Social media isn’t just for students anymore. Some schools are utilizing Facebook, Twitter and blogs to keep in touch with parents, community members and alumni. Since it is easier to reach these constituents where they are instead of getting them to visit the school websites.

“It’s what the kids and parents are at home with, and it’s really important to be able to meet them where they are,” says Marlene Nesary, a spokeswoman International Society for Technology in Education, an Eugene, OR based nonprofit group that supports the use of information technology in learning.

Schools are realizing that the simplicity of social media status updates and opening up two-way communication are real and relationship-building benefits that social media platforms provide.

“If you can read a blog and can see pictures and watch video clips, all of a sudden you have some insight into what’s going on,” says Adrian Murphy the teacher at Green Acres in Rockville, MD that is responsible for the school’s new blog. “You’ve been invited to the conversation, and you can participate on your time.”

Reading a blog about interesting goings-on with the students and school can take as little as a minute or two, but getting parents to visit the school for a parent-teacher conference is very time-consuming. The instant and always-on nature of social media enables better, more consistent communication while preserving the precious commodity of time.

To follow up on my last blog post and illustrate just how much strangers now influence our opinions and decisions, I thought I’d post some revealing findings about the importance of worldwide input via social media.

In Universal McCann’s recent report, “When did we start trusting strangers?” in the “Proliferation of influencer channels” section, it is posited that the web is encouraging trust among strangers the world over. This trend does not correlate with the societal assumption that strangers are out to get us. Rather, we see the web as an equalizer; a readily accessible platform for expression of all peoples. Tapping into that global authority expands our knowledge boundaries and allows us to shape our opinions based on the widest range of (assumably) unbiased, unsolicited and candid information. If knowledge is power, then it seems that we’re craving the power of that collective voice so much that we now hold stranger’s opinions in nearly as high a regard as the people we personally know.

• We trust strangers online almost as much as face to face recommendation
• The top four trusted forms of recommendation are all direct conversation -
• significantly two of these are now on internet channels: email and Instant Messenger
• We would much rather trust a stranger than a celebrity, by a long way
• We trust a stranger over any paid-for communications or advertising
• We trust a stranger more in a regulated environment like reviews in a retail site such as Amazon or an auction site like eBay
• Blogs are becoming a trusted form of opinion, blogs from people you know rank at number 7 and those by from professionals or micropublishers, number 15.
• Blogs are almost as trusted as their written word counterparts, magazines and newspapers
• Not everything online is trusted: emails from companies are only marginally more trusted than celebrities

(Source: “When did we start trusting strangers?” page 35.)

Those in our “strangers” sphere might not be our BFF just yet, but from the looks of this report and others cropping up weekly, it seems that they’re quickly becoming PGF (pretty good friends).

When you’re looking to purchase, what mechanisms drive your opinion and finally form your decision? As media changes, so do the channels that we rely on for information and the weight we give to those channels.

Word-of-mouth has always been a major influencer, with friends and family topping the trusted list. But it is the advice from strangers with experience in what we’re seeking that has nearly doubled in value in the past 10 years.

Other influentials include teachers, religious leaders and then media such as newspapers, magazines, radio personalities, TV news reporters, followed by bloggers, advertising and finally, telemarketers (from eMarketer’s chart, “Trusted Sources of Information according to US Consumers, 1997 & 2007″). But a revolution is well under way: we now trust the opinions of strangers whose material we read or view online as much as our friends!

So when did strangers become such a heavy influencer of our decisions? The boom of social media has given us access to billions of ratings, reviews, videos, blogs and micro-blogs, from people we don’t personally know. This state of affairs has been referred to as the “democratization of influence to the masses.”  This is a serious call-to-action for all marketers. Social media is now key in our hierarchical decision-making processes and must be recognized as a tool to meet your audience on the new communication grounds.

So how do we come to trust Stranger X’s opinion more than Stranger Y and Z? What strangers have to say is obviously important, but perhaps as important is strangers’ ability to identify with us that makes the difference.  As we look at avatars, read profiles, skim comments and blogs and view video clips, we look for clues that help us decide whether this is an opinion we’d trust. It might be abstract, but it’s the little things that influence whether we identify with that someone in one way or another.

It might be their work or life experience, notoriety, social life, family situation, appearance, personality or their style of communication that help form our “online” opinion of these strangers. As we gather those clues, we filter them through our own prisms of experience and knowledge. Does their opinion add up? Can we supplement our knowledge base with the views expressed by Stranger X? We’ll count or discount these influencing factors, and move onto the next review, comment, tweet, chat message, email or video until we’ve reached our own decision-making comfort level. And, we’ll add in a dash of traditional media opinion if applicable, and wrap it all up into our defendable decision.

You may be a little ahead or a little behind this curve, but the reality remains that the opinion of the masses is increasingly important in our lives. Its wise to join the conversation but don’t jump in without some preparation.  Transparency and good user experience are essential ingredients if your goal is successful viral marketing. Consumers want to know what makes your company tick, they want to see the faces behind the image and most importantly, they want a great product or service.

The social media hype continues and is enticing companies of every shape and size to dabble in creating new networks. To facilitate the craze, dozens of open source social networking platforms have launched. Jeremiah Owyyang’s blog lists over 60 brandable software platforms that can plug into your existing domain, allowing you to create your very own social network.  But should any company build a social network?

In a Deloitte study of 100 businesses with online communities, Ed Moran found that 35% of these communities have less than 100 members and less than 25% have 1000 members. 6% of the businesses studied spent over $1 million on their social networks. Sadly, all too many fail at their attempts to connect customers to their brand because instead of focusing on the community itself, businesses are focusing on the value that social community could provide for their business.

Despite the failures, there are definitely industries that DO have ready-made communities with well-established brand alliance, and have a greater chance of building successful online communities. These verticals might include: local television networks (daily news watchers), radio (listening audiences), niche local communities (apartment renters, child-safe search) and education (school districts, private schools, universities).

Clark County School District, the 5th largest school district in the nation with nearly 300,000 students, was a few years back, reportedly the largest user of bandwidth in the Las Vegas valley. Schools are instant communities – not just in the “will you be my friend” sense of students, but in the student to teacher, student to parent and teacher to parent and relationships. Because they already have distinguishable groups in these necessary and long-standing relationships, Clark County can foster those relationships through a community network, which they’ve begun to explore with the CCSD website.  Feedback mechanisms aren’t yet extant, but Homework Hotline, a public television program, gives students an outlet during the week to call in and ask teachers their tough homework assignment questions. Their content management system, my.CCSD.net reach the three main constituents in these ways: 1) teachers can create personalized websites to communicate with students and parents; 2) students can access to homework resources and assignments; 3) parents can locate their children’s classroom and assignment information online without involving the child or teachers. A cursory look at some teacher sites didn’t provide a lot in the way of content or personalization, but it is summer after all – the start of the school year should light this online community back up.

Morals of the story:

• If you don’t have a pre-existing community, don’t assume that you can create one (and don’t spend a lot of money trying to create one).
• If you do have a pre-existing community (and they already visit your website regularly), focus on the value that your social network will provide to your users.

If ever there was a time to engage and reach out to your customers, it’s now. There are so many ways of letting your good customer practices shine. Yes, social media and customer-centric practices can be uncomfortable to step into, but the end product can mean loyal customer partners for life.

Take in this real-life story about a company with heart – and get some inspiration for your own sincerely driven efforts to positively impact the lives of your customers. Zappos’ uncalled for sympathy, as reported by Zaz Lamarr in her personal blog, “Writing, Cooking, Life,” has sparked a lot of publicity online. We doubt that was the end intention of Zappos, but rather that it was a random act of kindness. There were people at the company thinking from the heart rather than the head who went beyond the rules to let a customer know they really care.

I Heart Zappos

I really do.

One bright, extraordinary note in all of the sad stuff of the last few weeks - in May we had ordered several pairs of shoes from Zappos for my mom. She’d lost a lot of weight, and her old shoes were all too big. She had a whole new wardrobe of clothes in pretty colors, that fit, so I wanted her to have some pretty shoes that fit, too, when I took her up to Oregon to stay where her sister is. Out of seven pairs, only two fit. Not bad considering she’d never been this thin, so I was winging it, and the return shipping is free.

The rest were here waiting to be returned. Because of various circumstances - lost label, my mom being hospitalized and me being away, the shoes were never sent back. There’s a time limit on the return of 15 days. Remember this. When you do a return to them, they pay the shipping, but you have to get the shoes to UPS yourself. Remember this, also.

When I came home this last time, I had an email from Zappos asking about the shoes, since they hadn’t received them. I was just back and not ready to deal with that, so I replied that my mom had died but that I’d send the shoes as soon as I could. They emailed back that they had arranged with UPS to pick up the shoes, so I wouldn’t have to take the time to do it myself. I was so touched. That’s going against corporate policy.

Yesterday, when I came home from town, a florist delivery man was just leaving. It was a beautiful arrangement in a basket with white lilies and roses and carnations. Big and lush and fragrant. I opened the card, and it was from Zappos. I burst into tears. I’m a sucker for kindness, and if that isn’t one of the nicest things I’ve ever had happen to me, I don’t know what is. So…

IF YOU BUY SHOES ONLINE, GET THEM FROM ZAPPOS.

With hearts like theirs, you know they’re good to do business with.

You’ve inspired us all, Zappos. We encourage all companies to think outside the sometimes stuffy lines of corporate-to-consumer relations and think like a human, with heart.