S1 E39 Who is Your Internal Audience and How Do You Leverage Their Network?

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 Who is Your Internal Audience and How Do You Leverage Their Network?

◾Who your internal audience really is

-Includes teachers, employees, custodians, administrators etc

-They are your largest, most significant asset and the best tool you could use to network out into your community.

◾How do they know what you value

-How are you measuring if what you are doing is working?

-Do you use that language in your social media and internal communication?

◾Provide a roadmap

-Gives your internal audience what they need to say and where to find resources

-Your internal audience needs to become your biggest ambassadors to the district and can do this when you give them the tools to do it

-Provide a place with templates for forms about things like inclement weather, early dismissal, safety drills, etc

◾Celebrate the wins

-Make sure you are recognizing all of the great work being done in the district

-When employees feel seen and valued, they are more likely to be great ambassadors for the district

If you need any assistance with this, 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.

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

Social: @VeronicaVSopher

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*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. 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. 

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. All right, let's talk about who our internal audience really is. Now, most of you are saying, well, it's the obvious, right? It's our staff. Yes, it absolutely is your staff. It does include your teachers, your employees, your custodians, your administrators, and the truth is, they are your largest and most significant asset and the best tool you can use to network out in your community, because oftentimes they live within your community, which is really important. So let's really take a look at our internal audience, how they process and what it is they are looking for. So let's recap just a little bit. If we think about the master your mark system and the things that I've talked to you about, it's really about connecting with people, especially internally, making sure you've taken care of what you need to take care of inside your organization before you go out and project it on the outside of your organization, you have to look inward as much as you can. You have to use these internal stakeholders to gage how you're doing, to gage sentiments, to better understand what people's concerns are, how they might be feeling about things, and that they're on board, that they understand what the mission and the vision is, that they believe in it. It's not just something they can recite, but it's something that makes an emotional connection to them, which is going to be really important. So when you start thinking about your strategic plan, or you start thinking about an initiative or some project that you're launching, you likely go to your internal audience first to gage feedback right, to garner what they might be thinking, to see where their concerns might be, to ask questions like, What am I missing? What are we not thinking about? What do you think our parents are going to say? Nine times out of 10, the people doing the work are the people who know exactly what the pain points are, and can tell you what pitfalls might exist in the conversation. So it's really important to leverage those assets. So yes, it's your teachers, it's your employees, it's everyone that is a vendor for your district. It's even your board. It's your volunteers, people who are partners with the district and who represent the district on the greater community level, especially when they're working with students, it can also be your boosters, that's another group, your PTO and your PTA, making sure that they know what your mission and vision is and what those values are, so that they can have some buy in. They know what the taglines are, but more importantly, they know what the taglines mean, and that's why you want to market internally as much as you can. So let's think about this. How do you know what they value? What are you measuring? How are they telling you whether or not it's working or not? Do you actually use that type of language in all of your collateral material? Are you using it on your social media? Are you using it in board presentations? Is the tagline on the bottom of your slide deck that you're using during board meetings or during community meetings. These are all the types of questions that you need to be asking when you assess whether or not your internal communication program is working. Now you don't need an entire marketing plan or internal communication guide if you are just getting started, but you have, but if you do have some of those baseline assets ready to go, leverage them, revisit them and make sure they're being updated. If you don't have them, at the very least, you need a roadmap, a roadmap that earns trust with this community and that gives them insight. It basically provides a blueprint for the things you want them to say, how you want them to feel and how you want them to connect other people. You need to make sure that these assets are readily available. So if you have a shared drive or an intranet system, make sure that people know where to go for your branding guide, where to download logos. One of the worst things you can do is tell people that they can or cannot use these type of images and logos, and then don't give them access to those logos. So make sure that you have those templates readily available, readily marked, that every time you bring in a group together, maybe our principals- their monthly meetings, or even our campus paraprofessional staff, secretarial staff that are working anytime they come together. We go over some of those templates. We go over those expectations of how to treat each other internally, how to provide feedback and how to stay on brand your internal audience needs to become your biggest ambassadors and advocates for the district, and it's easy to do when you give them the tools to do it. It's not so easy to do when you don't give them access to those kinds of things. And I know everybody is concerned about giving people access to logos, because they're going to get stretched or the colors are going to be changed. And yes, that could happen, but the really easy solution is to make it available in a lot of different formats that are aligned to your brand guide. So making sure that there's a just a dual color, if you've only got two colors in your logo, that the approved colors are already established, that you give people what the color codes are, so that if they want to have any merchandise or swag created, that it's as close as it can get to that exact color, because color match is important that you've got a white version of that logo to be printed on dark colors. Vice versa. You need the inverse. If you need just a black version of that logo, so it can be put on lighter colors or maybe on a white background. So think about all the different ways that your logo and your brand is currently being used. Do a little mini audit and create a little handbook, and it can really just be a page or two. It doesn't have to be super robust. 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. Now that you've got some of the visual assets taken care of, then think about some of the copy that you want to be using. For example, if you've got a standard letter about fire drills that goes out, make sure that you've got those templates already ready, available for all those campuses to use, and maybe the template will start out with something along the lines of safety and security is our number one priority, which is why we ensure that all of our drills are done monthly or as required by law, and we're happy to report that we're in compliance. Make sure that you are communicating clearly and accurately to families as much as possible, and the best way to do that is to make sure that there's templates and there is a place for anyone who needs these templates to go and download them. I think inclement weather is one of the most challenging And preparedness is the number one way to do that so making sure that they have an opportunity to not only provide things that we deal with in the school communication space, but feedback, which we talked about, but to engage with leaders. So brown bag lunches, focus groups, little town halls with our employees, those are going to be really important, going out and it's also one of the simplest things we can do, and that is visiting, making sure that your leadership team is visible, not only on the campuses, but in your operational staff too, with because there are systems that can be put in place. So your operational staff. So going to the bus barn, going to the facilities, warehouse, those kinds of places, are going to be templates are going to be important make sure during the really important just to be walking around, seeing what's happening, asking those questions, getting to know what people's issues might be, and then celebrating some of those summer months you're working on templates for inclement weather, wins, because every department has wins, and that's the last piece of advice I want to give you. When you're thinking about for a two hour delay, for an early dismissal, for all those harnessing your internal audience and turning them into ambassadors, you need to make sure you're recognizing the great work that is being done throughout your district. Yes, different things that might be have happening. I know I work we have wonderful things that have happened on a campus. It's so fun and exciting to see learning happening in the with a lot of districts on the coast, and we have to worry classroom, but it's also fun and exciting to see things happening on the operational side, maybe with the construction team or with the facilities team, with our bus drivers and our about hurricanes, and so we have to prepare some of those, some cafeteria workers making sure that our business office gets recognized. A lot of our districts are winning state of those communications, ahead of time, just like when I'm recognition for exceeding expectations in the business offices, and so making sure that those people are recognized by name, maybe at a board meeting or in a newsletter going out to working with districts out on the west coast, where we might the community, it really goes a long way when the when employees feel like they've been seen and they've been heard, but most experience more earthquakes, we have to remind people of what importantly, they've been valued, they're more likely to become your biggest advocates. So when you get a chance, tap into your internal audience, get to know who they are, what they the protocols are, right. And we've got districts that have value, where they consume their information, identify what gaps might exist for them, and then address those gaps so that you ice and snow that they have to deal with, we know that that can demonstrate to them that you are shifting gears and you are hearing them, and you're implementing things, they're might be a hindrance to school operating normally, so just going to make a difference for the district. So with that, we'll go ahead and end this episode of School Leader Soundbites. I hope this information was really helpful. making sure that all of those assets are readily available Remember, tapping into your internal audience is a key component of the impact education process. And of course, you can learn more about my master your mark program on again- this is another great way to build trust with your my website at Veronica sopher.com if you are looking for any support in that space, be sure to reach out. You can find my contact information there. And if you are listening internal audience. They will be more likely to become on the podcast, make sure you hit subscribe. We don't want you to miss any episodes of school leaders sound bites. If you're watching on Facebook or YouTube, drop me some comments and I'd ambassadors when they feel empowered to tell our stories. love to connect and we'll see you next time you.