The internet is full of cats. They are everywhere and they get shared on every social media platform with regularity.
There is:
- the famous shocked cat
- the equally famous angry cat
- and the even more famous (and incredibly wealthy) grumpy cat.
I myself contributed to the cat sharing phenomenon at a session I recently delivered for NEYTCO’s regional group in London on ‘social media for early years’.
@Lloyd_Razemba: @AstecEY Richard Duddy presenting @neytco. #eytalking #neytco 'Social Media is not just for cats' pic.twitter.com/qpLFCoXGic
— Lloyd Razemba (@Lloyd_Razemba) June 2, 2015
In mitigation, I was just trying to prove the power of social media – just as I’m doing now!
Additional free childcare news explosion twitter goes wild mayhem
As soon as the recent news about the impending increase in free childcare hours was announced, our @AstecEY twitter newsfeed went into a frenzy. Countless links came flying by as news and comments were shared across the early years sector and further afield. Content I managed to catch included:
Our CEO Neil Leitch spoke to ITV London yday about the 30-hour offer and the issue of funding. Watch the report here: http://t.co/sOkougtxgv
— Pre-school Learning (@Pre_schoolLA) May 28, 2015
Just talking to @annediamond @bbcberkshire about extension of childcare funding. @samgyimah joining in shortly #eytalking @NDNAtalk
— Sarah Steel (@nurserysarah) June 1, 2015
Quote from NEYTCO’s regional lead Jo Verrill @ceeda_uk in this @BBCBreakfast article. #childcare #Parenting https://t.co/I62f26LONe
— NEYTCO (@NEyTCO) June 1, 2015
That’s not all. The conversation is still going on and I have not heard one person mention a cat. Not one!
This shouldn’t really be a surprise. Many early years professionals and businesses are well past the point of dipping a toe into social media: they treat it as serious part of their marketing communications plan. Our sector even has several of its own hashtags to help us identify interesting content.
If you want to find early years news and peers to connect with, the popular and ever-useful #EYTalking is a great place to start.
When you connect with other people who provide valuable content, it tends to lead to more connections with even more people who provide equally valuable content. If you hang around the right places long enough, you won’t struggle to find content that doesn’t feature a cat. In fact, you will struggle to manage your news feed so that you can find the occasional cat.
What about the problem with rabbits?
When your newsfeed becomes populated with quality content, it can be easy to disappear down the rabbit hole by clicking the seemingly endless links until the day is gone. That will not make for the most productive day. However, that is a simple matter of discipline: your poor time management does not detract from the potential worth of a social media tool.
You could just as easily get lost in the darker pages of Hegel, but that doesn’t mean reading is worthless pursuit!
You do need to make sure that you receive value from your social media use and that does require a little thought.
Think > do > evaluate
If you’re considering using social media for your business, your thought process should start with your business objectives.
Think of your overall goals and how you can use all of the tools at your disposal to help you meet them.
The image to the left shows roughly the process I went through to sign up to NEYTCO.
They used a combination of offline and online methods to help me along my journey to eventual purchase. Your customer will have different needs and will no doubt require different methods. For example:
- a nursery may decide to use facebook to engage with parents – deepening relationships and improving the customer experience (see the Old Station Nursery group facebook page for a great example)
- a publication may use twitter to broadcast news stories or generate leads
- some of the practitioners at our nursery use Pinterest, an image sharing platform, for inspiration for activities and decorations, such as these
A benefit of using online tools is that you can (usually) access data to help you understand how effectively you use them. Make the most of measurement tools available and you’ll see exactly what value your chosen tool brings to your business.
Cats are a great place to start
If you’re starting out on your social media journey, I appreciate that all this talk of planning might overawe you. If you first want to find out what tools are available to you and how to use them, this simple approach will help you overcome your apprehension.
- Find the conversation – ask your colleagues and peers what tools they use and what for.
- Listen to the conversation – become familiar with the discussion and how people use the tools. (You could even set up an account for experimental use or ask someone to show you how they use it).
- Join the conversation – when you understand the etiquette and feel comfortable, throw yourself into the discussion.
If you’d like some help to get started or to use your existing tools more productively, please do get in touch. I’ll be more than happy to trade coffee for a masterclass – an hour spent teaching someone how to share cats on the internet is always an hour well spent!
Richard Duddy
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Thanks for introducing me Richard, I will be on the lookout for cats!
You don’t need to do much to find the cats tbh. They really are everywhere!