School Communications
Your school calendar can be the most valuable tool to connect with parents, so give your school calendars the attention they warrant.
We often think we know what our parents and community think—and sometimes we’re wrong. The only way to find out how people really feel is to ask the right questions. Consider surveys to improve your school communications.
With 2020 now behind us (thank goodness), it is time to address some of the issues left in its wake. For one thing, many schools have seen decreased enrollments, and since your sustainability is based on enrollment, it’s an issue you have to take seriously.
Looking for ways to enhance the online learning in your classrooms? Check out these tips!
Your school website content matters, especially how you say it. Get some tips for keeping it positive!
Tips for topics and strategies to create effective blog posts that will engage and convert.
Struggling to keep your website current? Find out how to improve school communications without overwhelming your busy staff.
If you've accepted the idea that a school blog can be beneficial, take the next step and add the power of storytelling to your blog articles. Here are some tips!
In the era of social distancing, you’ll need new tools, new approaches, and new processes to overcome the challenges schools face in internal communications, stakeholder engagement, and alternative learning delivery. Video conferencing has emerged as a key element of all three.
Emergency notification systems have become indispensable tools for school communication. Are you using yours effectively?
While schools across the country are shut down for various lengths of time and staff and students work remotely to ensure students continue to learn, administrative staff can focus on improving communications.
The moment you are in an emergency situation is not the time to prepare for an emergency situation. Prepare now for future emergency situations at your school.
You’re a principal or superintendent with no school in session, charged with continuing to communicate during a quarantine closure. What can you do to make this work? Check out the tips and resources to find out.
Learn why it is important to get in front of a crisis and when unable to do so, how to improve your messaging moving forward.
Would you like to improve your school’s newsletter? Are you intrigued by the idea of making it a pillar of your overall communication plan? Here are some helpful tips!
Why does getting the media to cover your school event seem like such a Herculean feat? It doesn’t have to be!
Effective school communication is essential to your school’s reputation, community support, and student success. Build your school communication plan using these simplified steps.
Use your school’s instructional videos and increase your public relations. Your students will learn better, resulting in healthy connections and more effective parent engagement. Find out how.
With so many communication avenues at our disposal, it is a miraculous time to be a school leader, but these avenues include pitfalls. Learn why hiring a communications coordinator for your school district might be a wise economical investment.
Parents are stressed, and like the “bad moms” of the movies, even the best moms and dads in your district act like “bad moms” at some point. So what is the most effective way your school can communicate with the majority of parents?
Are you a school board member, or do you know someone who is? Learn how the most effective governing board members help the schools they were elected to lead become more successful in meeting their goals.
The level of technological connectivity in today’s world is beyond anything we as digital immigrants have ever seen before. What can school leaders do to navigate these uncharted waters?
Your school and district websites are essential PR tools, but since they must reach a large audience that encompasses your entire community, they serve distinct purposes and functions. In contrast, the sole audience for teacher sites is current students and their families. You may ask, “Is a teacher website worth it for such a limited audience?” The answer is yes!
It’s the kind of news we never want to hear—a tragedy has struck. Unfortunately, in our world today, the news media daily reports the reality of violence, accidents, and death, and our schools are not immune.
Take a look at your school's communication strategies. Are you missing the point by maintaining the status quo?
Your school website and social media presence are public relations tools that help you build and nurture relationships with audiences that are already connected to you; a blog can do the same.
To be an effective educator, you must be a good communicator. To be a good communicator, you must break your messages down into their simplest form and change the way you talk about programs and educational systems. Let’s commit to replacing jargon with more relatable language and compelling, authentic stories.
Vacant expressions, glazed eyes, confusion—these are all classic side effects of “jargon monoxide” poisoning.
As academics and education professionals, there are terms and phrases that you use on a daily basis to which you possess a much deeper understanding than others outside educational circles.
As a parent in a busy family, one of my greatest struggles is getting the messages sent from schools. My children attend high school, junior high, elementary, and preschool, and staying au courant in our home is no small feat. So, if you can get my attention, you’re really doing something right.
Imagery is a timeless form of communication that engages audiences in various ways. Whether you recognize it yet or not, seeking to increase your use imagery as part of your school marketing is important, easy, and effective. Let’s look at the value of concrete imagery, such as pictures either on a printed page or screen
In today’s highly-connected world, it is more important than ever to establish trust. One of the main contributors to trust is creating a culture of transparency. To most of us, being transparent means you’re hiding nothing. You’re letting others look through a window into your world, throwing the blinds wide open.
Nearly every educator will agree that positive parent engagement improves a child’s educational outcome. Besides making common sense, many data-driven studies are proving what we all know intuitively.
A while back, our CEO, Bonnie Leedy, was invited to be a guest presenter at the annual conference for the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools (PARSS). We asked participating PARSS administrators to submit a story about a time they successfully shared what was going on at their schools with the community. We chose one lucky winner to receive a copy of the Marketing Your School toolkit.
What is effective school communication? Most people would acknowledge that it is critical to the success of our school, but it is a broad topic and difficult to pin down.
It sounds simple enough, right?
Merriam-Webster says it is “the interchange of thoughts or opinions.” I think the use of the word “interchange” is significant, as it indicates mutual give and take.
Blogging shouldn’t seem like a new fandangled idea any more, especially as you delve into your position as school marketer. You might be hearing about it in conference sessions, in articles about school social media impact, or from other education blogs.
The question school marketers should be asking themselves is, "to blog or not to blog?"
Standardized testing—do these two words raise your blood pressure? It seems as though the school year all comes down to testing, doesn’t it? For administrators, your school grade, your school reputation, your school brand, all rely heavily on the results of how students from your school perform on test days.
If you’ve been following our blog for any length of time, you know that we believe communication is at the heart of every school’s success. That includes your school reputation, public relations, school marketing, customer service, and crisis management. In each of these areas, without rock solid communication strategies in place, you risk losing control of the situation.
Back-to-school jitters aren’t just for students and teachers; administrators certainly get their share of the stress that comes along with that first day.
Have you ever walked into a crowded room where a hundred little conversations are taking place all at once? It sounds a little like a beehive buzzing, doesn’t it?
In school communications we don’t throw the term “marketing buzz” around much—although maybe we should.
It's summer. Are you enjoying the quiet hallways, catching up on paperwork, and working on your summer maintenance? Taking time off for some outdoor adventures on your bucket list?
Working in a school can be a tough job. It is also one of the most important roles in American society.
Would you like to improve your school's communication? Start with your school webmaster's role. Learn what would be ideal in a perfect world and how you can make that a reality in your school.
Now that you are headed into the second half of the school year, it’s a good time to refocus on how to best reach and engage parents in this new year.
You’ve worked hard all year long to build up a strong relationship with school families; if you want that relationship to remain strong, you have to nurture it.
The primary task of your school’s website is to facilitate effective communication. If done right, it can not only keep everyone informed, but it will improve morale and create staff, parent, and student enthusiasm for the school.
The primary task of your school’s website is to facilitate effective communication. If done right, it can not only keep everyone informed but will improve morale and create staff, parent, and student enthusiasm for the school.
Take note, today’s staff members want to be asked for feedback and to be heard.1 I think we also recognize that in addition to more frequent communication, how we communicate can mean the difference in how effective we are as leaders. This means better listening skills.
I’ve been preaching for years that content is king. I’ve written numerous articles espousing this recommendation. However, I’m kind of old-school and I actually read content—on the Web, in books, in ads, etc.