Advice About Social Media for School and PR Professionals

Posts in category video

When the Bullying of a Bus Monitor Goes Viral

Jun25
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack

Karen Klein, via People magazine

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle has published a fascinating look at why the story of Karen Klein, the bus driver who was mercilessly bullied by middle school students in Greece, N.Y., went so viral.
Among other things, the story says, viewers of the YouTube video shot on the bus identified with Ms. Klein, who is a senior citizen and who didn’t fight back.
“This is a glance into the heart of darkness of the human spirit,” said Syracuse University media professor Robert Thompson in the D&C piece. “But it’s not a serial killer, it’s our own kids.” Everyone loves an underdog.
Even more interesting, from strictly a social media point of view, is that the video only had a few dozen hits on YouTube until Daniel Kiernan posted it on Reddit, a social networking site.
“Users on a second site, 4Chan, picked up on it, and soon, links were being posted to Facebook and Twitter, and views on the YouTube video were growing exponentially. By Friday, the video had amassed 4.2 million views…”
The Democrat and Chronicle also notes Rochester’s two other popular local YouTube sensations — when Jason McElwain, an autistic high school senior, scored 20 points in a basketball game, and when Emily Good was arrested for filming a traffic stop.
Timing is everything. When McElwain scored those points in a Greece Athena High School basketball game in 2006, Facebook had only 10 million fans and Twitter hadn’t even been born. (A segment on ESPN actually vaulted him into the national spotlight.)
Meanwhile, Ms. Klein’s popularity has grown so much as a result of social media, that more than 29,000 people have donated $648,000 (as of this writing) to a fund established by Indiegogo.com, a fundraising website that didn’t even exist until 2008. Ms. Klein was making $15,000 a year as a bus monitor.

Posted in education, Internet, schools, Social Media, Teens, The Press, youtube - Tagged , , , ,

How Schools Are Effectively Using YouTube

Jan10
2012 Leave a Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack
Image representing YouTube as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

 

I was happy to write this piece for the National School Public Relations Association’s “Trend Tracker” column:

We all know that YouTube has been used by high school students to clandestinely videotape a fight in the school hallway, or to turn the tables on a teacher they don’t like. The black eye that the media has given YouTube, along with other social media sites, is certainly somewhat self-inflicted.

But YouTube, like most social media, is simply a mirror on society. With three billion viewers a day, and more than 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, you’re bound to witness both the good and the bad.

At the same time, YouTube has worked hard to polish its image. Several years ago, it partnered with the country’s colleges and universities to create YouTube Edu, where you can watch promotional videos and free classroom lectures posted by Harvard, MIT, Stanford and dozens of other institutions of higher learning. And recently, it has expanded that site to include the categories of “primary and secondary education” and “lifelong learning.”

Dozens of tech-savvy school districts, state education departments and even the National PTA have decided it’s time to join the rest of the universe by using YouTube as a public relations tool. And while any foray into social media can have its pitfalls (anonymous commenting on YouTube, for example), you can control what’s posted on your channel.

Among those using YouTube effectively are the Guilford County Schools (GCS) in Greensboro, N.C., with 338 videos uploaded to its channel since it was created in January 2010. GCS’s videos have been viewed 29,420 times and range from features about students and school events, to panel discussions among educators about learning trends. At last count, 60 viewers “subscribe” to the GCSchoolsNC channel, which means they’ve chosen to receive video feeds from the district on their own YouTube pages.

On a larger scale, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction uses its YouTube channel to post press conferences and messages from the state superintendent, and to promote individual schools throughout the state. The WisconsinDPI channel has uploaded 127 videos since creating the channel in 2008, and its videos have been viewed more than 113,000 times.

One of my favorite school YouTube channels was actually created by OneDublin, an independent, parent-run organization supporting the Dublin, Calif., public schools. This group has its own website and YouTube channel, and its “I Am Dublin” video is one of my favorites. In the piece, graduating seniors individually name the college or university they’ll be attending, and proudly point out that “I Am Dublin” — a simple, but effective way to promote the success of the high school.
Make Connections with Other Social Media

If you’re going to create a YouTube channel, it’s important to remember that most social media sites want you to make connections. If your district already has a Facebook fan page or a Twitter feed, for example, you can easily connect those sites to your YouTube channel. Go to your YouTube Account Settings page and choose the “Activity Sharing” dropdown. There, you can simply choose which of your other social media sites should be connected to your YouTube channel. When you make that connection, your uploaded YouTube videos will automatically appear on your Facebook fan page wall, and links will appear on your Twitter feed.

A number of paid and free third-party applications also can help you to add a YouTube tab to your district’s Facebook fan page, where a real-time library of videos posted to your YouTube channel can appear. Many of these apps, including Involver, Tabsite, and Pagemodo, automatically refresh your YouTube video library. This means that your Facebook fans never have to leave Facebook to watch the latest videos you’ve posted.
Additional Thoughts and Advice

A few caveats about using YouTube:

If you’re a one-person school public relations office, take small steps. First purchase an easy-to-use video camera (we use the Flipcam in our office) and practice making brief videos of school events. Then, install video editing software like iMovie or FinalCut Pro, and learn how to use them. Do this before even thinking about creating a YouTube channel.

While certainly the decision to open or close comments on YouTube is up to your discretion, most districts close comments on the site. The reason? YouTube continues to permit viewers to post comments anonymously, so comments can sometimes be off-color and downright vulgar.

As the opportunities provided by electronic communication continue to grow, YouTube is one medium that is worth consideration. Think of it as a video newsletter — like a printed newsletter, it allows you to control the content to disseminate your message and avoid the news media gatekeepers.

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Posted in Communications, education, Internet, Public relations, schools, Social Media, Uncategorized, youtube - Tagged , ,

Messing Around with Montages

Feb14
2010 Leave a Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack

If you’re in public relations and you dig making slideshows and simple little movies, you might want to check out One True Media, a very cool free website that help you build a slideshow by uploading a series of photos, or provides you with the ability to upload mp4 video files. What’s cool about One True Media is that the tool also gives you the option of choosing titles, captions, background music (with a pretty big library) and styles. The best way to explain how One True Media works is to simply show you the sample I created for the White Plains City School District, one of my clients. It took me, maybe, 20 minutes to upload the files and pull the little show together.

What’s also neat about this is that One True Media then provides you with a URL for the show and an embed code, so you can place it on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or a blog — fast and easy. Of course, like many “free” Web 2.0 sites, One True Media will offer you the chance to purchase their premium service, which is your call. But for me, the free service seems to work just fine.

Posted in facebook, Public relations, schools, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0, youtube

Lip Dubs the Rage on YouTube

Jan19
2010 1 Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack

Gosh, to be in high school or college again.

Technology has changed the way kids learn, they way they have fun, the way they communicate and the way they sing and dance. Just take a look at what’s become all the rage lately –”lip dubbing,” a relatively new phenomenon that takes an age-old idea, adds a Flipcam, some creative planning and YouTube, to create and distribute some of the most clever videos out on the web lately.

Take Shorewood High School and Shorecrest High School, both located near Seattle, Wash., rival schools currently competing on YouTube to make the best lipdub video, with the help of a couple of clever video teachers and about 300 of their closest friends. Videotaped in one take with a handheld videocam, they show hundreds of students individually mouthing the words to Hall & Oates’ “Make My Dreams Come True” (Shorewood) and the Black Eye Peas’ “Heya” (Shorecrest), as the camera moves down hallways, into offices, around corners, outdoors and into lobbies and gymnasiums, every student performer knowing his or her cue (generally).

Shorewood has gone one step further. There, the school videotaped in reverse, with the main lip-syncers learning the lyrics to the song in reverse before shooting began. It’s a hilarious, fun-loving video that features a variety of tricks that look cool in reverse — balloons in the air, paper airplanes, that kind of thing.

Perhaps influenced by the popularity of “Glee,” Fox’s hit show about a bunch of high school theater and musical “nerds” that belong to a glee club, the lip dub videos are reproducing like white mice. Other high schools with lip dub videos include Florida’s Bloomingdale High (performing to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing”), Hempfield High School in Pennsylvania (“Party in the USA” by Miley Cyrus), and Sandwich, Mass., High School’s version of Bowling for Soup’s “High School Never Ends.” Colleges and universities are beginning to join in the fray, with Boston University, Suffolk University and the University of Quebec at Montreal creating more lip dubs.

On Suffolk’s video channel, the school explains that the video was created by students and the Office of University Communications, and provides “a tour through some of Suffolk’s buildings and streets of Boston.”

The Suffolk video was shot with a cast of 50 students, took six weeks to produce and was filmed in one continuous shot. The video was rehearsed for two hours, with individual “scene managers” responsible for the action in each separate location in and around the Suffolk city campus. The lipdub was filmed live and took three “takes”. Not only that, but the video ends with the Suffolk University seal.

Seems to me that these lip dubs could be awesome promotion, public relations and recruiting tools, particularly at the college and university level.

Here’s the Suffolk video:

Posted in education, Internet, Public relations, schools, Social Media, youtube - Tagged , , ,

The Social Media Guru

Oct02
2009 1 Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack

This video is pretty hilarious.  I’m doing several presentations on social media in the next few months, so I’m going to do my best NOT to sound like this guy:

Thanks to markhamnolan on YouTube.

Posted in Social Media, youtube

Remix America Lets Us Mash Up History

May12
2009 2 Comments Written by Evelyn McCormack

I’m thoroughly impressed by so much out there on the web, but the newest addition to my “must-visit” list is Remix America, a video mashup website with an educational twist. Here’s what Remix America says about itself:

This country is a remix, it’s what we do. What did Jefferson and Paine and Adams do but mashup history, take a little from the Magna Carta, a little from John Locke, and a whole lot of rebellion. Now, thanks to the web and digital technology, everyone can join in. This is a unique moment in our history — We can rediscover the promise of the Declaration of Independence next to the music of Louis Armstrong next to the beats of the Beastie Boys and clips of our candidates talking about “Changes.” Every one of us can own our best expressions of liberty, democracy and freedom, remix them as they see fit, and share them with the world.

RemixAmerica.org is a multi-partisan, non-profit website that uses digital technology to give everyone the chance to own the words, the music, the images and sounds of America in digital form; to remix those expressions and ideas with their own; and to send the products of our community’s creativity out to the world… where others will come back to us and start it all over again…

Basically, Remix America, the brainchild of producer/philanthropist Norman Lear, wants to “change the National conversation” by offering a long list of historical videos, “America Then,” with a long list of more current videos, “America Now,” and offers anyone with the skills to use bits and pieces of those videos to create their own mashups that say something about this good country of ours. This is a must for classrooms, professors, teachers and technology directors. There’s a lesson around every corner on this website. Here’s just a sample, a remix from member WreckandSalvage. It’s a mashup of two months’ worth of Good Morning America snippets that somehow is an interesting take in the state or our country, the media and more:
video platformvideo managementvideo solutionsfree video player

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Immaculate Reception — Vatican Goes Video

Jan24
2009 3 Comments Written by Evelyn McCormack
VATICAN CITY, VATICAN - JANUARY 08: Pope Bene...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

OK, so maybe I shouldn’t be sacriligious about this.

But you have to admit, it’s pretty Web 2.0-cool when the Vatican launches its own YouTube channel, and that’s exactly what happened on Friday. Pope Benedict XVI joined President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II in launching his own channel, the latest effort by the folks in Rome to reach out to the digital generation. (It probably won’t work on my college-age kids, however.)

At a Vatican news conference, an executive of Google Inc., parent company of YouTube, joined with the Catholic clergy to announce that the Vatican had posted its first 12 videos on the pope’s new YouTube channel. The Church hopes to publish three new videos each day.

“This is in particular directed towards the young, but not exclusively,” said Father Federico Lombardi, director of the press office of the Holy See. “This is a step toward better communication. The pope encouraged us to adopt new ways of communication in order to reach out to the people who are interested in the pope’s message.”

Initially, the new YouTube channel will post videos in four languages — Italian, English, German and Spanish — and more languages will be added later.

Way to go, Ben!

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Posted in collaborating, Communications, google, Internet, Social Media, social networking, Web 2.0, youtube - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Thinking of Not Voting? Google Says Think Again.

Nov01
2008 1 Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack

OK, so while I sift through the dozens of Obama emails I’ve received today asking for my help calling voters in one last push, Google has done another great video meant to encourage anyone out there who still might be apathetic about voting (could there be people like this?) to get out there and pull the lever in the most exciting landmark election I can remember.
Again, they’ve called on well-known faces (and some apparent help from Steven Spielberg) to make a fun, well-paced video that’s the sequel to the “Don’t Vote” video released earlier. Check out the latest installment here, and tell me that Sacha Baron Cohen doesn’t crack you up:

Happy voting. I hope to see you there on Tuesday.

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Posted in google, Internet, Uncategorized, Voting, youtube - Tagged , , , , , , ,

Don't Know Where to Vote? Ask Google

Oct26
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack

While working on a Hubpages article tonight called “10 Ways to Protect Your Vote,” I stumbled across Google Vote, the latest foray by Google into making our lives easier.  The site allows anyone with the basic questions about voting — who, what, when and where — can discover the answers to their questions with this handy little tool.

Google notes that of the people who failed to vote in the last presidential elections, 10 percent said the reason was that they did not know where to cast their ballots. Now, thanks to the wisdom and foresight of Google, there are no more excuses. Think back to 2000 and even 2004, now think about how much the Web is having an impact not only on the presidential election, but in our knowledge of the candidates, the issues and the controversies.

Here’s the quick tutorial Google provides for using Google Vote:

watch?v=QUn0hMIMy5M

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Invisible Girls

Oct22
2008 Leave a Comment Written by Evelyn McCormack
Two girls smiling.

Image via Wikipedia

My daughter is about to step into young womanhood, frantically working through her final year at Loyola College in Baltimore, embarking on a nerve-wracking internship with an investment bank, and shopping with her Mom this weekend for business clothes required for a young woman on the cusp.
She’s gorgeous, smart and hard-working. But she’s also lucky, living in a country and society where the efforts of young women are valued and encouraged. Since I’ve been on a social change kick these days, I recently stumbled across a website with good intentions aimed at girls ages 15 to 24 who aren’t as lucky as my daughter. The Girl Effect is dedicated to improving the lives of young girls in our world, particularly those in developing countries. Browsing through the site is a humbling experience.

Here’s what The Girl Effect says:

Girls living in poverty are uniquely capable of creating a better future. But when a girl reaches adolescence, she reaches a crossroads. Things can go one of two ways for her — and for everyone around her.

Among other things, The Girl Effect Fact Sheet lists some disturbing statistics about girls living in developing countries:

1. More than 600 million girls live in developing countries.
2. One-quarter of girls in developing countries are not in school.
3. One girl in seven in developing countries marries before the age of 15.
4. Medical complications from pregnancy are the leading cause of death among girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide.
5. 75 percent of 15- to 24-year-olds living with HIV in Africa are female.
6. When a girl in a developing country receives seven or more years of education, she marries 4 years later and has 2.2 fewer children.

You can donate money to Girl Effect, publicize its efforts (particularly on your website or blog), join its FaceBook page, and simply learn more about the imperiled future of girls on our planet.

You might want to begin by watching the Girl Effect video here.

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