Introduction

TESOL Colombia’s primary goal, since its foundation in 2015, has been to serve as a meeting point for all stakeholders in the field of English Language Teaching (ELT), Teaching English as a Foreign Language, or Teaching English as a Second Language at all levels, throughout Colombia. It seeks to foster career development and professional cooperation and to promote high-quality academic standards and research in ELT, as well as all other matters related to the teaching and learning English for speakers of other languages. It promotes the exchange of ideas and resources, both nationally and internationally, within a framework of mutual respect among all actors, students, teachers, administrators, government and private entities and educational institutions involved in ELT. To ensure its primary goal is achieved, communication across the board is paramount, and social media sites (SMSs) have played a key role in keeping both members and non-members connected and up to date.

Educational Scenario in Colombia

Colombia’s educational system is quite diverse, in part due to the country’s geography, which creates challenges in bringing teachers from different regions together face-to-face. Additionally, although most private schools place their preschool/primary/secondary levels together in the same area/buildings (meaning that teachers at such schools often teach at all three levels), many public schools students are housed according to the different levels, (i.e., primary is separate from secondary) in terms of location, buildings, and staff. Moreover, instructors in higher education often work at two or three different universities or schools simultaneously. Thus, time, geography, and diverse working conditions in Colombia make it challenging to bring all the stakeholders together. This is why TESOL Colombia decided to focus on the use of digital communication channels to stay in touch with both members and non-members, not only to disseminate information but also to offer short, informal professional development opportunities by way of webinars.

Use of Social Media: Content Management

One of the challenges for an organization using social media is the production of sufficient content across the board that is interesting to all its followers. Accordingly, TESOL Colombia uses a social media matrix (Appendix A) that specifies elements such as month, type of post, topic, date, link, and responsible for helping generate a constant and consistent flow of content to SMSs such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. These elements can be changed, according to the needs of the association, and as many volunteers as needed can be called upon to help generate content. This matrix is a shared document that can be hosted and accessed through services such as Google Docs, OneDrive, or Dropbox. Selecting the right tool is critical, but the general “rule of thumb” is to select an application or service that most or all of the collaborating members can already access to share and collaborate on documents, thereby decreasing the learning curve and facilitating collaboration.

Decisions do need to be made on who should have access to such a matrix, but another “rule of thumb” is that it should be accessible to any members who volunteer to generate new or recycled content - graphic designers to put together text, artwork, videos, etc. and proofreader(s). As TESOL Colombia is an association focused on language, there can be no excuses for misspelled words, grammatical errors, and the like, meaning that it is crucial to have pre-planned posts that can be checked by proofreaders. This last role—of proofreading—is crucial, but voluntary, and so could be rotated periodically (by month, semester, etc.), depending on the number of posts that need to be disseminated (dates closer to conferences, workshops, registrations, etc.).

Use of Social Media in TESOL Colombia

SMS have made their ways into the homes and lives of many. At the time of writing, there are more than 34 million active users of social media in Colombia alone. Popular SMSs in Colombia include Facebook (93%), Twitter (73%), Instagram (73%), and YouTube (96%) (Statcounter, 2019). The growing use of SMSs, combined with multimodal communication, make them an attractive way to stay in touch with Colombian ELT teachers, as well as content teachers teaching in English. In Colombia, the main subject areas taught in English include math, science, biology, geography, social studies, and literary arts.

Twitter @tesolcolombia

The Twitter account @tesolcolombia was the first SMS account created for TESOL Colombia in 2015. The @tesolcolombia account is used to disseminate general information at both the national and international level, as well as to provide links to webinars, workshops, and conferences. To help maintain a consistent online presence, the same frequently used hashtags are used to connect all the tweets; some of these are #tesolcolombia, #tesolcolombia2019, #innovationinELT, and #tesolcolombiainnovationinELT. These hashtags are also used in posts from the personal accounts of TESOL Colombia board members, who also often post on the LinkedIn (40% of active users in Colombia) SMS to help disseminate information (Statcounter, 2019). Twitter provides a space to connect with the TESOL Colombia’s conferences (#tesolcolombia2019) and with colleagues in different geographical locations, as well as to collaborate and find support with/from other associations and practitioners.

Facebook TESOL Colombia

The TESOL Colombia Facebook “fan” page was initially created in 2019 to increase readership and reach a broader base of teachers both nationally and internationally. According to statistics, (Statcounter, 2019; Statista, 2019), approximately 79.35% of the Colombian population are active users of Facebook, as are about 80.11% of the rest of the population throughout South America. At present, there are 474 subscribers to the TESOL Colombia Facebook page, which has received 484 likes thus far. More than 50% of visitors access the page via mobile devices (Statcounter Global Stats, 2019), meaning that access to content disseminated from this page is not defined by a schedule but can happen anytime or anywhere. Discussion of ELT on the page has increased over time, especially in the contexts of professional development opportunities, job vacancies, and updates on the association’s annual conference. There are currently 3 volunteers from the association who help keep the page up to date. They post on a weekly basis, with the posts pre-planned and scheduled so that not everything goes out at the same time on the same day.

TESOL Colombia also cross-posts from its Facebook page to other relevant Facebook pages to attract new audiences. As many of TESOL Colombia’s board members also are or have been conference chairs or members of other academic committees, they often have access to and permission to communicate through these other pages (Appendix B) to share and disseminate information, to promote dialogue, and to create discussion on ELT matters.

Instagram @tesolcolombia

Instagram, presently the fastest growing SMS (Insights, 2019), is the latest addition to the TESOL Colombia social media portfolio. Although there was some internal debate over whether to open another SMS account, the facts ultimately spoke for themselves: 70% of Colombian Instagram users are in the age ranges 18-24 (34%) and 25-34 (33%) (Statista, 2018). This is close to the most populous age range worldwide, 18-29, which makes Instagram an important tool for attracting a new group of subscribers. Visual messages are becoming much more popular for users nowadays. However, Instagram has provided additional options such as security of photos, growing hashtags -making it easier to follow conversations- and best of all, little or no reading, where users get a chance to enjoy the pictures and videos. As TESOL Colombia’s Instagram account is (at the time of writing) less than 6 months old, with only 251 users, the association is still in the process of generating content conducive for Instagram’s core users; i.e., images and messages, short videos, while using the same hashtags as for Twitter to maintain top-of-mind awareness for the TESOL Colombia brand.

YouTube @tesolclombia

TESOL Colombia’s social media plan would not be complete without YouTube. The association opened up a YouTube channel at the same time as Twitter. While the YouTube channel has fewer followers, it has lots of content (86 edited, original videos). There are fewer volunteers to produce or work with videos, and this work also demands more time in terms of editing. Nevertheless, videos are an excellent tool to distribute your message across multiple SMSs. Videos can be used to introduce board members, send announcements, provide excerpts from conferences and workshops, and present interviews with conference attendees, amongst other purposes.

Bitly

Bitly is a link management platform that allows you to shorten, share, manage, and analyze your links. This site has helped TESOL Colombia track the progress of its online digital campaigns. The information provided by Bitly helps the association’s social media volunteers oversee each digital campaign more effectivity, using data that attests to the number of clicks, the (country of) origin of each click, and time of each click. This helps the association better understand its audience so as to make changes to future campaigns, content, and posting times.

Conclusion

Overall, the use of social media has helped TESOL Colombia connect members, build readerships, and continue informing and promoting academic dialogue within the Colombian ELT community. There are various ways that social media can be used within a language association. However, if an account for a given SMS is created, it must be maintained; otherwise, all the work invested in increasing readership and establishing a presence will quickly diminish, along with the attendant loss of face validity. Choosing the right social media platform can be a challenge, but as Burgess, Marwick, Poell, Dijck, and Poell (2017, p. 3) suggest, “go where your audience is.” Pick just two or three platforms that you can maintain successfully, instead of creating many and failing your audience by not having enough content for them all (Alhabash & Ma, 2017). Cross-posting and -feeding into other successful social media accounts—or even looking at other language associations, professional development pages—can provide you with ideas about what kinds of content to produce. In any event, the sky is the limit, and there are SMSs that cater to all. It is up to you to find the right mix.

References

Alhabash, S., & Ma, M. (2017). A Tale of Four Platforms: Motivations and Uses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat Among College Students? Social Media and Society, 3(1). http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2056305117691544

Burgess, J., Marwick, A., Poell, T., Dijck, J. van., & Poell, T. (2017). Social Media Platforms and Education. The SAGE Handbook of Social Media, (June), 579–591. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473984066.n33

Insights, S. (2019). Global social media research summary 2019.Smart Insights (Marketing Intelligence) Ltd. Retrieved from https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/

Statcounter. (2019). Social Media Stats Colombia June 2018 to June 2019 |Statistic. Statcounter Global Stats. Retrieved from http://gs.statcounter.com/social-media-stats/all/colombia

Statista. (2018). Global social media ranking 2018 | Statistic.Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/

Statista. (2019). Distribution of Facebook users in Colombia as of December 2018, by age group |Statistic. Statista. Retrieved from https://www.statista.com/statistics/866304/facebook-user-share-colombia-age/

Biodata:

Jermaine S. McDougald is Director of Faculty and Research at the Department of Foreign Languages & Cultures, Universidad de La Sabana (Bogotá, Colombia). Currently the Editor of the Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning and Liaison Officer and Co-Founder of TESOL Colombia Association. His research interest includes CLIL, YLs, teacher training, bilingual, and international education.

Appendix B: Summary of TESOL Colombia SMS and users.

Appendix A: TESOL Colombia SMS Matrix