Show Notes: 

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Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the SchoolCEO Podcast. I’m your host, Eileen Beard. So far this season, we’ve been doing a deep dive into a SWOT analysis of school communications, one mini episode at a time. Your schools’ strengths are obvious: they’re your people. You have dedicated teachers and staff and you all have the same lofty purpose—improving the lives of your students. And in the course of improving their lives, your people generate your biggest strength as a comms team: really great stories you can share to build your brand and earn your community’s loyalty and trust, to aid retention and gain support for a bond election, to drive enrollment and recruitment. 

However, we all have some chinks in our armor. School communications’ weaknesses, or vulnerabilities as I prefer to call them, may include a small budget, a small team, a poor working relationship with leadership or staff and, of course, the feelings of anxiety or exhaustion those vulnerabilities might contribute to which can lead to burnout. 

But we believe where there’s a weakness, there’s a way. In other words, many of your vulnerabilities are also your opportunities. To overcome a small team, we talked about various methods for getting teachers and staff to help tell your stories, including collective authorship and designating a content point person at every school site. We also discussed how to get students involved in social media marketing, event planning and other aspects of communications. Finally, we talked about encouraging your families and community members to become ambassadors for your brand. 

Lastly, we discussed many of the threats you face from external sources and how to respond to them—things like the changing national narrative about public education, school choice, crises and political actions that can alienate people within your community. The solutions for which all come down to telling your stories smartly—developing an internal and external communication strategy, making sure your schools are visible online and IRL, showing you’re not afraid of a little competition and making your communication accessible to as many people as possible. 

And for all that we’ve discussed, we’ve only just scratched the surface of the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats you all might face and the various ways you might respond. 

Here’s the thing, communications teams have to spend a lot of time responding. Instead of continuing to talk about how you might react to some of the things we’ve discussed, let’s talk more about proactive communication. How to get strategic about communication. 

We think one of the main components of any successful strategy is simply having a website or app that is full of information and easy to use—and training your families to use it. When someone knows where to look for answers and the answers are actually there, that someone is going to be less likely to call your office or complain online. That person is going to keep going back there to get information in the future. That person is going to have more confidence in your school or district. That person is going to be more likely to recommend you to friends and neighbors and so on. Establishing your website or app as a reliable source of information is a foundation on which to build the rest of your strategy and your brand. 

To hear more components of a great communication strategy, stay tuned to future episodes of the SchoolCEO Podcast. 

Thanks for joining me.