Shorten Your Meetings

Do you want to shorten meetings? If so, make a simple communication decision, then stick to it, because it saves time. You can shorten meeting time and change meetings from lower level thinking skills to higher level thinking skills with a very small change in communication.

How often do you have meetings start or end with announcements or updates about events? Make a decision to place the news and announcements on your website, so everyone can see them. Update them frequently. Remove old news and announcements, but archive them so they can be searched for later.

If you have a website that is easy to use, with relevant and up-to-date news for the organization, you can skip essential meeting minutes usually devoted to bringing everyone up to speed on events, and move on to the essential issues that need collaborative discussion and decision making.

Try it, you could start to save time on meetings this week.

Best Laid Plans

One of my favorite quotes is from Robert Burns's poem, To a Mouse: "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley." I've often thought it should be posted on the walls of science labs and tech facilities to remind us to be flexible.

As we designed the new website for Canadian Academy last year, one goal was to reduce the amount of time needed to publish the newsletter. We hadn't printed the newsletter in 2 years, but it was still digitally assembled and placed on the school website each month. The advancement office wanted to streamline the process, so fresh news was distributed to targeted audiences on an as-needed basis. Our plan was to have administrators each maintain a blog targeted to appropriate audiences. The high school principal, for instance, would have a blog for the high school community, and so on.

While viewing the website last week, I saw that the high school principal does have a blog but the others don't. I was curious to know why and what has changed. In a Google video conference, Murray Smith, the Director of Information and Communication Technology, said that the news manager module and the calendar manager module rather than the blogs and forum module, built into the finalsite-based school website was replacing the need for the monthly newsletter. News and calendar events are available to targeted groups when needed, and archived when they are no longer needed. The system is easy to manage, efficient, and time-saving. For now, they are happy with the news and calendar module solution.

Why does the high school principal, Melanie Vrba, have a blog? She is using it for more in-depth and on-going conversations with her community. Her blog extends beyond the information contained in the newsletter last year, so it is extending the usefulness of the website and is not simply replacing what was there previously.

The plans changed but it sounds like the new plan and the new methods of communication are more efficient - always a good reason to be flexible.

Healthy Decisions

The physical education teachers want to control the type of food sold on campus to ensure only healthy food is available to students. Although students understand health issues, they want to have choices about what to buy, and also what to sell for fund-raising events. The food service wants to sell healthy food but also to sell enough to stay in business. Which group wins, and how is the decision made?

Making a decision invites criticism, especially if the faculty, students and parents do not understand the reason behind the decision, or if the decision-makers do not understand the opinions within the school community before a decision is made. Developing communication systems to stimulate comments and questions and with time for reflection before a decision is made, creates a healthier school environment.

The sale of food on campus was a topic discussed at several leadership meetings last year. This year, the topic is online in a school forum on the new website. Within the portal, and behind the password, is the new Community Forum with topics for viewers to respond with comments and questions.

A lively discussion between students and teachers about food and food sales has developed. Does the school have the right and responsibility to dictate what food is available on campus? Should students be allowed to make decisions about what to eat and what to sell? The final decision will obviously not make everyone happy, but through the forum, members of the school community have the opportunity to comment and to question, to provide explanation and to demand further explanation.

The result should be increased student awareness of health issues related to food, increased faculty awareness of student opinion, and hopefully, a better understanding of the final decision, whatever it will be.

Which School is Best: Using Social Media

"Traditional sources of advertising are on a steep decline", so schools must develop other means of advertising the school to find potential students.

Some schools are investigating ways to improve search engine optimization to control school website placement on Google, Bing, etc. How important is search engine optimization to a school? Check search engine page rank and make adjustments when possible to cover all sources of information about the school, but keep in mind that personal opinions are more important than search engine page rank.

Social Media for Personal Opinions
If parents want to know which school is best for their child, where do they go for information? They ask people they know and trust, although the exchange of information may via an online social media site and not face-to-face.

With 250 million people using myspace, youtube and facebook every month, it should not be difficult to find people, including perspective parents and students. Use social media sites to connect with students, parents, teachers, and influential people in the community. If each of those people connects with just a few others, the network of contacts for the school is dramatically increased and will distribute information about the school and spread the reputation of the school further than any newspaper advertisement or search engine page rank.

If the school is not using social media sites, it may be time to set social media goals and to plan for the use of social media.

Investigate several social media sites. Does someone on staff have a myspace page, a Facebook page, or some other social media expertise? Ask them to demonstrate and to help to set up accounts for the school when the school is ready to create one. If no one on staff has the expertise, ask a student! They are using social media and love to demonstrate their knowledge. As you investigate various sites, take a look at these examples:

• Twitter: International School of Zug and Lucern
• Twitter: Yokohama International School
  
• Facebook fan page: International School of Zug and Lucern
• Facebook Alumni Page: Canadian Academy
• Facebook fan page: Lausanne Collegiate School

Decide on a plan. Someone will need to update the site, monitor the activity, and respond to followers. Remember to point the social media site back to the main school website to reinforce the message and reputation of the school.

Decide how to evaluate the success. A recent Mashable article says that 84% of social media websites don't measure return on investment (ROI). That may be true, but ROI may be easy to measure. At Canadian Academy, when the school's Facebook page was created, the number of alumni contacts increased by several hundred in a few days. That is a significant ROI.

References

• Graphic image from Did You Know? (version 4.0) on YouTube. View the entire video for additional information about current trends.
• How Schools Can Use Social Media to Attract New Students and Make More Money
• How to: Establish Social Media Credibility in 7 Easy Steps
• Social Media Adoption Stages and Your School
• 84% of social media websites don't measure return on investment (ROI)

Competing for Students: Search Engine Optimization

Worried about losing students to competing schools? One-way to increase the number of students, is to increase the likelihood that parents and students will find and select your school website when they use search engines such as Google or Bing.

"Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine." Understanding search engine optimization (SEO) will help to improve page rank and placement on a search engine results page.

To guarantee a website is listed at the top of the search engine results page, you can pay for it to be placed at the top. These paid links are labeled "Sponsored Links" on Google and Bing.

To achieve success with organic (un-paid) SEO, consider these guidelines to help ensure your school website is at or near the top of the search engine results page.

1. Content is king. If the content does not contain the information the viewer is seeking, or if it is poorly written, inaccurate or out-of-date, the bounce rate will be high, lowering the ranking for the website. (If a viewer links to a site and within a few seconds leaves the site, that is a “bounce”. The more bounces, the higher the bounce rate, and the lower the page rank.)
2. Authority is essential. Provide a complete "About Us" section with a description of the organization and with contact names and information.
3. Quality links, both internal and external, help to reinforce the authority of the website. Internal links should link the main pages. Maintain external links to organizations that contribute to the authority of the website, and request those organizations to provide links from their websites to the school website. The more interconnected the links, the better the ranking for search engines.
4. Search engines use META keywords to match web pages with search queries. Ensure the META keywords in the code of the website are also included in the content of the web page. For instance, do not indicate a META keyword, "Alumni", unless the page content uses the word "Alumni".
5. HTML page titles for each page should accurately reflect what is on each page. Limit each to a short but descriptive phrase. Long page titles are problematic for two reasons. (1) The search engines do not usually use all of a long title. (2) In developing a bibliographic citation for information found on the Internet, the HTML page title is used. It is annoying to have to include a page title that is a long description rather than a concise page title. (View Google "snippits" for information about page titles)
6. META Page descriptions should accurately describe the content of each page. These are used in the website description on the search results page. If the META page description does not match the content on the page, this will lower the page rank on the search engines. (View Google "snippits" for information about page descriptions)
   

Changing Page Ranks: Although the concepts of organic SEO guidelines are simple to understand, it is best to monitor the search engine results to look for areas that need improvement.

1. A website at the top of the search engine results page may not continue to stay at the top. Search engine algorithms, used to determine website ranks, are not published, and they are changed without warning. Competing websites also influence page rank. Are there new and competing schools or have other schools started to develop and improve their SEO? These factors influence the site page rank.
2. Search engines do not visit every site every day, so changes to content, authority, links, META keywords, HTML page titles, META page descriptions may not affect website ranking immediately. Allow a few weeks to see if changes to the site result in changes in page rank.
   

References

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (download Google Search Engine Optimization Starter guide)
• The Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: The anatomy of a search result (snippits)
  
• How Keyword Density, Frequency, Prominence and Proximity Affect Search Engine Rankings
• Google Analytics Blog: The Value of Landing Pages
• SiteProNews: 5 Google Tools for Researching Your Market
• Proven Link Building Strategies that Work
• SEO Design Solutions | Internal Links – Are You Making the Most of Yours?
• SEO Design Solutions | Stop, think – Before You Build another Link

Designed to be Read on the Web

In creating pages for a website, remember:

1. Content is king.
   
2. Formatting is the queen.

Jacob Nielsen's summary of how users read on the web was written in 1997 but it is still a gem of an article:

Web pages have to employ scannable text, using

• highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
• meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones)
• bulleted lists
• one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
• the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing

Checklist for Maintaining a Website

Designing a well organized, attractive and content-rich website is essential for effective school communication, but that is only the first step. Maintaining the website is the key to success.

Develop a plan to monitor and update the website and then implement the plan.

• Determine who reviews and evaluates your school website. Divide the tasks if possible. Assign specific sections to the people with appropriate information to maintain each section.
  
• Establish a time-line for review, evaluation and updates.
  
• Develop a procedure for viewers to report errors, then make the corrections.

It helps to have a checklist for reviewers to use when evaluating the website. I find the following list helpful. What other characteristics do you look for?

Content

1. Does the website state and reflect the school’s mission and goals?
2. Does it promote and support the school’s curricula and programs?
3. Is the information up-to-date and accurate?
4. Does the content respect copyrights and fair use?
5. Is the information consistent across sections?
6. Are there sections that should be deleted, added or relocated to another part of the website?
7. Are there translations in the most important languages, if necessary?
8. Are the calendars, news and announcements up-to-date and easy to find?
9. Are there links to essential social media and curricular resources?
10. Do the page titles (see the title bar at the top of each page) reflect the content of the page?
11. Does your content contain some of the keywords or key search phrases that people might use to find your website?

Authority

1. Does it promote the school as a part of the community?
2. Does it add value to the school’s online image?
3. Does it support a safe and healthy online environment for the community?
4. Does it support school-defined policies to protect the privacy of students, parents, staff, alumni, and other members of the community?
5. Is there a directory of administrators and staff to facilitate on-going communication, possibly behind a password to protect the privacy of the group?
6. Is there an accurate directory for parents and students that is password protected?
7. Is the contact or author for each of the sections of the website easy to find?
8. Is there an "About Us" section with up-to-date information that supports the "authority" of the organization?
9. Are there well organized and meaning internal links that connect important content?
10. Are there links to external websites that have authority? Do external websites with authority link to the school's website? One way to determine which websites link to your website is to use the link:webaddress command in AltaVista. (Google works also, but I find that AltaVista gives more comprehensive results.)
    

Technical and Visual Components

1. Is it organized with easy-to-find and clearly labeled sections for the various target audiences?
2. Do all links work?
3. Is it written with standard and consistent conventions and voice?
   
4. Is there a system, such an RSS feed, so viewers can be notified of site changes?
   
5. Does it provide calendar information that can be synchronized with viewers’ calendars?
6. Is there a mobile phone version to support more than computer communication?
   
7. Is it visually appealing?
8. Do photos on the site follow school publication protocols?
9. Are there consistent layouts, fonts and organization for all sections?
10. Are the HTML titles, META keywords, and META descriptions up-to-date, and do they accurately reflect the content of each page on the website?

If everything is already in order, thank the people that maintain the site. They are doing good work. If that person is you, you are probably already getting thanks from your school, but well done. Take a 5-minute break to relax and enjoy your accomplishments.