What to tweet and blog about?

[john4math]

A little background:

The site I'm working on, www.ixl.com, is a math practice site for pre-K through 8th grade.  Our content consists of math skills where we randomly generate math problems, grouped by grades and topics.  We have around 300 skills per grade.

The question:

We don't currently have a twitter feed, Facebook page, or a blog.  I'm working on setting these up, or at least a twitter feed and the Facebook page first.  I'm wondering, what kinds of things will we tweet about once I get a twitter feed set up?  What kinds of things should we be tweeting about?  Things like online education articles?  And articles about teaching math?  Do you guys think that would be compelling enough to get followers and make this productive for us?

Another question, how important do you think a blog is, compared to a twitter feed and Facebook page?  I was thinking it would be fun to set up a blog, and post math questions from the site 2x or 3x a week, as well as other content that could overlap with the twitter feed.

[RyanKent]

For content ideas, set up a news feed for yourself that is filtered for "teachers". I just read a story last night: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/20/why.quit.teacher/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Take recent news stories, add your experience, insight and commentary so the article will be helpful to your readers.

[firstconversion]

If your going social, you need to have something interesting to say. Having an opinion helps drive that conversation. Its easier to have an opinion on the politics of education than it is to have one on a maths problem

Maths questions target students, and Im with EGOL that it will more likely be parents who follow you but only if you provide value. I would look at the higher level  stuff, having an opinion on how maths is taught, the politics of maths and teaching, running competitions for maths stuff for their kids

I have to ask why you arent doing the freerice.com thing with it? big extra love & links from the community - work out how many grains of rice there are in a packet and you realise how cheap that type of thing is to do

[EGOL]

Another question, how important do you think a blog is, compared to a twitter feed and Facebook page?

I have a blog and each blog post automatically posts to FB and TW.  People who want to follow our blog then have access.  So, if you do the blog and share the feed you get the other two free.  Also, if other folks, such as homeschool parents or groups like your content they might republish your feed to their tribe.

I'm wondering, what kinds of things will we tweet blog about?

My bet is that your real following will be parents and tutors and teachers who steer kids to the practice site.  So I would post tips for them on teaching, motivation and making learning fun.