A DISGRUNTLED COMMUNITY member is consistently filling the electronic airwaves with misinformation about you personally and your school district. What do you do as they attack your integrity, your family members or your district’s reputation with random misinformation or half-truths to develop their own incorrect storyline?

Should you respond or should you let it go? Is there a way to stay in front of social media so it does not overtake your school district? What do you do if your district doesn’t employ a communication coordinator?

After 20 years in the superintendent chair in three districts, I contend the drip, drip, drip of misinformation or unfair criticism from community members is more dangerous to your school district than a single negative event that attracts public attention but usually is gone from view by the following day’s news cycle.

Whether you are a rural, suburban or urban superintendent, you should be concerned about the spread of misinformation and actively engaged in your district’s social media narrative. If you are not telling the story of your schools and the decisions to support them, someone else is telling those stories for you and about you.

Pro-Active Measures

Here are five strategies, drawn from my experiences, for becoming an active and pro-active proponent of your schools through social media use.

»Pick one social media platform and become really good at it. I use Twitter as it is a more difficult platform for someone else to interrupt and to carry on negative conversations. It also is the easiest to use for quick posts as a busy administrator. You (or someone you designate on your staff) should keep an eye on other platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, but if your main account has strong content, others will show up to follow your storyline.

»Tell the district story every day. Use your primary tool for promoting highlights of the system’s excellence and showcasing employees, students, programs and supportive businesses and other partners.

»Teach others. Encourage other positive Twitter users in your district to embrace the goal of creating a positive district narrative. Offer to teach a training session at district-run technology events, conferences or staff meetings on how to use social media to maintain a positive district storyline. If you can create a volume of positive posts, you can overwhelm the negative. This strategy also works on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

»Visit your schools, classrooms and district events and use these opportunities for positive posts. I visit more than 500 classrooms during the school year and note the interactions through my tweets. You will pick up more staff, students and community members as followers to your account with this approach as everyone tied to K-12 education likes to see their students on social media doing something productive.

»Engage negative posts with positive, corrected information — but only when necessary. Letting something lie may be a better response than the superintendent giving it credibility. If you have done your homework, others will respond to a misinformed claim with the correct information. Do not be afraid to ask staff and community members to respond with the facts to provide a different perspective.

Gut Guidance

Investing ahead of the inevitable can be helpful. By encouraging community members, educators and school board members to pro-mote the positive developments in your district, you will be prepared when the misinformation surfaces. Having a full and positive social media “bank account” also allows you to avoid feeling compelled to respond to every drip, drip, drip of negative information from particular community members, thereby saving your responses for the most critical situations.

The best social media advice I can give anyone: If your gut is telling you not to push the “send” button, then don’t. Check with a colleague before responding to a misinformed critic as you cannot rewind a misguided post. It lives forever in the social media stratosphere.