Each year, schools all around the world share their inspiring #SchoolStories throughout December. Each day there's a new challenge to tackle and share with your community. We call it #SocialAdvent.

Will you be taking part?

The #SocialAdvent Challenge 2017

December has been a firm favourite at @intSchools HQ over past years. We put lots of time into making this challenge as fun as possible for schools wanting to get involved.

This year we are looking to make our fourth #SocialAdvent challenge the greatest one yet, with a record number of participants across a global audience. To make it extra special, our creative elves have been hard at work - coming up and designing a bigger, better and refreshed #SocialAdvent to spread festive marketing cheer throughout December. 

Get involved!

Download the #SocialAdvent Calendar using the links below. We have created two versions for you:

• poster - download and stick onto your wall

• foldable desk calendar - download, fold in half and keep on your desk

Sulfur, Oxygen, Carbon, Iodine and Aluminium - what would they create? SO₂CI₃Al (not a recommended, or even viable, chemical formula by the way).

In this week's #SchoolBytes, we are sending out something a little special. With a team of lab-cloaked researchers, we have been splicing the atoms of social media.

What did we discover through our study? Many, many elements that make up the very fabric of the Social Media Universe! In a truly scientific manner, we've begun to map out these elements.

For your viewing pleasure, we give you The Periodic Table of Social Media.

Each year, during the very busy school conference season, we boot up our #SocialScore tool and analyse how schools are performing on Twitter.

This year, we wanted to share our findings - taking a more analytic approach to what the top Tweeting schools are doing to be hitting a high #SocialScore.

So, without further ado, here are the top 10 HMC schools on Twitter. 

Creating videos for your school marketing does not need to be complicated or expensive. No need to hire Spielberg or rent out a £100,000 camera to capture your #SchoolStories.

Instead, make use of the tools that are readily available - you likely have a decent camera and full editing suite sitting in your pocket or handbag right now.

Being mobile

A large part of what we deliver to schools is this idea of capturing #SchoolStories as they happen. How? By using mobile devices (i.e. smart phones and tablets).

It gives the user the easiest method of recording a quick video - or montage of pictures, or audio bite or whatever it may be - without having to lug around additional equipment. It allows for spontaneity and mobility. 

Recording a video

Every modern smart phone will have a native camera app that allows for video recording. There are, of course, hundreds of other apps that can be downloaded / purchased, but try using the native one first to get a feel for it.

Do you feel that there are too many accounts for us to manage online? That with social media in particular, the expectation to have a presence on everything is too time consuming and exhausting?

Looking at social media, the average adult has 7 personal accounts, while the average teen user has even more! On top of that, most of us have accounts for work, email, shopping, messaging, keeping up with the news and much more.

Since the services we use are generally run by different companies, there often isn't a natural way to link them together. As a result, it is necessary to treat your experiences with different services as entirely separate entities. Wouldn’t be nice then, if there was a way to better coordinate at least some of your personal or professional online life?

Look no further than IFTTT (“IF This Then That”).

IFTTT (www.ifttt.com) is an automation web app that lets you link up different things you’re doing on the internet. Over 400 services currently work with IFTTT, including Facebook; Twitter; YouTube; Google Drive and Instagram. As well as the big companies, there are also loads of services that cater towards particular niches, like internet-enabled lighting, cars and blinds.

How does it work?

Fortunately, it’s pretty simple.

With just a handful of clicks, you can tell IFTTT that if one thing happens on Service A, then it should make something else happen on Service B.

For example, if you add a new profile picture on to Facebook, then your Twitter profile picture should change to the same photo. Or if it’s going to rain today, a notification should automatically appear on your phone at 7.30am, telling you to take your umbrella with you.

How to use it

To give IFTTT a go, you’ll need to make an account. Then, you can either browse other people’s creations or even make your own by:

• going to My Applets
• choosing New Applet
• picking a this and a that

You’ll notice that rather a lot of applets have been made so far. Many are particularly well-suited to marketers and teachers.

Here are four of our favourite IFTTT applets to get you started:

[1] Hear about top content relevant to you from social media

Whether you’re involved in marketing, teaching or something else entirely, it makes sense to keep up to date with ideas and suggestions from others in the sector. You may already have some preferred channels that you like to check for inspiration, but if not, it’s worth having a look at what’s out there by searching for something like “Twitter accounts to follow for education technology” or “best subreddits for digital marketing”.

To simplify this process into an automated service, let IFTTT bring the updates to you in the form of a regular email or a designated Google sheet.

• Send an email digest from a Twitter search or hashtag - we recommend taking advantage of Twitter’s advanced search tools by choosing a search like “#teamenglish min_faves:5” or “VR min_retweets:5” so that you can be notified of content that other people have found worthwhile.

• Get an email update with the top posts from your favourite Reddit subreddit - Reddit has a large number of marketing and teaching communities, and can be a really good resource if used well.

• Save tweets featuring specific content to a Google sheet - as with the email digest applet, think carefully about your search terms for the best results. If you don’t think specifically enough, you can quickly end up with a monster of a spreadsheet!

[2] Share your social media posts across different platforms

Keeping track of what you’ve posted where can be a bit of a hassle - given that in a lot of cases the services you use are run by different companies and don’t link together very well.

IFTTT allows you to synchronise your posts across different platforms, while keeping records of what you’ve posted for future reference.

This area is probably the main draw of IFTTT, and arguably what it was built for in the first place. If both services you’re interested in are on IFTTT then you shouldn’t have any trouble finding an applet that does what you want. We’ve selected some of our favourites:

• Post your tweets to Facebook when you use a specific hashtag

• Automatically share your new YouTube videos to a Facebook page and Twitter

• Post your tweets to LinkedIn when you include the hashtag #in

• Upload Instagram photos tagged with a specific hashtag of your choice to Facebook

• Automatically pin your Instagram photos when you add #pin in the caption

• Use the tag “buffer” on an item in Pocket to send it to your Buffer queue

• Archive all of your tweets to a Google sheet

• Archive every time you’re mentioned in a tweet to a Google sheet

[3] Share interesting content from others to your social media channels

It isn’t always easy to come up with content to populate your social media channels, especially if you’re just starting out or there’s relatively little going on. To keep your followers interested and engaged, it can be a smart idea to share interesting content by others.

There’s a good chance you already do something like this, but IFTTT can make it a lot easier! Take the leap with IFTTT and save so much time not having to scroll through feeds, looking for something great to share.

Here's a few ready-made applets for specific areas, and applets that you can further personalise to best suit you:

• Share NASA’s image of the day to Facebook and Twitter

• Tweet Wikipedia’s word of the day every day - the default language is English, but others are available. If you would like to choose another, all you need to do is find the right two-letter “ISO 639-1” code (“en” for English, “fr” for French, “es” for Spanish, “de” for German etc.) and add it to the app in the labelled box. This could be a really nice idea for MFL departments.

• Send tweets from a particular search to your Buffer queue - this one is really easy to adapt. We suggest you pick a Twitter account you trust and choose your search terms carefully (so you can capture the tweets that are most relevant to you). For example, try “@MathsIdeas what OR how” to get tweets from the Twitter account called Maths Puzzles (@MathsIdeas) which are phrased as questions, or “#DigitalMarketing min_faves:60” to only tweet those posts that have been significant interest to other users (i.e. liked a minimum of 60 times).

[4] Note things down as you go along

You don’t always have pen and paper to hand, and your collection of notes stored on your phone are becoming a mess. It happens to the best of us! But sometimes, having a designated system for keeping track of all your notes relating to a particular topic can be really useful.

• If you have a good idea at a bad time, add it to a note and email yourself a weekly list - after all, they don’t often come at a good time! IFTTT lets you choose when you want your email to arrive, so that you can peruse your ideas from the week at your leisure.

• Create a bibliography of articles archived from pocket in Evernote - when you’re doing research for a project or campaign, it can be hard to keep track of the extensive trail of websites you visit along the way. One way to tackle this issue is to use Pocket, a service that allows you to easily save pages for later, alongside Evernote to make a bibliography. IFTTT will automate this for you; leaving you free to browse to your heart's content while simultaneously creating a list of what you're looking at.

The Future?

The possibilities are simply endless.

With smart glasses, you will be able to set up IFTTT to actively translate text as you are reading it! With Internet-enabled lights, you'll have lights react to you coming / leaving home, or going to bed. In fact, this last idea is already possible via IFTTT today, if you happen to have a set of Philips Hue lights. You can even get your lighting to do something exciting when the International Space Station flies overhead - (SCHOOL SCIENCE DEPARTMENTS - TAKE NOTE!)

If you think of an applet that you would find useful, the likelihood is it has already been created (or at least something very similar you can adapt). If not, it's time to flex a few creative muscles and give it a go. 

Tell us in the comments below how IFTTT could save you time. If you’ve had a go at making any applets, we’d love to hear about it.

You’ll remember we previously wrote a blog post about what a Digital Storyteller (DS) is and why your school should hire one. Many of you got in touch to ask what the person who could fulfil this role looks like; to understand what their skills, qualities and background might be.

Well you asked, so we answered! Behold...the Digital Storyteller.

 

JOB SPECIFICATION

Digital Storyteller

 

Department: Marketing and Communications

Reporting to: Marketing Manager

Level/Grade: Dependent on experience

Type of Position: Online Marketing/Communications

Hours per Week: Dependent on school

Weekends/Evening: Dependent on school

Salary: Dependent on experience

 

Job Summary:

Talented individual required to promote school brand and identity to our community of parents, pupils, prospectives and wider audiences. Should have exceptional understanding of social media, to build relationships and deliver the school's unique tone of voice across multiple channels. Ability to spot and produce quality content, to marry to relevant social media channels, is highly desirable.

Top candidates will be influencers; bringing staff, pupils and current parents on-board to achieve marketing objectives. Workload will be high and varied, so you must be able to multitask across various projects.

Role Responsibilities:

• Ensure content shared on digital channels is optimised to achieve marketing objectives

• Generate ideas for content and marketing campaigns

• Write and produce quality content, taking into account conventions and limitations of social media platforms

• Manage and respond to negative feedback on social media

• Liaise with external individuals - in person and online (not students, parents or teachers)

• Use content creation and editing software (such as iMovie and Adobe Photoshop/InDesign) to create quality content

• Use school CMS to create pages and publish content

• Liaise with Graphic Design department to produce marketing collateral

• Collect and collate feedback into actionable points

• Track analytics to measure effectiveness and efficiency of digital marketing campaigns

Personal Specification

Qualifications and Experience:

• An understanding of conventions and purposes of specific marketing processes and methods

• An understanding of the conventions and ‘best practice’ of specific social media platforms

• Broad understanding of social and digital media

• Experience of using scheduling tools (including HootSuite, TweetDeck, Buffer and SproutSocial)

• Intimate knowledge and understanding of SEO and Analytics 

• Experience of using Content Management Systems (CMS)

• Video production/editing

• Desire to continually evolve personal understanding of marketing and social media trends

• Ability to write basic HTML

• Should have portfolio relevant activities

Capabilities and Aptitudes:

• Digital media / social media savvy

• Social media user

• Creative

• Versatile, flexible and dynamic attitude

• Someone who is able to remain abreast of key marketing and social media trends

• Someone who loves telling stories in a multitude of ways (NOT just pen and paper)

• Personable and outgoing

• Strong interpersonal skills

• Uses initiative, works autonomously

• Can collaborate well with others

• Influencer

• Organised and able to juggle varied workload

 

The kind of person you are looking to hire will depend more on you as a school and your expectations of the role than it will any other factor. There are questions to answer and variables to consider. By taking the time to answer these questions, you are half way to emplying your school’s ideal Digital Storyteller.  

The role of the DS centres around the telling of your #SchoolStories, using a wide range of digital media and content that can be published across your school's social platforms. This content can be used to increase brand awareness of your school and aid in humanising your brand to prospective pupils and parents.

The scope of hiring a DS for your school can only really be viewed as a grey process, rather than one that is black or white. There is no "one size fits all" job specification, but by carefully considering what it is you want from your DS you will soon be able to flesh out what qualities, attributes and experiences are important to you and to the person you wish to hire. 

The good news is, it won’t take long to know if you have hired the right person for the job! At @intSchools, we know how rich the lives of your students and your school are; so it goes without saying that the person who is right for the job is the person who will share your amazing and inspiring #SchoolStories to the world.