereby use of Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will become the new norm. 

As a participant in the 2012-2013 Jewish Day School Social Media Academy, Solomon Schechter School of Queens (SSSQ) was able to jump onto the social media train with a tremendous amount of support and guidance. Being a beginner in the social media arena (we did not have any social media presence), we found the importance of creating a content calendar to be paramount in establishing, maintaining and expanding our momentum on Facebook, and a valuable quantitative way of measuring our success.

Originally published on Clips and Phrases

A friend of mine has just begun to tweet.  She was one of those people -- which is very common -- who created an account two years ago, and was feeling very hip and on top of the trends.  And then she never used it.

We sat down last week to build some skills and help her get into meaty conversations in her field.  She was a quick learner, excited and motivated.  And a week later I got the one line email: 

So, what am I actually suppose to be saying on Twitter?

The 20 schools in the Jewish Day School Social Media Academy have been working on social media and social fundraising projects this year.  This post is part of a series of posts by the participating schools as they share their work, design and learnings.

The Charlotte Jewish Day School is now in our 13th year as a community day school and we are going to celebrate in a very 21st century way.