Blippit Social Facebook | The Blippit Blog

18th May 201630th December 2016

Improve response rates mid year on Ofsted Parent View Questions & other surveys too!

If, like us, you know that it’s ‘a bit challenging’ sometimes to get parents to fill in the mid-year Parent Survey that you’ve created based upon Ofsted’s Parent View form, this may be an innovative approach that will go down well.

FREE TO BLIPPIT SOCIAL SCHOOLS!
This is very low friction from a parent point of view because school is already engaging parents via Facebook so delivering and completing the survey actually ‘in’ Facebook makes the process nice and easy.

Data collection and collation is all taken care of too. The moment a parent hit’s SEND your data is saved and automatically presented for easy interpretation by SLT & Governors.

NOT A BLIPPIT SCHOOL?
Prices for non-Blippit Social schools are listed below.

FAQs

Is this just for the parent survey?

No. This was just an example of a survey that we created. You can survey parents on any topic you need to at any time

Can we have space for comments

Yes. You can have unlimited space for comments.

How can we filter so only our parents are able to take part?

Easily done – give out a school code/password to each family by text or letter and make entering that code a part of the survey.

Is it one response per child or per parent?

A survey can be set up to cater for either.

How do we do a follow up of survey participation?

We can include a compulsory question for people to enter their full family name so as not to rely on a Facebook profile names which may in the odd case be less helpful. Knowing who has responded and who hasn’t will be much simpler. Participation in surveys can also be incentivised via FB – i.e. we can use a prize draw feature to generate a random winner as a ‘thanks for participating’.

What's the cost?

This is a free and ‘on demand’ service to all schools who use our Blippit Social service. Schools who don’t use our Blippit Social Service can buy in ti Social Surveys at the rates below. (Small school discount of 20% applies if you’re a Nursery, Infant or Juniors only school)

up to 10 questions £ 59
11-20 questions £ 69
21-30 questions £ 79
31-40 questions £ 89

Here’s how it would look on your school Facebook Page timeline except customised to your school
Below is one version of a survey which would normally just be seen in Facebook so that parents don’t get stressed moving off to another website but for this blog post we’ve placed it here as well. You’re welcome to fill it in to get a feel for it 🙂

16th May 201630th December 2016

Survey Parents Directly on Facebook with Blippit Social

Also see this blog post:

Improve response rates mid year on Ofsted Parent View Questions

15th April 201630th December 2016

You've got that yucky feeling? Blippit chat to Kidsafe

This week Blippit Social met up with NW based Kidsafe for a chat about safeguarding, child exploitation and the importance of not keeping experiences inside that give a child a ‘yucky feeling’ as Kidsafe describe it.

Blippit Social’s approach & beliefs about the importance of schools having a social approach to parental engagement complement Kidsafe’s work well which is why we’ve some interesting ideas bubbling in the pipeline now that will mean good things for schools in the future.

blippit social and kidsafe — “They know it’s a puppet!” Jude Walker from Kidsafe with KS.

28th January 20164th May 2018

Head Teacher Video Series 2016 – Most popular social media questions & topics

Fnd out more about the core social media service available to schools through Blippit Social on the website

Also available as an iBook

Since 2010 I’ve been meeting with Head Teachers specifically on the topic of how they can reach out to parents and engage with them in new and effective ways via social media – particularly Facebook. Obviously, it’s now 2016 and I thought it was about time I shared more widely the kinds of questions that Heads, Business Managers and SLT members have been asking.

There are 9 videos in total that give a ‘below the waterline’ take on the kind of things we talk about when working with schools on Blippit Social. Click the three horizontal bars (hotdog) in the top left of the video to see the list and pick what you’d like to watch.

These videos are a follow-up to and expansion of my previous article for Head Teachers, Governors and anyone really thinking about taking first steps. Feel free to pass a link along and of course either comment or get in touch directly if you like.

Want Audio Only?

11th January 201619th January 2017

10 Pointers when thinking about using social media for parental engagement

We have always believed in fishing where the fish are and if one of your New Year’s resolutions was to work more efficiently, effectively and intelligently when it comes to engaging parents then hopefully this article might help.

1. Why use social media?
This is an important one to know. Typically schools want their community to ‘get’ their values and ethos. In short, schools want ensure parents can buy into what they’re offering because, while it’s a fantastic product, actually they’re only aware of the tip of the iceberg. Also, a teeny weeny bit of school wants to know what the wider community knows so ‘social’ makes sense.

2. What about the school website?

It doesn’t cut the mustard anymore on it’s own. People only use it when they’re booking holidays or if a disaster happens to cause school to close. The main audience for the school site now, unfortunately, is Ofsted with the occasional new family or grumbly parent looking for pupil premium stats.

3. What about school newsletters?

The ‘news’ and how people consume it has changed radically since social media became established. The weekly/monthly Friday newsletter has become routine, easy to ignore and taken for granted. Its almost invisible. Newsletters consume school time and energy as well as trees. Adding them to the school website feels like a good green idea but in reality it benefits very few, if any, parents. If you have web stats they will bear this out. Linking to resources on the website from social media is a much better way of targeting information and getting parents to share it for you with their networks as well.

4. What do people in your community use every day?
It’s such an obvious question to ask parents that literally no-one does it. Ask some parents what they use on a daily basis in terms of social media platforms. You don’t need to craft a letter to all parents or create something clever using Google Forms. Target a welcome evening for new parents and slip the question in for a show of hands. Make sure that colleagues who need to see the response are there to see it. You’ll get a sense of what people think about it and what if any pros or cons parents might see arising.

5. Can we just dip our toes?

If anyone in school is saying “Let’s just use Twitter for now”, be bold enough to ask why as this is often an anxiety-led response to the idea of social parental engagement in a strange environment where control is not absolute. Don’t proceed past ‘go’ until school is clear on both the needs of parents and the school. These needs will help tell you to choose the best social platforms to use. In my experience at least, using Twitter alone for effective parental engagement is like wafting a wet woolly mammoth dry with a flat cap. You’ll expend lots of energy but will hardly touch the surface and eventually you’ll wonder why you bothered. For some schools, the idea of using Twitter is appealing at first because comeback from any followers will be negligible. In fact with a bit of luck hardly any parents will notice school tweeting. School will however still look cool because of the Twitter logo on the website home page. Avoid the temptation to dip your toes in Facebook for other reasons. More harm can come from a half-hearted conversation starter with parents on Facebook because it reflects badly on school values. Parents are typically very pleased indeed to see you have joined them where they are but pretty let down if school doesn’t show commitment to it.

6. Clarity of purpose

If your school knows where it’s community is and then joins them on a particular platform, such as Facebook, it will really help school to be clear about why it’s there. Agree your overall strategy for communicating with parents throughout the year as social media does not operate on an island. Consider what the stress events for parents are so that you can be well positioned even before they arrive. Timely, concise, low-key and friendly updates lower parental anxiety leading to a calmer community who are able to deal with an upcoming stress point e.g. parents evening, admissions, school closure, non-uniform day (yes even that!) With data you will be able to see when, who, how and where people are engaging.

7. The Parent Journey

Improving the parental journey is often the main ‘why’ behind schools using social media to engage on a more targeted and timely level. Years ago research was done by the Cabinet Office to look into something called ‘the customer journey’. It highlighted how people’s emotional state fluctuated when they had to go through a particular and often bureaucratic process. Imagine, for example, the steps involved in taking a much loved pet the vet, reporting the death of a family member to the local council or even being a competitor on the X Factor. With the right kind of interventions along the way through these processes it is possible to flatten out the emotional spikes for parents along the way resulting in a less ruffled and more appreciative community at the end of it all.

8. Your School Story

Your school has it’s own story arc and each member of staff is a major character in the plot with parents and children moving fluidly from audience to guest stars on a daily basis. There are lots of happy endings, plenty of plot twists and the occasional sad event. If school can be clear from the start about what you will and won’t be sharing with parents from the outset then the chances of having to deal with unexpected topics on-the-fly are reduced.

9. What about Safeguarding & things that begin with an ‘e’

Safeguarding was commented upon by Ofsted last year in one of the schools we work with in that the work on Facebook (plus other activity that fed into/off it) made a very positive contribution to it. So many schools try to have e-safety meetings for parents that noone turns up to or ‘the wrong people come’. Sometimes, a different tack can work with supporting and educating a school community and it doesn’t always have to include someone standing at the front in the hall for half an hour. Drip feed your parents tips via social media – ideally Facebook – and they’ll share them as well as follow them.

10. Know your audience

Heads know their parental community but they have a heightened awareness of certain parents who colour the Head’s expectations of what will happen if the school uses social media to reach out to it’s community. If you’re a Head Teacher you’ll have certain parents ‘front of mind’ and will often unwittingly apply the vibe these people give on to the rest of your parental community. Phrases heard in the playground such as “Everyone is really unhappy about…” are bound to make Head Teachers uneasy but the reality in my experience is that ‘everyone’ comprises of just one or two slightly high maintenance parents. With social media, you have it in your power to fill the air with positivity and celebrate the great things that the children and staff do every single day. Your majority audience is happy, has got your back and will champion the school far and wide. They have invested their child into your school and parents are very keen to tell others, in this era of buying based on peer recommendation, what a great decision it was they made to send their child to your school. School has a wonderful opportunity to act as a social role model for parents and families and the contribution it can make to safeguarding shouldn’t be underestimated by being in the same space.

10th December 201530th December 2016

How four school communities kept it together during the floods

Some Lancashire primary schools affected by the recent disastrous floods are finally getting back to business almost as usual. It’s been a horrendous time with highly stressed families, children (mainstream & specialist schools) and last but not least everyone employed at the schools themselves.

To add a little extra stress into the mix, as sub-stations became swamped, power cuts had far reaching effects such as knocking out phone network transmitters. Broadband was no exception going down for many people for many hours.

Take away the ability to heat anything, dry anything, at night time to ‘see’ anything, drink fresh water or flush toilets and add the fact that many families were kitted out for Christmas and you’re only part way there.

With Nativities rehearsed, costumes made, lines learned, relatives invited, tickets part-sold and in already scarce supply due to school fire regulations (which winds people up every year) you could say it was a perfect storm.

Communication is critical in this kind of situation and at times over the last week there were no options open to schools at all. It was grim.

However, in amongst the pockets of communication blackouts, at four of the schools we work with as Blippit Social, the messages that squeezed out from each school’s Facebook presence were amplified and carried along by parents to reach those who needed to know what was or wasn’t happening.

A special mention went out to a local radio station called ‘The Bay’ who by all accounts did a pretty amazing job at getting people home, bypassing destroyed routes with timely and accurate information updates.

Heads knew that if they asked parents to share updates that originated from the school on Facebook that these updates would carry more authority and hopefully more clarity and this does seem to have been the case. Interestingly, when the school updated that it needed help, to gain clarity on the current status across the area, it was effectively counting on the wisdom of the crowds. Some might have said that Heads should have closed down their schools’ presence on Facebook for fear of virtual looting and vandalism but wisely in my view they chose not to.

Together we have learned that the vast majority of parents live up to the bar set for them set by the school. As a model of good practice for how to use social media effectively and reasonably, parents could not be linked to anything better than the school. Less savvy parents most definitely got some fantastic guidance too from their peers – it wasn’t all about the school.

…understanding leadership from a distributed perspective means seeing leadership activities as a situated and social process at the intersection of leaders, followers, and the situation.

(Source: Wikipedia ironically enough!)

Our data for the last month, aggregated across the four schools on Facebook, puts forward a simple view based on experience and evidence and it’s something like this (though the words aren’t right just yet it must be said).

Parent/school social networks can be complementary and highly effective during difficult times thanks to distributed leadership, trust, respect and an increased sense of transparency in the relationships.

Blippit Social monitors all the schools it supports and can explore the social data pretty much on demand. The following report extracts show data for the month leading up to and including the last 36 hours and as such show an interesting contrast to ‘normal’ business.

How did page impressions change?

How did the amount of page posts change?

How did the population of the communities fluctuate?

Did the community see an increase in virtual onlookers?

When in the week did people engage?

What times of the day did people engage

Number of shares by the community

Gender of people commenting in the communities

2nd December 2015

Communicating with parents heading in to the festive season within the structure of the Aristotelian Dramatic Arc!

The story arc of your school should ideally be less Aristotelian and more ‘Downton-ian’ where the peaks and troughs are relatively gentle and you could be forgiven for thinking that nothing much is really going on!

When school is on the front foot & leading communication it helps to make responding to parents less of a drama. We think Facebook is a key factor in taking the lead towards reclaiming school’s position as the authoritative news source.

Fishing where the fish are does work & if you’d like to know more you’re welcome to call 01772 657 100 or support@blippit.co.uk

23rd November 201516th November 2017

Death Knell of the School Newsletter?

The school newsletter has always been a big deal for at least two people in school, typically the Head plus the poor soul who inherited the MS Publisher Template from the last incumbent.

‘Knowing’ glances often shoot across the table during conversations about the school newsletter and website. Given the information requirements for school websites this is hardly surprising. (Clerk to Governors is a must read.)

In my experience here are the most common 5 approaches where tech touches school communications specifically for the newsletter. Some of these are done in tandem.

“We send the newsletter to parents every week on Friday…

on paper with pictures

as an SMS message linking to the website

as a PDF email attachment

via a Facebook update with a scanned image of the newsletter

via Twitter to parents with a link to the newsletters page on the website

…so why do parents still tell us they don’t know what’s going on?”

If Brian Blessed read the school newsletter out loud on a Friday standing in the playground parents would still not know fully what was going on in school. Why?

Is school boring?

Generally no. However what’s considered to be news and how these exciting things are shared might be giving the feeling of ‘old news’.

Is it to do with timing?

Yes without doubt.

People are used to ‘on demand’ consumption of media. Most homes if you’re lucky will save a paper newsletter to read later when they’ve nothing else to do – that’ll be never. They may though get a calendar out and add dates to it from the newsletter to remind them when it’s non-uniform or sports day or parents evening. They are less likely to read a scanned newsletter on a timeline and add dates from there remembering the detail while switching views.

Tweeting or Facebooking on a Friday will land better but, still, what is it that’s making you do it on a Friday? Our data shows that this is not the day to do it. What time on a Friday is best if you decide to still pick Friday? 3.30? You need to know when people are being receptive to receiving your ‘stuff’.

Is it to do with the format?

Yes without doubt. About 50% of people reading this post will have stopped already because there are too many words, not enough pictures, maybe they’re just tired, know all this already or someone has just un-paused the Blackpool stage of Strictly.

SMS messages are definitely a ‘read later’ thing once the parents get used to seeing the school sender name and they know that there’s just a link to a long newsletter awaiting.

There are some schools who have gone to extremes. I know of one school where parents have been given an iPad to get them to use Twitter and receive school Tweets!

Many more schools use Facebook now and report greater reach, engagement and impact. Some however seem to lean to far towards ‘operational’ updates – don’t forget this, don’t park there & nits. Even on Facebook it’s hard to break old habits and to forget that it’s ‘social’ not broadcast media where the relationship is ‘the thing’. These messages sit like uneasily in Facebook.

Even in Facebook there are improvements now to make sure parents get your updates over and above others but how many parents know about these.

Horses for courses

Teachers and business managers are experts in their business not in design. Too much effort has historically been spent by schools on making design choices at a micro level. Now, simple is best. Look at the format of Tweets, FB Updates & websites. Clear, simple, brief and fuss free from conflicting font styles and colours. Why use 200 words when 25 will do? Let the system you’re using style your message in a way with which parents are familiar already.

Is it to do with content?

Yes. People today are spoilt! They’re used to personalised this that and the other – even Coke and Nutella let you put your name on their label. There’s very little ownership over a school newsletter even though it’s a clear sense of transparency and honesty that excites/engages parents.

On Facebook (our favourite horse in the race) personalisation is king. These are the their updates, their school, their victory in the cup, their great decision to send their child there.

So how about scanning/saving a newsletter and sharing it as an image update on Facebook? That’s canny but I don’t think it’s transformative. How about disaggregating the newsletter into bitesized chunks and drip feeding them as updates at optimal times across the week instead?

With technology it’s often been the case that people do just what they did before except a bit faster/easier without reflecting on how else it could be measurably better. It’s maybe an indication of the times in which people work – less time to reflect, ticking off the list of jobs and so on.

If you’re in charge of the school website too, as part of the school comms strategy, you’ll have even more to think about. Our approach is to blend web with social to avoid doubling of effort. Much of a school’s attention is on tending their social ‘garden’ while the website is given a lick of paint each year to meet the necessary requirements. Who really is the audience for your school website anyway? Ofsted. We’d like to imagine many others too but sadly it’s holidays and snow closures that make your site stats spike.

Does all this mean the end of the school newsletter as we know it? Yes – in any useful form I’d says it does but it’ll be a while before parents realise if you announce it in the newsletter.

18th October 2015

The Parent Zone – Digital Families Workshop 2015

Last week I ran a workshop on fishing where the fish are at The Parent Zone Digital Families event in London. I was asked if I’d share the slides so here, as promised, they are!

[slideshare id=53978663&doc=blippitsocialintheparentzone-151015144743-lva1-app6892]