Using Social Media Tools to Listen In

Using social media is not only about creating content. It's about listening. It's important for schools or organizations to listen in on the discussions taking place online. Hearing the messages out there can help development of your schools online profile and help you figure out how your messages might transmit (even if it is something you do not begin). Listening in on the conversations taking place can help to generate content or even guide the messages we send out. You might find that there are conversations outside of your normal methods of transmission that you might want to participate.

It's important to remember that monitoring is not about controlling the messages out there, but rather about making use of what is being said. Sometimes the best marketing comes from those one-line messages such as "I miss XXX school."

Conversations may not just take place across one type of social media, but rather in six different venues. It can be overwhelming, but there are a number of tools that you can set up to search to find out what is being said and most of the tools are free.

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