Most of you are familiar with the information we provide for parents and professionals working with struggling teens on our website www.strugglingteens.com. This has been the anchor of our publishing for the last ten years. Previously, we had focused on our print newsletter but about ten years ago we shifted to the web and hardly do any print publishing anymore.
The most recent development in the Internet is what is called the Social Media which has started to dominate the Internet for the last couple of years. Although our web site continues to be the anchor of all our publishing, Woodbury Reports is using the Social Media and the Internet to expand the reach of what we have already been doing with our web page, and also to expand in providing additional information to help parents and child care professionals. The following are the various places you can find us. Each has a little different function and some provide additional information to what you will find on our web site that can be useful to parents looking for options for their children and to professionals wanting to stay updated on what is happening in the network of private parent-choice residential schools and programs. Although some of our sites are not technically part of what is called Social Media, this lists the other places we are providing as much information as we can regarding struggling teens.
Scoop.it is currently the hub of our activities on Social Media. Scoop.it is a leading social curation publishing platform provided as a solution to the overwhelming amount of information on the Internet. The idea is that the amount of information on the Internet is so overwhelming that humans have to sift through it and collect (curate) that which is of good quality and pertinent to a particular topic. The result is a graphically pleasing magazine format site bringing together in one place topic pertinent articles.
We have two main scoop.it topics. One is our
Week-in-Review which brings together everything we publish on our web site plus any additional articles we find on the web relating to the schools and programs we normally work with. This site has just been leveled up to Gold status by scoop.it.
The second is our
News and Views, an idea we used to do in our print newsletter years ago. This consists of non-network articles of substance that might be helpful to those looking for information of interest to both parents and professionals working with struggling teens. Due to the amount of people passing on the articles to their own sites, commenting on articles and the amount of traffic, the News and Views site has been leveled up to gold status as well, for the last two months by scoop.it. I can guarantee that every article included in both sites are quality and appealed to me as having some worthwhile information. The purpose is to help the interested person avoid links that have nothing new to say so they can spend their time on the articles with substance.
Linkedin is a very successful site devoted to interactions for all professionals. Our professional Linkedin site,
Struggling Teens, has attracted a lot of substantive interactions and discussions. Thought and factual pieces go onto our discussion site here and there have been numerous extended discussions and sharing of information from many people I know only through seeing their posts there. As of today, there are 1,104 members registered for our page.
Facebook.com is perhaps the best known and active social media site currently. Our site,
Places for Struggling Teens, has links to all the stories on our web site as well as additional information such as happy birthday wishes to all our colleagues having birthdays that week and other items of interest. There is a lot of chat potential that isn't yet being fully taken advantage of here. Currently this page has 527 likes.
Twitter is a micro blog limited to 140 characters each tweet. For us, the headline for every article that goes on our web site plus all the News & Views articles on scoop.it goes onto our twitter stream. I've established some important contacts who are interested in our network of private parent-choice residential schools and programs through twitter. Regarding its reach, today as I write we have 8,197 followers.
Pinterest is perhaps the fastest growing Social Media site on the Internet. It is visually oriented and emphasizes pictures. On it we have an increasing number of photos of visitors to our office with their pictures taken by our front yard sign matching the scrapbook of those pictures we have on our office wall. Also, pictures and quotes from our Internet Radio Talk show guests, visit reports, book reviews, parenting and kid jokes and more, with corresponding links to our web site for the full stories. Of course the emphasis is on the visual through pictures and graphics and this site is maintained by my in office assistant Laura Morton.
LATalkRadio.com is an innovative voice in the growing field of Internet Talk Radio. Patterned after regular AM radio talk shows, it is available exclusively on the Internet. I have been broadcasting hour long interviews weekly for two years with the title "Parent Choices for Struggling Teens," on a wide variety of young people subjects with experts in their fields. The last statistics I've received show monthly downloads of 12,000, which indicates the average show will receive 3,000 downloads. The numbers are steadily increasing and all shows are available for streaming and downloading on both LATalkRadio and iTunes and our strugglingteens.com website.
Google + although google+ has been around for some time, the buzz on the Internet is that it is finally taking off and is rapidly growing. We are emphasizing our "thought" pieces here hoping that it will encourage discussions that compare perspectives on the ideas presented.
Amazon.com is perhaps the largest book-seller in the world. We are in the process of converting our "Parent Empowerment Handbook" to amazon.com digital books. The Handbook is a collection of related essays and basic information about the residential schools and programs for struggling youth that have the best reputations among picky professional Independent Educational Consultants. Our first publication in the series was in 1993 and we have continued to update and improve it ever since. This 22nd edition, published in 2013, is being made available on amazon.com in a series of small eBooks and hopefully culminating in bringing all together in one large edition. Currently the first three segments are available and more will be available as we continue the updating and conversion process.
As you already know, what makes it possible for us to continue our work is the advertising on our
strugglingteens.com web site. If you are interested in having us help you get the word out about your services, school or program, we have several options in advertising that are available and we will be happy to discuss any options that might put you on one of our other outlets, in addition to our website, on a regular basis