Show Notes: 

For more great ways to turn staff into storytellers, read: Who’s Telling Your Story. 

See all of the results of our 2022 study: Who Speaks For Your Brand. 

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Episode Transcript:

Eileen Beard: Welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. I’m your host, Eileen Beard. We’ve all seen brand ambassadors on social media. Sometimes they’re TV stars hocking diet tea on Instagram or they’re TikTok influencers, demonstrating how to style outfits from a particular store. I actually find them pretty annoying, but the reason they clog up our feeds is that they work. When someone you follow and admire tells you something, it feels like a friend is recommending their favorite product to you. 

But what exactly does this have to do with schools? Let me tell you a story. At the start of 2020, Lynette White started to help Santa Ana Unified School District in CA manage its social media accounts. That was just a couple of months before the pandemic hit. Suddenly, students began learning remotely and the lack of in-person classes and events made it extremely difficult to capture special moments—and instill a strong sense of community among stakeholders. 

Does any of that ring a bell for you? White wanted to do something about it, but with 50 campuses in the district, she knew she needed help gathering and sharing stories. Then one night as she scrolled through social media, she had an idea. If the private sector has brand ambassadors, why can’t education? 

Over the course of a year, White developed 10 modules to train Santa Ana employees. Crucially, the very first module became brand training—showing trainees how to align their storytelling to the district’s vision, mission and values. Additional lessons ranged from how to use the most popular social media platforms to capturing high-quality photos and video to creating content calendars to using Canva. 

White’s vision was to get at least one volunteer from every school to be that building’s brand ambassador or social media point person, each of whom would be in charge of collecting and posting content to their school’s accounts. She described the program to teachers and staff as a professional development opportunity—a chance to connect with the communities they cared about and reinforce their schools’ reputations. There was an added benefit to these lessons White didn’t foresee—the program created a tight-knit community of brand ambassadors within the larger district community. And she notes that for teachers who hope to move into leadership roles someday, becoming a brand ambassador is preparation for the future. “The higher they go, the more they’re expected to be a storyteller for that district. Training them to be brand ambassadors early on gives them the building blocks to be able to do so.

More than 100 people signed up initially, but soon more joined. White was surprised by just how many volunteered to do the job, but perhaps she shouldn’t have been. Because White herself was actually an executive assistant to the superintendent at Santa Ana, not the social media manager. She herself volunteered to manage social media. The strong response White got from Santa Ana employees backs up what SchoolCEO learned in our 2022 study, Who Speaks For Your Brand. We found two-thirds of non-teaching staff and 72% of teachers “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed with the statement “I feel it is my responsibility to improve the district's reputation when I speak with someone about the district.” BUT, and this is a big but, we found 28% of non-teaching staff reported they had never been trained on district brand and messaging priorities. One in five teachers (21%) also said they had never received training on the subject. 

Teachers, in particular, have the most incredible stories to tell because they’re closest to the kids, but White says sometimes they need a little coaxing to tell them. “Teachers in public education are incredibly humble so they don’t talk about all the great things that they do every day,” says White. So the takeaway is clear: your teachers and staff want to rep your district, but they can’t do it if they don’t get encouragement, access and training. 

If you want to implement a similar storytelling strategy at your district, here’s what you can do: 

1. Although our research suggests it won’t be that hard of a sell, have your argument ready. Teachers and staff who choose to become brand ambassadors have a lot to gain: technical, resume-building skills, a stronger connection with families and coworkers, a soapbox to tell the stories that matter most to them, and a hand in improving the reputations of their schools, their districts and by extension, all K-12 education. 
2. Find or develop a course to train interested employees how to tell stories that align with your brand. White now offers her brand ambassador course online for 10 hours of PD credit. You can use hers, but White’s is certainly not the only course that offers PD credits for social media training. And if you’re worried about putting too much on teachers’ plates, if they are allowed to count courses such as these for their PD requirements, they’re not actually an additional ask of their time. 
3. Have a brand cheat sheet and a technical FAQ ready for brand ambassadors to help them as they go. We all need a refresher sometimes. 

Like I said in the last episode on collective authorship, a small comms team can also be an opportunity to invite many diverse voices to tell stories on your district’s behalf. Now we’ve shared two systems for doing just that and in the next episode, we’ll share one more. Until then.