I was sitting in a class called Organization and Supervision of Child Care Centers, and it hit me: when you start a new company, there needs to be a plan on how to inform others about what you stand for and what you do. Essentially, you need to know how you will make your name known to the public. One of the easiest ways to advertise your services is through a social media presence. Then it occurred to me — if we think about NSCS as our company, social media would be the perfect platform to keep all our members, potential members, parents, family, and everyone else up to date on what our chapters do.
Making yourself known on social media is crucial to expanding the population that hears (1) what NSCS is all about and (2) what your chapter does. I don’t know how your campuses are, but I’ve met quite a few students over the years who received invitations to join NSCS but thought we were a scam that wanted to take their money through the lifetime membership fee. Another issue I found is that some people felt like they didn’t know when anything was happening. One of my friends really wanted to be involved with NSCS after being inducted a few years ago, but since she did not see many posts or receive emails often, she joined a different organization to be involved with instead. One of her friends was inducted the same year and missed the induction ceremony. She tried contacting the officers to get her member pin and find out about events, but no one emailed her back. All of these situations distance members and create the potential for a negative view on your chapter.
We can try to combat these issues through tabling in high-traffic areas on our campuses and through holding or sponsoring events, but social media is equally important. Unfortunately, social media can be easily forgotten as a way to update anyone who wants to know about your chapter.
Here are some tips I have found to work for me when running our social media and interacting with other pages:
1. Make Facebook Events
I know I’m not the first one to admit that I can forget to post constant reminders for members about meetings and other events. I decided that creating events on our page for all our meetings and social events at the beginning of the semester would help members to find locations and times more easily in case they could not find an email or piece of paper with the information.
2. Create Themes
I think this helps to remind us to post consistently every week. It might even get more members to look at our pages because they know we have a certain theme or post that happens every week. When I look at other organizations, many have reoccurring posts like “Man Crush Monday,” “Woman Crush Wednesday,” “Motivation Monday,” and more. You could even create your own theme or hashtag to use. For my school, we have Relay for Life coming up soon, so I want to start a day devoted to posting about our NSCS team and what RFL means to our members.
3. Albums are Everything
Do you ever sit on Facebook and scroll through your photos? What about photos of organizations you’re in? On our page, we created an album for our current officers, with a small bio for each of them. We made other albums for events during the semesters; we showcase Integrity Week and our Induction Ceremony. Our Induction Ceremony album had individual pictures uploaded for each member inducted that day. If your albums are updated and new ones are always being created, it helps to show your chapter is involved with its members and the campus.
Cassandra Milham is a Child Development major and Family Development minor at the University of Akron originally from Franklin, Ohio. She aims to help children and families foster resilience in difficult life situations and to advocate for proper development in early childhood.