You probably talk about your school a lot. You talk about your school on tours, at open houses, and at enrollment fairs. You probably even talk about your school when you’re home with your family, even though they’ve heard it all before.
Don’t get the wrong idea. Talking about your school is great! After all, who knows better than you what makes your school special and what surprises your school might be planning?
However, when it comes to reaching out to families, talk won’t get you very far. In a world full of distractions and other things competing for a prospective family’s attention, it’s harder than ever to break through.
So how do you break through the noise to get the word out about your school and get your message in front of the right people at the right time?
Whenever I sit down with a client to come up with or evaluate their communications plan, I usually ask the same questions. Some of these questions include:
Let’s look at these issues one at a time.
Before we can jump into this detailed school communication planning guide, let’s stipulate that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution to every problem in school communications.
It’s important to recognize that a charter school communication plan will look different from a school district communication plan, which will look different from a Catholic school communication plan, and so on.
However, regardless of what kind of school you are, the first step is always to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t with your current school communications. And the place it makes the most sense to start is where most families will start when they’re planning to learn about your school: your website.
Some schools make the mistake of thinking of their website as just the hub of their school’s online presence. But these days, there’s very little separating the digital and physical worlds. Your website is the hub not just of your online communications plan but also of your offline communications plan as well.
Whatever someone is searching for, from your address to the photos from your spring musical, your website is the first, and sometimes only, place they’ll look.
Go to your school website. What messages are you sending? Who are you talking to, enrolled families or prospective families?
Remember, enrolled families have access to multiple channels for information, while prospective families often just have your website.
Therefore, while it’s important to keep enrolled families informed, the best use of your website real estate is to target prospective families.
How are you communicating? Are you starting a conversation Or are you just speaking in one direction? The answers to these questions will be central to your new communications plan.
Next, it’s important to get an objective sense of how well your current communications plan is working by digging into the data and evaluating key metrics, such as your enrollment trends and retention rates.
If you’re having trouble attracting new students, perhaps you need a communications plan aimed at connecting you with prospective families.
If you’re having trouble keeping students, perhaps you need an internal communications plan for your school that helps to ensure that parents and guardians know all of the great things your school offers and is doing.
Finally, you need to understand that no school communication plan will get across all messages to all people.
Effective school communications are about understanding your audience, what they look like, and what their needs are, then clearly delivering your message to them.
That’s why every communication plan can benefit from creating customer personas to help clarify who you are talking to and what you are trying to say.
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Remember, the more targeted you can make your school communications, the more effective it will be. Tailoring your communications plan to attract families who will be the most successful in your educational environment will save you time and money in the long run.
As discussed earlier, the first and sometimes only place families will go to learn more about your school is your website.
However, once families find you online, how are you planning to convince them to move the conversation offline so you can meet them in real life and enroll them in your school? The answer is inbound marketing.
If you want to turn web traffic into enrolled students, all school communications must be viewed through this lens.
One great way to encourage positive interactions online is to create a principal’s blog where your school’s personality can shine. Remember, you’re planning to talk to real people here, and they want to know you are real people, too.
Your communications plan can’t end once you get a family to enroll. Once a family is part of your community and entrusting you with their children, school communications are more important than ever!
Unfortunately, not all schools realize this. When I do school climate surveys, invariably, school communication ranks near the bottom in terms of parental satisfaction.
So how do you keep parents happy and engaged? By creating a school internal communication plan that engages families the moment they enroll and keeps them informed regularly and predictably.
For many schools, the onboarding process for new families is a matter of mailing out a student handbook and hoping families will learn about the school’s practices and expectations through osmosis.
The result is families who are confused, frustrated, and may never feel like members of your school community.
If you’re planning to establish healthy communication channels with families, it’s essential to create a strong onboarding process to welcome families to your school:
It will make new families feel more comfortable and save you from having confused parents constantly call the office with questions.
Making it easy for parents and guardians to get the message is central to any school communication plan.
Knowing that, keep these two tips in mind:
Now imagine that challenge if you have three kids.
No school communication planning guide could be complete without discussing what to do when things go wrong. While we always work hard to make sure everything runs smoothly, unfortunate incidents do occur.
That’s why any communications plan must establish best practices for operating during a crisis:
Your school crisis communication plan will only be effective if you’ve already established yourself as a credible and reliable source of information over the months or years of your relationship with the families at your school.
Credibility doesn’t come from the job title of principal or from the letterhead on top of your stationery.
Credibility comes from the totality of your interactions with parents — from the moment they first visit your website, through the onboarding process when they enroll, to their experience with the day-to-day school communications with all teachers and staff.
If you weren’t able to explain your school’s pick-up and drop-off procedures, how do you think families will view your explanations during a crisis?
Finally, when planning to deal with a charged or uncomfortable issue, make sure that your school speaks with one voice.
Even if multiple administrators and counselors are involved in developing the message you want to communicate, there should be one clear source for information that everyone should turn to.
Nothing ruins a communication plan faster than mixed messages in a crisis.
By the way, we offer a free press release template for schools in our content library, SchoolMint Enrollment Academy.
For all the discussion so far about your school communications, you know that in-person interactions will be some of the most important conversations you have with families.
These programs can be a lot of work up-front, but if you’re planning to use your community as part of your communications plan, this preparation can make all the difference.
Plus, by their nature as a “customer” of your school, the voice of a family member will have more credibility than one that comes from the school administration.
Keep in mind the purpose of school communications isn’t just to inform, entertain, or “get the word out.”
Your school communication plan must be part of an overall strategy focused on encouraging specific actions. This is what will elevate your school communication plan into an effective school marketing plan.
For example:
All of your communications must be accompanied by a specific ask or call to action. Otherwise, your communication will be little more than talking to yourself and will not get you the enrollment increase that you are looking for.
For over 10 years, SchoolMint has been helping schools, districts, and charter organizations attract and enroll more students through a range of tailored enrollment marketing services.
These services include:
Discover how we can help you attract new families in today’s competitive student enrollment environment!