That’s a wrap. How quickly 2015 came and went! Now that the holidays are officially over, it’s time to get serious about New Year’s resolutions. I’m not going to talk about personal goals such as trying to lose weight or make more money.

I’m talking about goals for your social media efforts for your school.

Without goals, how do you know where you’re going? And how can you plan to celebrate once you’ve arrived?

You’ve likely heard the story, but I want to share it again. (Source – What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School, by Mark McCormack). In 1979, interviewers asked new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA program and found that:

• 84% had no specific goals at all
• 13% had goals but they were not on paper
• 3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them

In 1989, the interviewers revisited this same group of graduates. The results?

• The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all.
• Even more staggering, the 3% who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97% put together.

So, let’s take some time to write down your goals. Here are a handful of ideas you might add to your goal list:

• Grow our followers by 25%. New Auburn, the very first school #SocialSchool4EDU worked with, launched Facebook in April of 2014. In 2015 it grew nearly 30%. It went from 559 likes to 727 on Facebook. Figure out what your number is and then share that goal with your school. Your staff will help you reach it!
• Post at least 10 times per week This is more doable than you think! Creating some weekly features like #MotivationMonday, #TBT and a Teacher Tuesday that you can schedule in advance means that you only have 7 more things to share.
• Start an Instagram page Middle and high school students are very active on this social media channel. If you haven’t started an account, 2016 is your time! And if you need help, just ask. I can provide some guidance and if you need more, I have a customized video course to walk you through it.



• Add e-mail signatures for all staff Building a standardized e-mail signature for all your employees (and even your students), which includes social media links, could create tons of new followers of your school. The trick is to make your pages easy to find.
• Incorporate our Twitter feed on our website People don’t know what they are missing. But if you show them all the cool things you post on social media right on your website – you’ll grab more followers!

The list could go on for goals:

• Reach at least 2,000 people each week with Facebook posts
• Get an engagement rate of at least 20%
• Add five teachers who actively tweet from their classrooms
• Start a YouTube channel with a weekly or monthly video from our superintendent or principal
• Start a school blog with different classrooms sharing each week

The main thing is to pick one or two goals and share them with your school. You can’t do it alone. Share the goal and then update the progress at least monthly with your staff.

So what goal did you set? #Commit2016 and share it with us below. We’ll be your accountability partner and ask you how you did, come the end of the year!