Grandma's House Day Care CenterAs an avid user of social media, I look for all sorts of reasons to incorporate it into my everyday life.  In fact, while at a carnival at our daycare provider’s facility a week ago, I was checking in via Foursquare and the father of one of my son’s friends said, “Wouldn’t be Michelle if she wasn’t doing something social media-related on her phone!”  I chuckled at the time but have given it more thought since then.  Yes, I like to “check in” on the rare occasions I drop off or pick up my boys from daycare. (I was the mayor for a while but then when my husband started taking over drop off and pick up, I lost my Mayorship – not that it got me anything at daycare anyway. A discount on the cost or a free day would’ve been nice! But I digress.)  Wouldn’t it be great if the daycare center was more active on social media? I mean, don’t they want to attract new parents to their center to provide child care services?  And as a working mother, it would be great to see throughout the day what my kids are doing, like on Facebook (pictures of field trips!).

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized how dangerous this idea would be. Say the class is on a field trip and the teacher “checks in”.  That lets every pervert and sicko out there know where a group of small children is currently located.  Ditto for promoting center events like the Summer Picnic or the aforementioned carnival.

So perhaps the option is a closed community, accessible by password only and parents have to be invited?  Cool idea but I realize daycare centers are strapped for resources, this wouldn’t be in their budget (the cost to build and maintain) and the teachers really don’t have time during the day to do live updates of events/activities.

So what’s the answer then?  How to businesses like this become active on social media to attract new families and keep parents of existing “students” up to date on activities and happenings?  I will say my daycare center took a step in the right direction when they offered the ability to receive the monthly newsletter via email instead of hard copy (which we took advantage of). So what’s the next step for them?  Any ideas?