Communicating through video: Creating connection and impact in external communications

This is the second in a two-part series on using video to communicate with your various audiences and stakeholders. Last month’s focus was on using video to communicate internally. This article focuses on using video to enhance your external communications.

Feel the power

Video is a powerful tool for engaging stakeholders. It can quickly and effectively share information, personalize and humanize your message and create an emotional connection with the viewer. The last point is critically important. Few media can make people feel something as strongly as video can. Let this emotional power work to your benefit.

As you plan your video, think not only about what information you want viewers to take from the video, but also how you want them to feel. By emotionally connecting with viewers, you increase the likelihood that they will remember the content and have a positive association with your school or district. Videos that have emotional impact also are much more likely to be shared via social media or other ways.

Why video? It’s all about the kids

One way to connect emotionally with your viewer is keeping students front and center. Our schools are all about our students. Unfortunately, what people often hear about are budgets, test scores, rankings, closures or challenges faced by our schools. By focusing on kids, we remind viewers what our schools are about and why it’s all important. Here are a few ways to feature students in an external video, with parental permission, of course:

• Feature student voice — Letting students speak for themselves can be incredibly powerful. Students have a clarity and honesty that translates very well to video. Whether you are talking about a bond measure’s impact, a school’s opening or closing or launching a new program or initiative, consider having students share their views in their own words.
• Feature teacher voice — Teachers love to talk about their students. Give voice to their passion, enthusiasm and caring. Let them show the innovative or creative ways they are instilling a love of learning in students. Provide an opportunity for them to share what they love about teaching in your school or district. 
• Highlight a personal success story — Trying to make a broader point with a video? Try going hyperlocal before you go more general. Pick a student story that illustrates your broader theme or a student who has benefited from a program or approach. Feature interviews with the student, parents, teachers or others directly connected to the story. Keep it emotionally-driven and personal for greatest impact.
• Show students actively engaged in learning — Certain learning activities really lend themselves to video. Capturing students engaged in active, creative, innovative learning makes for great stock footage for many topics.
• Highlight the diversity in your schools — Our students come from many cultural, economic and racial backgrounds. Make sure to feature that rich diversity in your videos. English learners could say “hello” or “welcome” in their first language or talk about what they love about their family’s culture or traditions. This can be a powerful tool to create a welcoming and inclusive environment in your district.

Getting seen: How to feature videos externally

Like internal videos, external uses for video communication are limited by only your creativity and time. Here are a few ideas:

• Providing an overview of your school or district — A short video can be a wonderful way to introduce people to your school or district. You can feature it your website or use it at community events to set the tone and provide a common ground for what you are all about. You also can use it internally in new employee orientation.
  Overview videos should focus on students, your district’s vision, mission and key goals and anything that sets you apart. This is your opportunity to market yourself to people who may not be familiar with what you do every day.
• Celebrating success at the student, program, school or district level — Whether you are using video to show a student’s personal triumphs over adversity or highlighting a higher graduation rate or innovative STEM program, video is an excellent way to showcase and celebrate achievements.
• Sharing critical information — People generally retain information better from videos or other dynamic mediums than from static printed materials. Whether you’re making the case for an upcoming bond issue, explaining a curriculum or program change or discussing a boundary change, video can be a valuable tool to reach a wider audience in a simplified, digestible manner. Use graphics and other tools to make complex topics more accessible.
• Leadership messages — Leadership messages don’t just have to be for internal audiences. Consider having a welcome video on your website from your superintendent, principal or board members. These short messages help humanize leadership and make parents and community members aware of who is leading their schools and what drives them.
• Recruitment — A video can be a wonderful recruitment tool. A short video highlighting your district and featuring teacher reflections about why they love to work there can be hugely impactful. As with most videos, let teacher and student voices shine. Showcase what makes your district special and unique.
• Staff profiles — In addition to videos featuring school leaders, your website can feature short videos on teachers or other key staff. Allow teachers to share what drives them, their hobbies, why they teach and more.

Producing a strong video

Like internal staff videos, keep some of the basics in mind:

• Be creative — You truly are only limited by your own creativity. There are millions of short video examples online. See if there are impactful techniques or approaches you might want to try. 
• Don’t “overscript” — Let students, teachers or administrators share what excites them. Take the best. Leave the rest.
• Keep it short and sweet — Less is often more with video. Keep it concise. Five minutes or less is generally best. Two minutes or less is even better. 
• Have fun — If videos aren’t fun, people won’t watch or share them. There is little worse than a boring video. Have some fun making the video. Include people who enjoy the process and can add passion and creativity.
• Use emotional drivers — Let your video be emotionally driven rather than informationally driven. 
• Have a clear message — Be clear about what you want people to take from your video. If it doesn’t contribute to your central message, cut it out.
• Keep it student-centered — Our schools are all about the students. Make sure that comes through loud and clear in your videos.

Resources

• School Videos You Must Watch Before Creating One for Your Own School — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/12169
• How to Create an Educational Promo Video For Your School — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/75472
• How to create a great promotional video for your school — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/23874
• 5 critical video production tips: How to shoot better quality web video for business — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/38831
• Our Kids, Our Future features hundreds of videos by Washington state school districts — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/27972
• Video production tips — http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/74381

Contributed by Crystal Greene, communications consultant

The important relationship between superintendents and communications staff

A communications team’s size can vary from a multiperson staff headed by a communications director to the superintendent’s assistant with communications as one of his or her many duties.

However, more leadership teams are realizing that in today’s competitive era of charter, magnet and private schools, a district must effectively communicate its strengths to be more successful. That means more communication.

“In the century we live in, I think that education organizations need to look to our business colleagues, particularly in the area of marketing,” said Matt Utterback, superintendent of Oregon’s North Clackamas School District and this year’s American Association of School Administrators National Superintendent of the Year.

“Public education is becoming more competitive, and our communications department needs to be focused on telling our stories and doing it through a marketing lens.”

Everyone knows how to communicate, don’t they?

Unfortunately, the field of communications itself suffers from poor marketing. Jamie Marie Riche, principal consultant and founder of Ideal Communications, has observed that superintendents often don’t understand exactly how the communications staff can be effective in achieving the district’s goals.

“I am often a guest lecturer at the (Seattle) superintendent candidate certificate program, and that day I spend with them is often their one day spent solely on communications,” she said. “Part of the problem is that superintendents may not, through their training, understand the importance of it and don’t know how to turn it from a personal skill into an organizational tool.”

Often, superintendents have risen through their field on the merits of their own communication abilities. This career success can make it difficult to recognize that good communication is obviously highly important in every facet of district life. However, don’t confuse it with communications with a capital C.

“There’s kind of an old PR saw, ‘Everyone thinks they understand schools because they went to school,’ and it applies to PR as well,” Riche said. “Everyone communicates, so they think they understand the communications function.”

It’s a two-way street!

Riche points out that the misunderstandings go both ways. “I also often see PR people who do not fully understand the pressure of (being the superintendent),” she said.

You may have the most attentive and communications-focused leadership team on earth, but the superintendent has a lot of different pressures and considerations with each decision he or she makes. The communications staff may be unaware of these pressures. Despite a communications director’s suggestion to go in a certain direction, the superintendent may choose to do the opposite.

“I’ve seen PR people take things personally when they should not,” Riche said. “Painting with a broad brush, I would say that the one weakness I come across the most with my PR colleagues is that they take things personally in ways that are not helpful professionally.”

It’s easy to feel like your advice has been disregarded, but “once our feelings are hurt, we become less effective at giving advice next time,” Riche added. She has two pieces of advice for when you run across this situation:

• Don’t take it personally!
• As quickly as possible, move on and get strategic again, even if your professional feelings were hurt for good reason. “The faster you can get your head back in the game, the better,” Riche said. “If you can take another look at your strategy, and you still feel your strategy is good, then you have to depersonalize it. It’s important, for the good of the team, to figure out quickly how to advocate for your position without sounding pouty.” 

Hurt feelings and missed opportunities are a result of misunderstandings. So, how can we bridge this divide?

A seat at the table

In school districts large enough to have a dedicated communications/PR professional, it is critical to have a strong relationship between the leadership team and the professional. The communications staff needs to be well-informed and act in lockstep with the superintendent and leadership team. That can only come from being fully informed. 

“The PR person needs to be at the table for cabinet-level discussions, even if they are only at the coordinator level and everyone in the cabinet is at the director or executive director level,” Riche said. “They should ideally attend the majority of the cabinet discussions, even if organizationally there should be some topics that they might not normally be privy to.” 

For districts with a part-time communications director or staff members with multiple roles, a daily, or at least weekly, meeting with the superintendent is critical. Having everyone on the same page can mean that when a communications staff member sees an opportunity to build a relationship or resource that leadership has on the agenda, he or she can seize it and move the whole team forward.

What does a successful team look like?

“When you have a really well-staffed and high-functioning communications department, they are doing regular internal check-ins about how they are doing on the steps of their strategic plan,” Riche said.

"They are attending some of the community meetings and acting as almost a facilitator to those meetings, following up with action items. It’s a robust, back-and-forth engagement — reporting on it, tracking it and keeping projects moving.”

Last November, the North Clackamas School District put a $500 million capital construction bond on the ballot. “We spent the two-and-a-half years before the bond constantly telling our story,” Utterback said.

Before starting the campaign, the district completed a survey and found that the community didn’t have very positive feelings about its schools. There was simply no way the district would pass the bond, especially in Oregon where bonds are a challenge to pass. The leadership team realized that the community had little knowledge about its schools. 

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for community members to be unaware of what’s happening in the school district. Around 60% of the people in every community have no association with their schools because they don’t have any children in the school system. These are the same community members who are asked to vote on the schools’ behalf.

“We used website, social media, advertisements in the newspaper and table tents at the mall,” Utterback said. “The communications department also utilized me as a superintendent.” During the community engagement program, Utterback gave more than 200 presentations to the community.

“Every PTA, every community organization, every school staff, and in some cases I visited them twice,” he said. Each of his presentations celebrated the district’s successes and laid out the plan for what it wanted to achieve in the future.

As the district saw improvements in student data, attendance rates and grades, Utterback and the communications staff used that information to win over the community.

“Over the course of two years, a lot of our community saw me one-to-three times and each time they saw this improvement in the story, and they made connections with me,” Utterback said. “Suddenly, the district wasn’t this bureaucratic monster.”

When a survey showed the community approval rating was at 80% to 90%, the bond issue went on the ballot. “It passed in November with 63%,” Utterback said. “That is the highest, or tied for highest, ever in the state.”

Whether your district has a small or large communications staff, your goals are the same: successful students. Ultimately, North Clackamas’ investment in communications paid off in a big way for their district. 

By following a communications plan, the students’ and district’s successes were self-reinforced. The more positive news, the more community support it received, which paved the way for more opportunities for students. 

Contributed by Megan J. Wilson, Los Angeles-based freelance writer and communications consultant

Tips for editors: Where do you start editing?

A good editing process starts with looking at the calendar or clock. How much time do you have for the editing? Triage your time. The less time you have, the more you should focus on the most-essential aspect of editing: double-checking for accuracy.

For example, seconds matter — not just minutes — when you’re writing or editing an urgent social media post or announcement about a security lockdown at a school. Urgency trumps perfection in grammar. You can, and should, come back to add details and fix any glitches in your original post.

The ADCs of writing

For most writing, I teach the ADC hierarchy: accuracy, deadline and clarity. Accuracy is No. 1, followed by meeting your deadline. Then comes writing with clarity. That is why it is important to build your editing time frame with sufficient time to work on writing with clarity and purpose.

Where do you start editing? By not editing. Avoid the temptation to jump into the weeds and starting fixing every little thing. Try to read for content without making any changes. By doing so, you’re more likely to catch holes and major problems. Take notes about what you find, instead of relying on your memory.

If you can, print the writing. Even though we strive for paperless offices, editing by hand is more accurate and effective than editing on a computer.

As you move through the writing, think about the writer’s frailties. Look for them. For example, I often stumble on days and dates. I use calendars and sticky notes to help me, but I still ask my editors — we all need editors — to double-check any references to days, dates or time zones.

In the same vein, I’ve supervised writers who were prone to misusing certain homonyms, such as breaks and brakes or its and it’s. Other writers, including one of my bosses, frequently misspell names. I made it a point to look up each person’s name and recheck it against a verified source.

As you consider clarity, remember the first rule of editing: Do no harm.

Early in my career, I had a penchant for taking a piece of writing that was 90% good and doing so much rewriting that it became 85% good, then 80% and less.

Overediting can cause as much, or more, harm as underediting. Every change should have a purpose that is more than your own idiosyncrasies.

One of my graduate school professors banned any form of “it” in students’ writing. In a graduate school course, it was a useful lesson, despite my colleagues’ grouching. It and other pronouns can be unclear. Even more importantly, the ban was a realistic lesson in learning to follow the boss’ rules, even when those rules are illogical. Try not to be one of those bosses, or editors.

With that in mind, here are techniques for improving clarity:

• Subject, verb, object — Encourage writers to use what writing coach Roy Peter Clark calls “right-branching” sentences. This sentence is an example of a right-branching sentence because it starts with the main thought. In contrast, this is a left-branching sentence, because it starts with an introductory phrase. Right-branching sentences are easier to understand than left-branching sentences.
  However, be wary of rewriting too many sentences during editing; it’s too easy for the editor to introduce errors. And understand the difference between writing errors and style differences. It’s not wrong just because you wouldn’t write it that way. 
• Never assume — If something seems unclear, check with the writer about what he or she meant, rather than assuming. It is better to leave an unclear passage as is than to make the wrong assumption and introduce an error.
• Prune — Look for unnecessary words and redundancies.
• Conciseness improves clarity — The more complicated the subject matter, the shorter the sentences should be. For example, one short thought per sentence is a good rule when describing something technical, such as operating instructions for a laptop.

Five common errors to watch for:

• Remember that “it’s” is the contraction for “it is” and “its” is the possessive form of “it.”
• Don’t use apostrophes to form plurals, unless it’s the plural of a single letter or number, such as the Oakland A’s.
  The plural of Smith is Smiths, not Smith’s. The plural of Ramirez is Ramirezes, not Ramirez’. The plural of Hughes is Hugheses, not Hughes’.
• “There’s” means “there is,” so only use that contraction with a single item.
  Incorrect: There’s several days set aside for grading.
  Correct: There’s one day set aside for grading.
  Furthermore, “there’s,” “there is,” and “there are” are dead construction, so avoid them when possible.
  Better: One day is set aside for grading.
  Similarly, avoid excess words such as “a total of.”
  “Seventeen students will take the test” is better than “A total of 17 students will take the test.”
• Clauses that can stand alone as sentences cannot be connected by a comma. They must be joined by a semicolon or a word, such as and or but. Or they can be separated.
  Incorrect: This essay is helpful, it will help me edit faster.
  Correct: This essay is helpful; it will help me edit faster.
  Or, this essay is helpful, and it will help me edit faster.
• Periods and commas are the only punctuation marks that always go inside the quotation marks.
  Incorrect: The class is reading “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.
  Correct: The class is reading “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
  Incorrect: “My son enjoyed watching ‘Frozen’”, she said.
  Correct: “My son enjoyed watching ‘Frozen,’” she said.

Final tips

When you make changes, always read the changes aloud s-l-o-w-l-y to catch any typos or other errors you might have introduced. And if you can, read the entire piece aloud slowly. 

Remember, do no more editing than is necessary. The better you’ve trained people on writing, the less editing you need to do.

Contributed by writing consultant Dick Hughes. Contact him at thehughesisms@gmail.com or www.facebook.com/Hughesisms.

Editorial calendars plan content and help reach your audience

Attracting a follower, or even a page view, can be a challenge. Fans can be fickle. Despite your hard work creating a social media post, video or infographic, content has a short shelf life. Content is often seen and then forgotten.

“The average half-life of content on Twitter is less than three hours,” Michael Brenner writes at contentmarketinginstitute.com (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/38503). “On Facebook, five hours will give you 75% of all the views you will get. An average article reaches just about everyone it’s going to reach in 37 days.”

A lot of noise fights for audience attention, and collectively, our attention spans are getting shorter.

“According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, the average attention span of a human being has dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds in 2013,” Brenner writes at digitalistmag.com (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/94440). “This is one second less than the attention span of a goldfish. That’s right, goldfish have an attention span of 9 seconds — one second more than you and I.”

This makes the effort to keep our audiences informed about operations and programs and initiatives much more challenging. To catch the brief attention of viewers, who also are engaging with content from many other sources, we need to churn out more content. 

The struggle to engage people with more content — news stories, photos, videos and social media posts — is real. Most of us are already stretched to the limit. We can’t add more to our busy task list without letting something go. The key is to simplify the way we produce content. We might be able to do a bit more if we can find a way to do it faster.

Understand your audience

The first step in creating the best content for your audience is to understand your audience. Your community may be different than neighboring communities, and your parent audiences may differ from your community audiences in information preferences. 

Try different kinds of content and pay attention to how you are reaching your audience. If you conduct a community survey, be sure to ask respondents how they prefer to get information. It might surprise you that people prefer emailed news over social media posts or newspaper articles as a primary information source.

Your editorial calendar is your guide to what and when to post

Teach people to watch for your news by distributing it consistently. One way to do this effectively is by keeping an editorial calendar. It can be very simple — a spreadsheet, calendar app or task list with dates. However, it should help you track pop-up events and those that come around every year.

Key questions to help you build your calendar:

• Who are you creating the content for?
• Why is it important?
• Who will produce it?
• What do you want your audience to get from the information?

Calendar tools

The calendar shouldn’t be complicated. Spend time on the content and messages. Use a simple Excel spreadsheet or shareable Google Sheets file. Content Marketing Institute has a template at http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/51826. To use it, click “File” and select “Download as” and “Microsoft Excel (.xlsx).”

Apps for project management, task lists and tracking might help if you prefer mobile tools or manage a team. Try Trello, CoSchedule or Evernote. Google Calendar also has shareable features and task lists. 

However, when you build your calendar, be sure to include the basics: date, topic, author (if not you), school or district contact, audience, material production timeline and status. Separate each list item into a separate category for easier searching later. You may want to know when you published that web story about a program at Your Town Middle School. Make it easy to find with a built-in search feature.

Remember, you don’t have to build everything from scratch. Be sure to review your calendar occasionally to see which topics and content can be repurposed for repeated use, especially events that happen every school year.

The power of pictures

Everyone knows pictures are powerful ways to get noticed. According to Neil Patel at contentmarketinginstitute.com (http://links.ohioschoolboards.org/78045), “Content with images gets 94% more views than content sans images. It doesn’t matter what industry, topic, niche or specialty, images matter. Content with visual imagery also gets more social shares.” 

This isn’t new information. Images have always been a better way to get noticed. They open the door to the information you want people to see.

Is it better to include a poor-quality photo than no photo? Maybe. Any photo may be better than nothing. But why take that chance? You don’t need a professional digital single-lens reflex camera. Today’s phone camera quality is excellent. Combined with free photo editing apps, there is no excuse for terrible photos.

If you are looking for mobile phone photo apps, the following are helpful and easy to use:

• Snapseed (Android or IOS, free) — Recently acquired by Google, it has filters, editing tools and the ability to share to social media sites or download.
• Adobe Photoshop Express (Android or IOS, free) — If you like Adobe tools, this app should be familiar. It’s a scaled-down version for quick mobile edits.
• TouchRetouch (Android or IOS, $1.99) — Try this app when you want to fix imperfections or entirely eliminate elements in your photo.
• PicLab (Android or IOS, free) — This app adds text to images. You also can create photo collages and add filters.

Contributed by: Marcia Latta, communications consultant

Why and how to form your facilities task force

Considering a construction bond issue for a new school or to expand an existing one? Long before you start sketching designs, pull together a facilities task force.

That’s a critical first step in determining if you even need a new building or if there are other options. At election time, recommendations from your facilities task force will carry considerable weight with voters and might be a major factor in the bond issue’s success.

The facilities task force’s job is to involve community members in the planning, construction, maintenance and monitoring processes of your school district and make recommendations to the school board. Input from the task force will help you make a thoughtful and informed decision about how to address facility needs.

And just as important, task force members become knowledgeable — and often passionate — about the district’s needs and become some of your best advocates if you decide to proceed with a bond issue.

Who should be on the task force?

The task force should include 20 to 40 members with diverse backgrounds and expertise. Ideally, it will include at least one or two parents, perhaps, a student or two, staff members and a mix of citizen volunteers and local government staff. It’s helpful if some members have expertise in construction, maintenance or similar fields.

While guiding such a large committee can be challenging, it is worth the effort. Having many different perspectives and areas of expertise will help you consider multiple options and become aware of community concerns about facilities. In the end, you’ll develop a better bond proposal.

It’s important to believe — and convey — to task force members that their mission is not to just rubber-stamp whatever course of action the district wants to take. The group has the important job of studying the issues in depth, looking at different options and ideas and making recommendations.

The task force should meet at least a year prior to seeking a bond issue. In some districts, the task force may meet once or twice a month over the course of 12 to 18 months to glean all the information to make the best recommendation. That’s a long time, but think of it as an investment in developing knowledgeable members who will make solid recommendations.

Some meetings may involve field trips, visiting various schools to observe firsthand and better understand the issues. Some meetings may involve presentations from architects or other experts who can offer background and information about situations. Other meetings may involve discussions of best practices or innovative solutions.

Start with the mission

Before beginning its work, the facilities task force needs to know why it is convening and the scope of its work:

• Are all schools in the district over capacity and class sizes too high? 
• Do only one or two schools face overcrowding? 
• Is your district considering adding preschool classes at elementary schools but doesn’t have room? 

In each case, the facilities task force’s role will be to study the issue, review existing facilities and propose possible solutions. With help from district experts, it may be able to put dollar amounts on proposals before sending recommendations to the school board.

The scope of work should go beyond just recommending whether to build a new school. For example, if your district is overcrowded, the charge should be to look beyond current enrollment needs to what the future might hold. 

Some things to consider:

• What does the community want in terms of school facilities? 
• How do current spaces and technology support instructional strategies and desired educational outcomes? 
• How do current facilities compare with those of similar or neighboring districts?
• What are the costs of building new versus repairing and maintaining or adding to existing structures? 
• How do the current attendance boundaries affect educational programs? 
• What is the projected enrollment information for the next five or 10 years? 
• What is the district doing to ensure equity across the district?

It’s smart to invite the media to attend facilities task force meetings. They can help the public understand the district’s challenges, whether overcrowding or dilapidated buildings, and feel the urgency to act. That kick-starts your information campaign and is a huge step in winning any bond measure.

While a bond campaign officially begins when the school board votes to go on the ballot, the work really starts with the facilities task force. It lays the groundwork and begins the conversation with your community.

Contributed by Connie Potter, communications consultant