S1 E32 It's Back to School Time- What's Your Comm Strategy?

Welcome to School Leader Soundbites, a podcast dedicated to empowering K-12 leaders with the latest insights and strategies in marketing and communications! Today, we are discussing: It’s Back To School Time – What’s Your Comm Strategy?

Tell them what to expect 

-Include your stakeholders (external audience) and parents (internal audience). 

-How will you be communicating to them- explain how you will communicate emergencies and non emergencies

-Make sure their contact info is updated

-Share where to find info that has been shared previously (in an archive)

Tell them where to go to get it 

-Make sure it’s crystal clear where certain information will be shared and how

-Make sure your website and social media stay updated with links and info

Feedback loops

-Make sure you do what you say you are going to do

-Let them know how you use their feedback, earn trust, not erode trust

Exceeding their expectations

-Give the baseline of what to expect, meet those expectations and then take it up one degree by exceeding those expectations

-Bonus content- Add a video to the post or go live and reward the community for tuning in with a call to action at the end to help you measure engagement

As you are starting the school year, if you are looking for a facilitator or need some help, head to veronicavsopher.com. If you want more info, please contact me or drop questions in the comments and be sure to share this episode with your colleagues! If you have any questions or suggestions for future topics, I'm here to listen. Thanks for tuning in to School Leader Soundbites.

*School Leader Soundbites* is your essential podcast for navigating the complex world of K-12 leadership with confidence and clarity. Hosted by Veronica V. Sopher, a 25-year veteran in school public relations, this podcast delivers actionable insights and innovative strategies to elevate your school's marketing and communications efforts. Veronica V. Sopher is the strategic designer behind several award-winning marketing campaigns and has crafted winning bond and tax rate communications plans. With extensive experience in crisis management—including handling weapons and deaths on campus, natural disasters, and polarized political landscapes—Veronica is an expert passionate about public education as the great equalizer. Join Veronica as she shares her expertise and offers practical tips that will optimize your leadership and support your district's goals. Whether you're looking to enhance community engagement, improve transparency, or turn feedback into actionable results, *School Leader Soundbites* provides the tools and knowledge you need to succeed.Sponsored by K12 Insight, this podcast is more than just a resource—it's a catalyst for meaningful change. Discover how K12 Insight’s solutions can strengthen relationships with parents, students, and staff, fostering a culture of trust and collaboration within your school community. Veronica is also available for consulting and public speaking, specializing in leadership development and executive coaching. Tune in and transform your leadership journey with insights that make a real difference.

Find me at: https://www.veronicavsopher.com/

Social: @VeronicaVSopher

*About Our Sponsor:* K12 Insight partners with schools and districts to build stronger relationships with parents, students, and staff. They believe trust is the foundation of successful education and offer solutions designed to foster engagement, promote transparency, and turn feedback into actionable results. Want to explore how Let's Talk and K12 Insight's comprehensive suite of customer service solutions can amplify your school's efforts and st

Transcript

Veronica Sopher: 0:07

Hello, hello and welcome to School Leader Soundbites. I'm your host, Veronica Sopher And I have the honor of coming to you every week, dropping new episodes of our podcast where we talk about school communications, public relations, marketing and advertising. So if you are looking for some content on how to improve your school district's visibility strategy, you have found the right place. I come to you every week with more than 20 years of experience in school communications, and I love talking about all the things that you need to know to improve your school district's presence in your community. So let's go ahead and get this episode started. But before we do, don't forget to hit subscribe. We don't want you to miss any episodes of school leader sound bites, and if you're watching on YouTube or Facebook, drop us some comments. So let's go ahead and talk about the new school year. It is a great time of year. Most of you are getting ready with school lunch information and supply list and making sure your website is updated with the current content and calendars. And most of us are still doing registration online, taking a lots of time to explain to parents how to get registered, how to get our kids ready for the new school year. But there are some things you need to be doing right now, before school starts, or in the first few weeks of school to make sure that your communication strategy is ready to go. So first thing I want to do is tell you that you need to have four steps ready to go. First thing you need to be doing is to tell them what to expect. In other words, your stakeholders, your internal audiences and your parents, your external audiences, tell them what to expect. The second thing you need to do is tell them where to go to get this information throughout the school year. So you're going to share with them about your tools and different platforms that you're utilizing. And number three, you're going to need to have a plan in place of how you're going to listen to them your feedback loop, right? Make sure your feedback loop is a third step of your communication strategy for the new school you're kicking off. And number four, exceed their expectations. So we're going to talk about how to implement really great strategies for your communication plan for the school year, but then we're going to talk about how to exceed it, because that's ultimately our goal. So let's go ahead and start breaking these down. You've got a new school year. There's lots of emails that are going out to parents. You are talking about how to register, how to make sure your kids have the school supply list that they need. Maybe you've got uniforms in your school district, so you're sharing links and resources. There's always those great backpack attack type events where we're kicking off the school year with like fairs and parents can come and get school supplies. They're also making sure that they've got resources available for them to sign up for free and reduced lunch and any other community resources out there that exist. Many of you are doing fun things like having free haircuts, free shoe drives, those kinds of things happening, and as you're communicating those things out, whether in person at these events or online or on social media. Tell them what to expect from the school system. How are you going to be communicating to them? Most of us have emergency systems that we're using that do text messages or phone calls, but explain how weather is going to be communicated, implement weather or school closures or delay. So if it's XYZ, then you're going to need to make sure that you communicate that out via text message, or maybe it's going to be done via email. This is a great time to remind them to have their email addresses updated and ready to go. And you're going to also need to make sure that they have a way to do that if they don't have access to stable Internet logins and those kinds of things. So make sure you've got computer terminals or iPads out these community events so that parents can make sure that their information is available to them to update same thing with closures and inclement weather. What TV channels are you going to communicate with? What? How are you going to post it on your social media channels? Which social media channels are you going to be using? Those kinds of things are important, and then also communicate the things that are not emergency. So during the school year, we're going to send out a monthly newsletter to parents. This will be found in your email account, or it will be found on the front page of the website. Let them know where to go to get this information, but more importantly, where to find it as you push it out to them, I know some school districts are actually texting links to parents with their monthly newsletters because they're realizing that more parents are reading the content on their cell phones and their mobile devices instead of their email addresses. So that's something you also need to keep in mind, too, and then, more importantly, share with them where they can go to find archived information. Because what happens is, we send out information to parents. We send it out once twice, maybe even three times, and parents make a mental note of it, but they don't actually make a note of it, if you know what I mean, that will help with some of the phone calls that you get coming into central office or to the campus office. So make sure that they know that if they miss an issue of a newsletter or they miss an episode of a podcast that you've got out there, that there's an archived place for it, a library, so that they can go back and check it out. But don't just label it with a date. Also label it with content and tags so they know which episode or which newsletter issue they're looking for. It's something that they know they saw somewhere, but they're not quite sure where. So I always like to remind our client districts to tag it with content and topics so they can easily find it too. And every once in a while, it's good to share on your social media channels that if you missed an episode or you missed an issue of something that was communicated out that they know where to go back and find it. So that's another great way to keep it front and center for parents. So we're telling them what to expect. We're telling them where to go to find it. And you want to make sure that it is crystal clear that you're going to be sending out this kind of information via email, this kind of information via text, this kind of information on social media, this kind of information on the newsletter, but then make sure that you've got links to it from other places, because here's the truth, they're not going to remember all of those things, but they're likely to have an instinct to go to your website. Your website should be the place where they go for documents, for resources, for links. Social media should drive them to your website, and then all of those emergency management systems that you're using should have links also from from there those platforms over to your website, because you want it all housed in one place, it's going to be really important. And then it's also important to remind them of what might be coming from the campus versus what comes from central office. Because, as many of you know, our families have students in secondary and elementary school, and so sometimes they're getting two or three messages, depending on what schools that they're at, could be up to two or three, and they might be overwhelmed with all the messages. So if you if your emergency notification system allows you to synthesize all of that that's coming from the district, just send it to them one time, because no one wants to open up their email and see the same email sent three different times from three different places that all share the same pieces of information. So just be mindful of that most of you already have experts in your district that know how to use those tools, so I encourage you to continue to utilize those are you looking for a facilitator who can come and do some team building with your leadership team, or maybe your communications team or cabinet. Maybe you're looking for someone with experience to come and do some retreat facilitation or maybe some customer service training, or maybe you need to make sure everyone's on the same page and do some true north work during the summer. If you are then make sure you click the link below to learn more about how I can come out and bring all my years of experience to help you in your district. And then the third tip is reminding them on how you are going to accept feedback. So if you've got a survey tool available, a Survey Monkey, if you're using great tools, like, let's talk from our friends from K 12 insight, then make sure they know that you've got a feedback loop in place, and you're going to listen and you are going to take action based on the things that they share with you. So that's really, really important make sure you do what you say you're going to do. If you're going to ask for feedback, you're going to need to make sure you let them know how you used that feedback. That's really important because we're trying to earn trust, not a road trust, and feedback loops should be in a very important part of your communication. Your communication strategy with both your internal audiences and your external audiences. is exceed their expectations. So we've said, set a baseline we're going to meet your expectations community. We've told you at the beginning of the year, this is how we're going to communicate. This is how often we're going to communicate. These are the types of things we're going to communicate, and these are the different ways in which we're going to communicate to you. But then you're going to want to take it up one notch. That one degree you've you know, most of us have read the book 212, or we've heard great keynote speakers talk about how at one degree, water goes from being really hot to boiling, and it molecularly changes its composition. We want to do the same thing with our communication strategy. We want to give them the baseline of what to expect. We're going to make sure we meet those expectations, and then we're going to take it up one degree by exceeding those expectations. So that's going to look different for every superintendent and every leader, every building principal. But think about how you can exceed expectations. Maybe you're going to add a video to the mix, and you're going to shoot it out every couple of weeks, just a bonus episode of content. Or maybe you're going to go live on your social media platform, whatever a social media guidelines that your district has set for you, and you're going to exceed those expectations, and then you're going to reward your community for tuning in. So make sure, when you give them some of that bonus content you have a call to action, like, be sure to message me. Send me a message here, connect with us. Here, take action here, those kinds of things that's going to help you measure that engagement, but then also give reward the community for engaging with you in a lot of different ways. So take a look at all the different ways your community. Communicating with parents and with community members as well as your staff. Reward them, give them some bonus content, exceed their expectations, and make sure that you're rewarding people for connecting with you. That's really, really important. So as you're thinking about starting off the school year, I wanted to drop some of those strategies in there for you to make sure you have a really good communication strategy. So four things to do, tell them what to expect, tell them where to go to get it. How you're going to address their feedback. Feedback loops are really important. And then the fourth thing is you're going to exceed their expectations. I want everyone to have a super great start of the school year, making sure your communication strategy is articulated to both your internal or external audience is going to go so far for you, and I just know that everyone is thrilled to have students back into the building. So with that, we're going to wrap up this episode of School Leader Soundbites. If you have any questions or need any ideas, make sure you reach out to me. You can find me at Veronica v sopher. You've got my email address Veronica@VeronicaVsopher.com, and I'm always happy to connect in the comments and share any resources that might be helpful to you. So with that, we're going to wrap up this episode wishing you a great 2024-25 school year.