S1 E36 Superior External Comms Start With Clarity

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 how Superior External Comms Start With Clarity.

◾REACH Process

-A toolkit/model you can use when you want to connect with your external audience

-Includes community members, elected officials, business owners, state level and national level

◾Relationships

-You know who your target audience is, how they consume information and where on the website/social media they are clicking

-2-way communication path

◾Empathy

-Systemic, intentional way of connecting with your audience

-Understand the source of the pain

◾Acute Support

-Be ready to address something quickly if plans have to change suddenly

-Policy changes, correcting errors

◾Communication Plan

-Aligned to our brand and guiding documents

-Flexible based on the district blueprint- celebrate wins, acknowledge fault when its happened

◾Holistic Approach

-Thought partnership outside of our district

-Think about your culture and your climate- consistency, community, equity, inclusivity- make sure everyone has a place in your system

If you are looking for ways to Master Your Mark and 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.

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Transcript

Veronica Sopher: 0:00

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 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 Soundbites, and if you're watching on YouTube or Facebook, drop us some comments. Last time, we had a great conversation about the impact educational process where we digging in and connecting with our internal audiences. This week, I want to talk about the reach process. Now the reach process and my master your mark program, is really about connecting with your external audiences, which are going to be people who are outside of our school building, outside of our district most of the time. That does include parents. It includes community members, elected officials, business owners, anyone who has a stake in our district, sometimes depending on what's happening, it could also be people at the state level or at the national level, inside of this big conversation we call public education. So when we're talking about our external audiences, just know that there's a lot of fluctuation. But with the reach process, we can really hone in on what those external messages are and how they can benefit us. So I will start out with the basics. The reach process is basically a toolkit. It's a model. It's something that you can use when you want to connect with your external audiences and make sure they're getting the messages that you want them to get. So let's think about relationships. How do we be relatable? How do we put content out there that people can connect to? That's the first part of the Reach process. That's the R, and then E is for empathy. And we're going to dig into that a whole lot, because I think that's really the secret sauce when we're talking about external audiences and crafting our messages. The A is for acute support. Sometimes that's exactly what you need in that moment, and we have to be able to pivot quickly on our messaging to address some of those needs. Of course, we want to stick to our communications plan, so that is the C and the Reach process. We want to make sure that our communication plan is aligned to our branding guide and our brand and our guiding documents. And then we also want to take a holistic approach. So when we think about thought partnership, and when we think about what's happening inside of our community and even outside of our community that affects what's happening in our school system, we have to have a holistic approach. So let's spend a few minutes diving into the reach process, which ultimately is going to connect us to our external audiences. So the first thing I want to talk about is, when you are relating to community, especially our external community, it's because you are clear on who they are. You know who your target audience is. You've identified who they are, you've put a name on them. You know where they spend their time, how they're consuming their information, where on your website they're clicking, where on your social media, they're engaging. Where they are talking about you, not inside of any container that you create, but maybe out on Facebook and some of those Facebook groups. You know, I travel all over the country, and I will tell you that no matter where I go, one of the reoccurring themes that there is that there is a Facebook group for that district. Sometimes it's negative, sometimes it's a mix of negative and positive, but generally speaking, people want to talk about you outside of a container that you have control of, so just know where your people are. That's really important. When we talk about reaching people and making sure we're relatable, you also want to make sure that there was a two way communication path. So it's not just you giving them information, but you have a way to connect information. Oftentimes, surveys are a really great way to do it, but just having a way for them to connect with you, this is a great time for me to plug in one of my partners, K12 insight. They have a wonderful tool called Let's Talk that allows you to track messages that are coming in and out of your system and can help you prioritize them. There's a lot of other great ways that you can connect with people, but making sure that you have a way to collect data, synthesize it, and actually use it to drive some of your messaging is going to be really, really important. So make sure you are clear on your target audience. It's going to be really important. The first step of being relatable and then having empathy. And empathy really looks like a systemic, intentional way of connecting with your target audience. In this case, it's our external audience, so understanding what their pain points are, understanding what they value, what they're saying, what it really means, how it's being interpreted, understanding the true source of the pain. Sometimes it maybe is a transportation. Issue, or maybe it is a curriculum concern. Maybe you are having troubles in one feeder pattern of your school system, and it's a personnel issue, but until you really understand what their pain points are and what the source is, it's going to be hard for you to address it. So identifying, understanding and validating where your internal or your external audiences are are going to help you drive messages that are going to make a difference. They're going to be tangible and they're going to be measurable. That's why empathy is so important, letting people know that you see them, you hear them, you care about what their concerns are, and you're willing to do something about it. Validate those concerns as much as you can. And then the next thing I always want people to think about is, even though we've got great plans, we've got to be ready for those instances where you have to address something quickly, maybe an error was was released from the school district. This is what I call acute support. We're assessing your target. We we had a plan in place. We had to veer off because something happened. Sometimes there's variables, sometimes it's weather, sometimes it's things that are out of our control, like a pandemic, but we need to be able to address those issues. Sometimes it means policy changes or correcting errors. Sometimes new legislation comes out that has unintended consequences. That's one of my favorite terms of public education is unfunded mandates. Knowing what those look like and what the impact will be on your school system is going to be really important. And sometimes those changes are not ones that we were planning for. Sometimes we have a death of a leader, maybe a principal, or we have someone at Central Office who has passed away or has moved on for family issues or something like that. So we always have to be ready for those unintended changes that are going to happen in our leadership. And so that's something that you should always plan for, but do your best to quickly name it, address it, change course, and make sure that your messaging is sensitive to what those changes might be. I'm a big fan of creating content. You hear me talk about that a whole lot, in batches, and sitting down on the third Friday of every month for two hours and creating content that is what that we call evergreen in the journalism space, that can be used everywhere. And sometimes we use tools that help us spread that out throughout our calendar content. When we are in the middle of a situation, though, you want to look at whatever tool you're using, push pause and be sensitive to what's happening in your community. So for example, if there is a tragedy, a fire, and there's great loss in your community, and the whole community is rallying around it, you don't want to have your social media really celebrating things that might be trivial to the community in this scope. So just think about what's happening in your community, and be mindful that when you do schedule content out, it needs to be reviewed periodically, so that we are not making things worse. Because oftentimes the question I ask is, Is this making this situation better, or is it hurting the situation? We all know that we are stronger when we've got a team supporting us. And if you're a new superintendent without a communications team or someone dedicated to the communications function of a district, then reach out and see how my team and I can help you. We can serve as thought partners. We can provide you a la carte services such as graphic support, copywriting, speech, writing, all those things are going to help you communicate more efficiently and effectively with your community. If you want to learn more, click the link below and schedule a time to connect. And then the real key is having a communication plan. And what I love about a communication plan is that it is flexible. We set it based on what the goals are of the administration the superintendent. Maybe the strategic plan is guiding our work. So that strategic blueprint that the district has invested so much time and energy into, and you build out these plans, you build out what the budget looks like, the timeline, making sure that there's equity at all grade levels, so that it's not just about athletics or fine arts, that we're including everybody, including our special populations, our gifted and talented students, our special education students, students with mobility issues, any of those really great programs that you have that are making a difference for students, make sure they're included in your communication plan. Now your communication plan is going to celebrate the wins. It's also going to acknowledge when fault has, when there is fault in something that's happened. So all of your crisis letter, letters that you put out to the community, media statements, you've got templates for all of those, there is a clear path and workflow for what's going to happen in what order and by whom. So you need to make sure that your communication plan lists all of those tactical things that someone could easily follow with a checklist. Sometimes I also like to have a really quick cheat sheet for some for. Various departments. So for example, if I'm working with nurses in a school system, we take the communication plan and we look at all the things that they may have a role in, and then we create a cheat sheet for the nurses so that they know what to do. And it's usually on the first page of the communication plan, notify police, to notify principal, notify the District Health Coordinator, implement the Emergency Management System, whatever those steps are for your system, knowing who's doing what, when, and in what order, is going to really help you. So when you come across as the communication support person, you know exactly where you are in the process. And that's part of my K 12 master your mark plan. So if you ever need resources, I have a lot of great free resources on my website. Veronica sopher.com feel free to download some of those templates and use them. It's a really great way to make sure that your communication plan is set to go. Now I started off by saying a plan is really important to have, but the truth is, a plan is really important to have until something else happens, and you have to veer from that plan. So you need to make sure that you are flexible and that people have backup people to back them up. You know who the backup person is going to be. Usually, when an emergency happens, the campus principal or the campus AP handles it, but what happens when they're not on campus that day? Or, for example, the entire leadership team in a district is out for a conference who is next in line to handle those who's going to be on the scene? So knowing when to be flexible and having that support is going to be really important. And then really after the communication plan, I like to remind people that it needs to be something that is reviewed periodically. It lives digitally on any device that you are carrying around, that it's on your laptop, that it's on your hard drive, and that you have printed copies. If you go to any of my vehicles, you will always find the emergency plan there. You will have my you will see my go kit is ready to go, comfortable shoes, pins, clipboards, all the things I'll need to be on the scene of a crisis, and I highly recommend that you have one too. So again, visit my website for tips. I've done a great podcast in the past on what you need to have in your emergency go kit. I recommend that every administrator carry that with them. Most of your communication leaders are already going to have a go kit ready to go, and they can help you put one together if they're in your district, and if not, just reach out. And my team and I will be happy to assist you with that. And then the H in the reach process is really the holistic look. That's what when I want you to think about your culture, your culture and your climate. Use a toolkit, a media kit, any of the resources that you're already using in your system to impact your external audiences. You want to make sure that your holistic approach is about consistency, Community, Equity, inclusivity, making sure that you know that everyone has a place in your system, and you can guide them to where that place is. I love that we've got very specific tasks force in most of the districts that I support. So you're going to have those parents who are connected to the booster club for athletics, or the booster club for fine arts, or the special education committee or task force that's out there. And by last district, we really brought in the Gifted and Talented parents who had a lot of concerns about some of the things that were happening, and with their support, we will we were able to really shift some of the work that was being done in those gifted and talented communities. So make sure there's a place for everyone in your system. I know in one of the other districts that I've supported in the past, having an opportunity for our parents, who were English learners to feel more comfortable, to communicate and learn in their native language, really helped them to help the system, help their students when they knew what was expected at home, to support maybe testing or support what was happening with FAFSA, or what was happening for our seniors who were working on their college applications, making sure that they knew that there's not only a place for them to engage, but a place for those parents to learn, was important. So it's just really it comes on all of us naturally to support our internal audiences, but sometimes we don't think about all the places that our external audiences live, and so the reach process is a really great way to audit what you're doing. Take a look at where you can course correct, put in processes that are going to make a difference, and then evaluate it. That's a really important when you're thinking about your external audiences. So I hope this information was helpful to you. As always, if you have any questions, be sure to reach out. Veronica sopher.com. Is my website. If you are listening on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe. We don't want you to miss any episodes of school leader sound bites. If you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, drop me some comments. I'd be happy to connect with you there as well. Until then, make sure you are connecting with your external audiences. You. Using a process and a plan that will connect your messages to your target audience. We'll see you next time you.