Growing leaders from your staff

Encouraging and finding new leaders should be at the top of any good manager’s priority list. While some administrators see emerging leadership in their staff as a potential threat to their own management, there’s almost no downside to encouraging involvement and increased responsibilities. Good managers delegate, great managers foster leaders. The more you encourage people to take on responsibility, the stronger your team will be and the more they, and you, can achieve.

Recognizing potential

Among your staff, how do you determine the best candidates for leadership? In meetings and interactions with your staff, look for the following:

  • Staff members who state their goals. Staff members who state what they want to achieve and are taking action are ideal candidates for leadership. Teachers or staff members expressing initiative are a good sign. Giving them leadership positions could help them further their goals and hone their focus as well as letting them know their goals are valued.
  • They have a lot of questions. Staff members who ask good questions are attempting to clarify situations and workplace functioning. They care about understanding. Questions can be an expression of concern. This way of expressing interest can sometimes be grating, but when they have leadership positions, they may be more likely to see solutions to their queries.
  • New hires. Fostering leadership among new staff facilitates a sense of belonging to the team. When staff members understand that leadership is expected of them, this aligns with your overall goals and can fast track them to being a valuable member of your staff.
  • A complainer. Staff members who express problems or bring up issues are great recruits for leadership. Thank them for recognizing areas that need improvement and enlist them to lead a plan toward a solution. For example, a teacher who expresses concerns about a lack of art supplies might enjoy leading a drive to bring more supplies to your school.

How do I encourage leadership?

  • Show exemplary leadership. Be a great leader. Children aren’t the only ones who learn by example. Clear communication and mutual respect are the foundation of healthy work environments. Working on your own leadership skills will make you a valuable resource and support to the people you want to foster for leadership. You need to exhibit qualities and traits you hope to see in your staff members. You can’t expect others to be on time if you’re always running late. You must lead by example.
  • Reduce consequences. There’s no growth without risk, and your staff members need to know it’s  OK to make mistakes. No one should have a fear of failure. Not everything is going to work, not every goal will be achieved. But if the cost of failure appears too high, your leaders may feel it’s not worth trying. Failure can be another chance at improvement. When your staff members know they’ll be supported even if they fail, they will feel more secure. They need to know their efforts are valued, even if the result misses its mark.
  • Move them out of their comfort zone. The best leaders and teachers watch their staff or students exceed their own expectations. Giving staff members assignments or challenges to solve outside their comfort zone encourages new approaches to problem-solving and builds confidence as they learn to think in new ways. Each challenging project is another opportunity for them to develop their own leadership style.
  • Promote growth and success. When you recognize a person’s strengths, use them. Start with achievable goals to foster success, then move to more challenging tasks or projects. Improved skills should lead to increased responsibility. Encouraging self-improvement and providing opportunities for it is vital for cultivating leadership.
  • Transparency and clarity. At some point, each of us has had questions about situations at work. Letting your team know as much as you can about what problems are present and what work is needed is key information. Being transparent with your staff exhibits trust. When everyone has the same information, communication is improved and staff members have a better appreciation for each other’s goals. Part of clarity is making sure each person understands what is expected of him or her and each other. When they can see the big picture and their role in it and everyone understands your organization’s goals, they may step up to lead with solutions.
  • Provide training. A person may be ready for the responsibilities of leadership but lack the skills. Whether you’re training leaders, every workplace could benefit from workshops in problem-solving, conflict resolution, communication skills, planning and coalition building. Some employers fear that by offering workshops or further training and development, they might be educating their employees to leave for someone else’s business. But as the joke goes, what if you don’t offer those things and they stay?

Goals. Goals. Goal!

Your desire to elevate your staff’s commitment and responsibilities shouldn’t be a secret. Letting staff members know that you value their opinions, respect their potential and believe in their capacity to be good leaders can be a huge morale boost in addition to being good practice. Leaders learn by watching other leaders, and you have the opportunity to show them that you expect them to be equal owners in their own leadership training.

Fostering leadership in your organization takes time and planning. The benefit of having your staff members know you are invested in their growth and potential is a major morale booster. When you’re interested in sharing responsibilities and positive outcomes with your employees and encouraging and fostering growth, you will find that greater success and a happier, higher functioning work environment is an inevitable bonus.

Contribute by Jack Sanderson, a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and project facilitator

The importance of working with real estate agents

One of the first questions potential home buyers ask their real estate agents is, “How are the schools?”

So, making sure your local real estate agents are familiar with the good things happening in your schools should be a priority for every district.

It’s worth your time to cultivate good relationships with local real estate agents and not just trust that they have the same high opinion of your schools as you do. They need to be knowledgeable about the district as a whole and about the individual schools and how they differ.

Typically, real estate agents are eager for information about schools because it is such an important issue with potential buyers. Those with young children want to know which school might be the best match for their child. Those with older children want to know about the scholastic options, athletic teams, performing arts and other opportunities.

Connecting with local real estate agents

At a minimum, districts should give brochures and marketing materials about their schools to real estate agents, the local chamber of commerce and others. These outreach efforts should be updated every year or two. To make an even bigger impact, invite your real estate agents to an open house or other special event each year to personally update them about your schools. Check with a real estate agent or two to determine a good day for this.

Prepare a short program — perhaps a short video or PowerPoint presentation — highlighting the district. Leave plenty of time for questions and answers. If you have recently added new schools or completed significant remodeling and updating, consider taking the real estate agents on a short bus tour so they can see the improvements firsthand. Pack a box lunch to make it more fun.

Share your highlights

Be sure to highlight the qualities that make your district unique. Some communities are known for supporting education and passing levies to keep their schools modern and effective. In some communities, schools are defined by the support that parents and businesses give to help make schools better for children.

Perhaps they donate backpacks and school supplies for needy students. Or at Christmas, they may adopt students and their families and provide gifts and food baskets. Those are things that families appreciate and can tip the balance in deciding which school to attend.

Other districts are notable for special programs: a construction class where students build a high-quality house every year; a welding program where students are guaranteed a job after high school; or an immersion program where all students in the school speak fluently in two languages.

While families are always interested in test scores and how schools compare with those in other districts, help your real estate agents understand all the other components that can be just as important in identifying a good school.

Give them enough materials to share

Be sure to send real estate agents home with printed materials they can share with families that are shopping for homes. Brochures about your district and schools are ideal, but even a one-page fact sheet would work.

In preparing for your presentation to real estate agents, make sure you have answers to questions such as these.

If it’s an elementary school:

  • Is there an active parent group? How many parents participate? What activities do they sponsor? How does it spend the money that they raise?
  • Is there a before- and after-school childcare program?
  • Are there after-school activities, such as music lessons, Mad Science or soccer?
  • Does every classroom have computers or iPads available for student use?
  • Is there an active volunteer program in the school? Are volunteers welcome in the classrooms?

If it’s a middle school:

  • What electives are offered?
  • Are athletic teams offered through the school?
  • Are there after-school clubs and activities? l What is the ratio of computers to students? l Is there a dress code?

If it’s a high school:

  • How many electives are offered, and what are they?
  • Is there a program in which students can take some or all their classes online?
  • Are there opportunities for students to earn college credits while taking high school classes?
  • Are there opportunities for students to participate in the arts — vocal music, band, orchestra and drama?
  • Does the school offer career-technical programs, such as welding, horticulture, drafting or auto mechanics?

Can students attend a local career-technical school to take these courses?

  • Is there a college center where students can get information about different colleges and scholarships and how to apply for them?
  • What percentage of students go on to college, technical school, the military or a career after graduation?
  • Is there a strong sports program?

The more information you can give to a real estate agent, the more he or she can help you in communicating about your schools — not only with prospective homebuyers but with other contacts in the community.

Keep an open-door policy with your real estate agents year-round so they feel free to contact you when they have a question or need information. By giving your real estate agents a variety of information with a full picture of your schools, they will be better equipped to answer questions from families and able to counter any misinformation with facts and figures.

Contributed by Connie Potter, communications consultant

Print is not dead — or why a printed newsletter is a useful tool

If you ask if print is dead, the Google search responses are a resounding “no,” at least in a business context. And, schools are part of the education business in your community. Therefore, printed materials are a medium school staffs should understand and commit to using as part of their community engagement efforts.

There are many arguments against printing. The cost is high, the use of paper is wasteful, the process is slow, and the old-school tool can make you seem out-of-touch and behind the times. And, combined with mailing costs and delivery timelines, the notion of direct mail to your parents, businesses and community members seems old-fashioned and even ridiculous. Why would you mail something that you could email, post, text or tweet?

It’s about reach

There are some compelling reasons for reaching people through their mailboxes. One of the main reasons to budget for mailings is it gives you another way to reach your community. In most communities, an average of only 20% to 25% of voters have a direct connection to schools. Printed materials may help you reach more of your non-parents, an important tax-paying audience. Mailing a newsletter can help spread or reinforce your messages by adding another communications platform.

It’s about relationships

An article in The Business Journals (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/63109) offers three reasons to rethink the death of print:

  • Print establishes an emotional connection: “Custom- designed printed materials captivate the eyes and hearts of an audience.” Holding paper in your hands can attract attention and leave an impression.
  • Print triggers a response: “Customized formats with individualized messaging increase engagement and response among consumers.” According to the U.S. Postal Service, 81% of direct mail recipients read or scan the printed material daily, and direct marketers estimate that 65% of consumers have made a purchase as a result of receiving printed materials.
  • Print informs: Print is informational, reliable and can be saved and referred to.

Businesses love print

Schools may benefit from taking business advice about direct marketing. In addition to the tips from The Business Journals, an article in Forbes (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/33068) expands the list of benefits to include credibility, branding, targeted marketing, greater engagement and fewer print ads to compete with for the reader’s attention.

An argument for printing

Your mailer may not be read longer than the time it takes to travel from the mailbox to the recycling bin, but people are likely to remember that you made an effort to communicate with them, which can improve your credibility and trustworthiness. And, the minority of readers who read newsletters from start to finish will have something new to discuss with their families and friends.

Unless the content is date-specific, your newsletter can have a shelf life as a source of information about your school district for several weeks or months. Be sure to display it in your district and school offices and deliver copies to local community groups that have kiosks for local information. Your chamber of commerce may be interested in copies for its lobby. You also can leave copies with local real estate agents who may want to share news about schools with clients.

Although social media is a great tool for reaching people, it isn’t comprehensive and omits members of your audience who are not regular users or are not engaged with your district. Direct mail can help you get to people who are not a social media audience, do not visit your website and are not directly engaged with your schools.

A printed piece also can reinforce messages you post digitally. Messages must be repeated before they resonate. The recommended number of repetition ranges from seven to 20 times in multiple different ways.

Newsletter tips

An effective print newsletter should contain your primary messages, your positive stories and upcoming events that are open to the public. It should have contact information and a professional design. Also, consider adding a QR code to connect your printed news with your digital content.

Try not to think of a newsletter as extra work. Ideally, it is a repetition of messages you have already developed. It can simply be a new format for the same messages you use on other platforms.

For greatest impact, follow these design and content tips from CompanyNewsletters.com (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/32765).

  • Publish regularly. Keeping on schedule helps your credibility. It is common to underestimate production time for a newsletter. Be sure to account for enough time to write, design and edit your publication.
  • Repeat your messages. Don’t be afraid to use material you used elsewhere. The same content, adjusted for different outlets can and should be repeated. Use it in your newsletter, on your website and in social media.
  • Repetition will help your messages stick and make your newsletter project less burdensome.
  • Use descriptive headlines. Effective headlines are complete sentences with verbs.
  • Mix up the size of your headlines. Vary headline length to increase reader interest. Use larger headlines for higher priority articles.
  • Write a strong lead. Start with the important information that helps readers understand the point of the article. If they know what the story is about, they may be more likely to continue reading.
  • Vary column width for a more interesting layout. There is nothing wrong with the standard three-column design; however, varying the layout will make your publication more interesting.
  • Use photos. Photos draw readers in and make the content more memorable. They have been shown to dramatically increase readership in print or on social media. Omitting photos is a sure way to lower readership of your publication.

A note about sustainability

A valid concern for printed materials is sustainability. Arguments in support of periodically printing materials point out that paper is the most recycled material and is a renewable resource. In its white paper 10 Reasons Why Print Isn’t Dead: Why Marketers Need to Print (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/43520), HubCast notes, “Paper often comes from managed forests or farms, which replant about 4 million trees every day (four times more than they harvest).”

Contributed by Marcia Latta, communications consultant

Share information to help parents with school lunch options

Good nutrition is an important part of school success. Hungry kids don’t achieve as well as well-fed students. And, kids with allergies are at a real risk of suffering dangerous food-related allergic reactions.

Schools can help parents follow the rules for school meals by including nutrition information in back-to-school materials. Include all school guidelines to help parents ensure that their children have appropriate lunch options that meet their needs and avoid allergy triggers for their peers.

Do they know how important lunch is?

Most parents understand that school lunch is essential. The required brainpower for learning needs to be refueled with a healthy lunch, and it should start out fueled with a healthy breakfast.

“Nutrition can affect learning through three channels: physical development (e.g., sight), cognition (e.g., concentration, memory) and behavior (e.g., hyperactivity),” wrote a team of nutrition researchers from Berkeley (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/69098).

A reminder about the connection between lunch and learning is helpful at the start of the year and periodically as the year progresses.

Reaching out to parents with tips

Include this information in back-to-school materials, and use your school newsletter, website or social media to provide tips for parents.

If you have a regular school meal column in your parent materials, topics could include the following.

  • Food education: Talking to kids about food to help them understand nutrition and learn about safe food habits.
  • Understanding allergies: “Researchers estimate that up to 15 million Americans have food allergies, including 5.9 million children under age 18. That’s 1 in 13 children, or roughly two in every classroom. About 30% of children with food allergies are allergic to more than one food.” (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/55146)
    Talk to kids about being sensitive and careful around others who have potentially life-threatening allergies. Parents can help their children understand the health risks that children with allergies or food-related health issues face. Food education may prevent accidental exposure to food allergens by classmates.
    Also, make sure that kids know what to do if they witness an allergic reaction. Explain how important it is to alert an adult at the first sign of an allergic reaction.
  • Reading food labels: Understanding nutrition can be tricky. Teach them to read labels and recognize unhealthy foods and ingredients.
  • Washing hands before and after eating: All kids should do this, and most kids should be reminded frequently. This is important in preventing germ- related illnesses, but it also helps prevent exposure to allergens, such as peanut oil from a peanut butter sandwich.
  • Preventing bullying: Parents must encourage their children to report any bullying or harassment by other students. Bullying is not acceptable for any student. For students with food sensitivities, it adds additional anxiety about food and creates a hostile climate at school.

Be sure parents understand the rules

In addition to sharing school rules about allergy-related food precautions, schools should inform parents about school lunch policies.

  • Are there additional items that are not allowed at school?
  • Do parents understand how to pay for school-provided lunches?
  • Do their students qualify for free or reduced-price meals?
  • What is the policy to help their children avoid free- lunch stigmas or embarrassments?
  • Do parents know that children cannot heat food items at school?
  • Are parents aware of how much time is allotted for lunch?

Give them some meal ideas

Packing a healthy school lunch is not easy, even for those who do not have children with special dietary needs. The following lunchtime suggestions from a nutritionist are nutritional meal suggestions for any age level and the most picky eaters.

Build the meal with a focus on fruits and veggies.

Consider wrapping sandwiches in lettuce, or using lettuce and celery to scoop chicken salads.

The following examples cover a lot of nutritional bases:

  • Chicken with barbeque sauce, rice with mixed veggies; a plum and orange.
  • Roll up spinach, guacamole and sliced red bell peppers in lunch meat; serve with carrots and fruit salad.
  • Make a gluten-free pasta salad with cucumber, tomatoes, pepperoni, Italian dressing and gluten-free pasta; serve with berries.
  • Pack a corn taco shell with leftover hamburger or chicken; include watermelon and celery
  • Wrap tuna in lettuce; enjoy with a peach or plum.
  • Pickles work well rolled into lunch meat; serve with grapes and cherry tomatoes.

The following tips can help parents manage smoother lunch preparations:

  • Premake sandwiches for the whole week.
  • Make baked goods in large batches.
  • Specify a crate, box or bucket in the pantry with easy- to-grab lunch items.
  • Pack leftovers for lunch the next day.
  • Buy in bulk.
  • Talk to your child about what he or she is eating and what is thrown away.

For more tips on allergy-free food options, a printable list from the website AllergyAwesomeness.com is available at http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/41827.

Contributed by Shannon Priem, APR, former communications director for Oregon School Boards Association; health writer for Salem Health

Who are you talking to? Tailoring your writing style for your audience

I am writing this for you. You are my audience.

The preceding statements seem obvious. But here’s another one: I am writing this for my editors.

In other words, this essay is like much of the writing you presumably do. It has two audiences — a primary one and secondary one.

Assessing those audiences is essential to effective writing. My goal in this essay is to explain why and to provide ideas for defining your audience and determining your writing style.

Your second audience comes first

Let’s start with the secondary audience, which is whoever edits and/or reviews your work before publication. By “publication,” I’m referring to the moment when your work is sent to your main audience, whether it’s hitting “send” on an email, posting to social media, uploading to a website, printing or using any other format.

Although I refer to editors as your secondary audience, they are an audience for whom you absolutely should prepare. Doing so will save time, energy and stress.

You need to observe and learn the preferences and idiosyncrasies of your editors. If your supervisor — or whoever edits your work — still believes the outdated notions that there should be two spaces between sentences, that it’s grammatically wrong to end a sentence with a preposition or that one should never use contractions, then it behooves you to follow those rules without complaint. Those are minor irritations that need not disrupt your writing style and that are not worth fighting.

If your editor constantly makes substantive changes in both the content and the style, that is another matter.

And if you don’t have an editor, I encourage you to at least find an obliging colleague who will proofread your work carefully and alert you to glitches, errors in logic and holes.

Writing for your main audience

What works for one audience may or may not work for another. Like many writers, I often have a specific person — real or imagined — in mind to represent my target audience. Identifying or creating that representation is a good way to get a handle on the characteristics of a particular audience.

Knowing your audience will determine how you approach your writing. Your goal is to put yourself in the audience’s shoes and write from that perspective.

As a professional communicator, your audience,  not your personal preferences, should determine your writing approach. Your journal at home is where you can write any way you want.

If it is an audience with a short attention span, your writing must be tight and concise, able to be read and absorbed within a couple of minutes. In fact, your headline should be so on-target and your first paragraph so tight as to grab and keep the audience’s attention in a few seconds. One such approach is a quick-hit list of bulleted items.

News releases should be written in a tight, concise form; this is what the audience needs to know. So should some social media posts and, depending on your supervisors’ preferences, memos to them.

Storytelling is the most powerful form of communication. If your audience has time for a story,  you can take more of a feature approach. That sometimes is appropriate for a newsletter or website. Remember, a longer piece does not mean it should move slower. Prune your writing of tangents and unnecessary verbiage.

Your tone may be informal. But don’t try to be cutesy in your writing; it rarely works, even though you think it’s delightful.

Your tone should match your audience’s expectations. If the issue is serious or if you are writing to the school board or a government agency, your tone should be formal as an indication of respect.

If your audience is fellow staff members, you want to strive for a middle tone. Being either overly formal or overly relaxed can be off-putting.

If your audience is children, you should be informal but not hokey. Unless you’re a middle school student — or an accomplished author of youth literature — don’t try to write like a middle school student.

Who is the audience?

Many new businesses fail. Why? Because they lack a realistic business plan, including an accurate understanding of their target audience and how to reach that audience.

Every piece of writing should have its own plan, an answer to this overriding question: What do I want to accomplish with this communication; who is my target audience; and how do I make it relevant to this audience?

Here are a few more questions to help you prepare.

  • What is my key message?
  • Whom should I keep in mind in addition to my main target audience?
  • What are the audience’s values, interests and concerns? How do I incorporate these in presenting my key message?
  • What writing structure would my audience be most receptive to?
  • How knowledgeable is my audience on this topic? What is the right level of explanation to provide, and how will I do that?
  • Can information be told better through an alternative format, such as a graphic, photograph or video?
  • What questions will my audience have?
  • Have I answered those questions?

Does your voice matter?

Based on your audience, your tone and style may vary.

My writing voice tends to be one of short, subject- verb-object sentences and short paragraphs, regardless of the subject matter. I usually strive to be conversational but not unduly familiar. In an opinion piece, depending on the audience, I can be forceful.

Know yourself as a writer. I do a lot of rewriting. Even in personal emails, my first drafts often are too complicated, poking into tangents that I care about but that are neither necessary nor helpful to my main points.

One of my first bosses said I was not a natural writer. He was right. Over time, I developed a style that works for me. Until then, I unfortunately forced readers to endure some regretful periods of experimentation, including one during which I was teasingly known by colleagues as the “Master of Metaphor.” It took a while to learn that good writing, including vivid writing, is plain writing. Flowery language is off-putting unless you are someone who loves the past centuries’ great works of literature that hardly anyone reads today.

If you are concerned about developing your own style, relax. It will happen. However, here are tips to help you accelerate the process.

  • Keep track of writers whom you enjoy and admire. On your own time, practice writing in that style. Unlike athletes and musicians, writers spend little time simply practicing their craft. Practice is what creates improvement.
  • Take something you have written and practice writing it in other styles.
  • Go back a month later and read several of your pieces. What works and what doesn’t work in your writing? What can you learn from your prior work? Would anyone read these pieces if they didn’t have to?
  • Do freewriting regularly. Write by hand without worrying about whether the spelling or punctuation or grammar is correct. Later, take note of your voice in that writing.
  • Write down several adjectives that describe you. Together, they can give clues to the writing style to which you aspire.
  • Recognize how you’re feeling when you write. Are you alert and relaxed, or tired and stressed? The latter can infect your writing, creating a style of drudgery.
  • Read, read, read. Write, write, write.

Most important, find the style that works for you and your audiences. Write on.

Contributed by Dick Hughes, communications consultant. Contact him at TheHughesisms@gmail.com.

Sparking community engagement with effective social media

Implementing social media, an integral component of any school district’s communications plan, may seem like an overwhelming task, but there are many ways district communications professionals can ease the burden and create outstanding social media programs to help meet the goals and objectives of their districts’ overall communications plans.

Upfront investments in time, care and advance planning can make all the difference toward creating successful social media programs that positively represent districts and spark community engagement.

Understanding social media planning basics

Advance planning for district social media should begin by understanding how social media is uniquely designed and positioned to allow communications professionals to:

  • communicate timely information;
  • feature relevant, interesting and compelling stories;
  • facilitate two-way conversations;
  • monitor constituents’ comments.

Monitoring constituents’ comments posted throughout the last six months to a year yields insights into the topics that matter most to students, parents, guardians and taxpayers. These insights may help determine feature content as well as content for sparking engagement and evoking comments that establish two-way conversations and build relationships with constituents.

Creating an editorial calendar and determining content

The biggest upfront time investment for the communications professional is the development of an annual editorial calendar. Time spent in upfront planning leads to greater time efficiency for implementation and higher-quality content generation overall. When adequate time — including research time — is allotted for thoughtful content generation rather than scrambling last minute to meet posting quota deadlines, content will be better received for the desired community engagement and perception.

Ideally, editorial calendar development takes place during summer when more time can be devoted to the task. If the communications professional cannot carve out enough time for calendar development or finds the task too daunting, he or she may consider breaking it down into smaller chunks, such as creating the calendar monthly, quarterly or every six months.

The editorial calendar should reflect three to four posts daily for every day of the year, although perhaps less during summer break. Divide the calendar by date into the main information types that district posts will communicate. Add space for post themes and more space for the actual posts, so everything is contained within one document for easy access and implementation.

Using several types of information and execution styles, user engagement is sparked, and district posts will likely perform better when posts consist of a mix of the following:

  • Timely information — news and events, school closures, emergency announcements, policy changes and today’s cafeteria menu.
    Use the school or district calendar to predetermine key dates for events, teacher conferences, holidays, vacations and like events. Write the appropriate posts in advance, and enter them into the calendar for their appropriate posting dates.
    Consider posting more than once, further in advance and closer to the events, and include dates for post- event posts, such as athletic event scores, concert and play reviews and photos, and graduation photos.
  • Feature stories — topics such as student- and teacher-interest and recognition, educational programs and trends, district achievements in educational pillars, awards ceremonies and achievements and graduate and quality profiles.
    Stories should be communicated in a variety of formats, including video, infographics, photos and audio clips to peak user engagement and allow shorter time requirements for users to engage.
  • Themed features — teacher of the week or month, on-this-date educational facts, and weekly or monthly posts including student study tips, “from the archives” photos or videos or motivational quotes.
    Be clever in naming each feature for user interest to seek the latest post in the series.
  • Hashtag features — no longer just for use on Twitter, hashtags are commonly used on Facebook and Instagram posts.
    These may include using hashtags to name the themed features listed above, using popular educational hashtags or creating ongoing news or feature series under specific hashtag names, relevant only to the particular series where users can see all related posts. For a list of educational-related hashtags, visit www.teachthought.com/twitter-hashtags-for-teacher.
  • Cross posting — posts that include links or hashtags to drive users to other platforms, such as Facebook to Twitter or Twitter to Instagram to reach much broader audiences. These increase the points of contact and user engagement for enhanced user experiences, perceptions and relationship building.

Effectively implementing posts

The most effective and efficient way to publish posts across multiple social media platforms is by using a social-media management tool that allows communications professionals to schedule posts in advance for publication on the specified dates.

There are a number of social-media management tools that districts may consider to meet their individual district needs. Some options to check out include HootSuite, HubSpot, Buffer, Sprout Social and MeetEdgar.

Additional social media guidelines for best results

Here are some tips and tricks to help meet district communications objectives.

  • Gear posts to the individual platforms on which they will appear. Users expect a particular experience based on the particular platform, and posts should deliver that experience.
  • Keep up with the latest trends in social media. Users have short attention spans and to get noticed, posts need to hold users’ attention using the latest engagement techniques.
  • Monitor comments daily to filter any profanity, false statements, racist or hurtful comments. Manage profanity using the platform’s profanity filter and setting the filter to “high.”
  • Check the editorial calendar daily to ensure timely information posts that cannot be scheduled in advance are published.
  • Strive to post as much live video as possible. This is a posting technique that continues to thrive.

When social media content generation is thoughtfully planned in advance by monitoring the district’s user-comment history, developing and implementing an annual editorial calendar and using a variety of posting types, including timely information, feature stories, themed and hashtag features, cross posting and video, districts can spark the kinds of community engagement that establish positive district perceptions and build lasting relationships for better outcomes.

300m is an OSBA service provider, offering comprehensive and affordable social media management programs for OSBA members. Visit www.300msocial.com on the OSBA VendorLink webpage at www.ohioschoolboards.org/vendorlink for more information.

Contributed by Cindy Carvour, client services director, 300m

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