Having effective communication within any organisation is essential! Within schools it is critical. It can seem a bit daunting as there are so many ways to promote your school. This is why having a communication strategy can ensure success for your school with ease.
By having a plan for your communication this will help your school choose the most effective channels to share your information with your audience. You will also be able to attract future students, promote to parent and engage your staff members.
A great communication plan can make your life a lot easier. From mundane communication to exciting news updates, to what your sharing on social media, keeping your calendar updated or sending out emergency notifications.
Here are 3 helpful steps to creating a great communication strategy.
Know your Audience
You need to know who your audience is. With most schools, you have several different audiences. You need to consider who you are currently communicating with like staff, parents and student. Then, review how you are communicating with them. When reviewing how you communicate with your audiences you need to look for what is working and eliminate what’s not working.
- Do you communicate with your staff well?
- Does anything get misunderstood?
- Are you finding hard to engage with parents regularly?
Download our helpful guide Parental Engagement Guide here
By identifying what works well and what doesn’t you are able to move forward and make the best decisions what to include in your communications strategy. Have a mission in mind what you what from having a good communication strategy. If you want more Students enrolling at your school, think of questions like;
- Why should students go to your school?
- How can you communicate that to your audience?
Have a goal you want to achieve and then put a plan in place to reach that goal.
What channels will you use in your strategy?
Once you have determined who your audience is, you need to choose what channels you will use for your communications strategy. A fantastic channel to communicate with your audiences is your school website.
Your school website is a major tool and can be the central hub for all your communication channels. Also, you can use other communications channels like your social media, blogs, videos, calendar, notifications, news and events all linked your website.
Your website is an essential part of your school's communication strategy and branding. Branding and communication go hand in hand when engaging with your audience. Read this helpful blog of what a great brand can do for your school. Other channels which are often used are mobile app and email. Mobile apps are great as you can send out instant updates to your audience who have the app.
Plan your Content
Plan what you want to communicate to your audience.
- What do you want your audiences to know?
- How will you communicate that message to them?
- Is there an event that you need to promote across to your audiences at a certain time?
- Who is going to action all the content to the appropriate channels?
What can be helpful is creating a content calendar. You can sit down monthly or even yearly and plan out what you need to communicate to your audiences on each day.
There are 4 key areas that you need to need you to consider when planning your content:-
- Parental Engagement - reaching out to parents and communicating with them in meaningful and informative ways.
- Internal Communications - keep your staff informed and motivated with school activities.
- Crisis Communications - when an emergency occurs and you need to communicate immediately with your audience. You will need to communicate promptly and accurately when this happens.
- Public Relations - building communication of a good reputation of your school.
Follow these steps and you will be well on your way to creating a great communication strategy. Doing this will help to engage and communicate more effectively with your audiences.
We'd love to chat through helping your school develop a conent strategy. Drop us a line to schedule some time.
