Next Communications: Twitter Hint for School Districts

Monday, June 15, 2009

Twitter Hint for School Districts

I have been running a Twitter account for our school district for a little over a year now. It started as an experiment as part of our communication department's exploration of social media tools. I still recommend school districts use the tool and I am thrilled to see a growing number of school districts in our state that have found Twitter useful.

It's ok to broadcast
There seems to be a running debate about whether or not Twitter should be used as a broadcasting tool as opposed to a conversational tool. I believe that for school districts, a simple broadcasting Twitter stream could be an advantageous tool to provide useful information, updates, and links for the district community.

I recently stumbled on another alternate use of Twitter,
Announcement Update Page

Twitter creates unique Web pages for each tweet. These pages could be re-purposed as announcement pages pretty easily:

Post an update on Twitter, locate the URL -

then drop in a link to that URL from the district's homepage (or other appropriate location.)

What you get is a ready-made district announcement page (if you've branded the profile to your school district) without having to create new or updating existing pages on the district's Web site.

This came in handy a few times last year when we had some things that required attention, but that really didn't merit a full production of press release or district announcement page. Plus, it was really fast.

I know this isn't ground-breaking stuff, but speaking as a school district communications/PR professional, I can assure you it is very convenient and should be considered if you are thinking about using Twitter for your school district.

Do you think this is a worthy solution for a common problem? Do you have any other alternate uses for Twitter? The comments are yours.