Why Every School Should be Archiving Social Media
When it comes to school communication and social media, effective communication packaged into excellent content is the ultimate end goal. While school communications are focused on these initiatives, one less exciting but just as important element is missed. Archiving.
Why archive?
Archiving is a critical element for every school social media communication plan. Being able to comply with open records requests (made possible by the Freedom of Information Act) is an essential part of school communications. It not only helps you comply from a regulatory perspective, it also provides protection for students, staff and schools.
Unfortunately, many schools are not yet managing social media archiving. In Class Intercom’s 2020-2021 Social Media Trends in Education report, 32% of schools said they do not manage social media archiving. This becomes a big problem when your school is asked for related to your social media activity including posts and public comments on those posts.
What needs to be archived?
Archival is the storing of information records. In this instance all of your records are digital and hosted by a third party. When managing social media content for a public school or district all social media activity should be pulled into your own storage source and easily accessible for public information requests and potential internal or external investigations related to social media activity. Each school should be archiving and tracking:
- Social Posts – Everything shared on your social channels
- Post engagement – Comments and shares
- Deleted posts – Even if you delete a post or comment, record should still be kept of it
How should schools be archiving?
On the bright side, archiving can actually be pretty easy with the right tools. You can be spending your time focusing on creating great content while letting the tools manage your archiving.
With tools like Class Intercom, you can execute on a full social media management plan creating excellent collaborative content while being assured that archiving is automatically taking place.
Darin Clark is the Director of Communications & Safety at Perryton ISD. He stresses the importance of keeping the focus on content while still archiving.
“The ability to monitor the comments, archive, and all of that, those are the things that really sell me,” shares Clark.
While attaining an archival solution is necessary, it doesn’t need to be a headache and it definitely doesn’t need to detract from the main purpose of social media – content.
Clark says he is able to focus on content and save two to three hours a week with Class Intercom partially due to the archiving already being built-in.
To learn more about the importance of archival, and the assurance and simplicity Class Intercom can provide, check out the additional resources on Class Intercom’s website.
For more information on the future of social media in schools, download our 2020-2021 Social Media Trends in Education Report below.