How does your school decide on the primary topics for its external communications?
Do they come from strategic goals or from directives from the board or head of school? Do you use institutional pain points as your prompt? Or do you promote what instinct tells you that your audience should know?
At Fine Point Communications, we recommend that schools start their communication by identifying the audience, then assessing and responding to its needs. Many schools, though, select their messages more from internal needs and desires than from what their audience cares about or wants to know.
In fact, I’d suggest that most schools don’t understand what their audience wants — because they are unaccustomed to asking them about that.
Ante up with market research
This is what the corporate world calls market research, and it’s table stakes for any effective PR campaign. Even the most satisfied customer will have something they’d like to see improve, and the only way to get this information is to ask for it.
Yet independent schools are often reluctant to ask what parents, students or alumni want and don’t want, what they like and don’t like.
I don’t understand this reticence. As Big Bird put it, “Asking questions is a good way to find things out.”
Maybe administrators feel unready to hear the feedback, or maybe they worry that asking questions puts a burden on already-busy people.
Building a bank of community goodwill
To that end, I like this tweet from psychologist Adam Grant. He reminds, “People are happier to help than we expect,” and adds that “Seeking help is an expression of trust.”
So why not solicit, say, parent feedback about school communications? You’ll earn some goodwill simply by asking, and you may learn what is working for them, and what goes unnoticed or unclicked.
You could get these insights informally, by inviting parents to gather over coffee to answer a few questions. Or you could do it more formally, by creating an advisory group that meets regularly or through a SurveyMonkey questionnaire.
Whatever route you take, come into the process with what school communicator Mike Barzacchini has called a “research mindset,” predicated on what and why questions. You don’t need many: A half-dozen questions can explore parent preferences and elicit what they see as useful changes.
How to get starting with surveys
Dana Nelson-Isaacs, who writes regularly about surveys in education, has a good list of tips for anyone new to taking the temperature of an audience. I particularly like her advice to “begin with the end in mind” as you formulate questions.
You’ll need a plan for handling the responses (another reason to keep the question list short). And you’ll earn more goodwill by sharing what you learned. Participants will be looking for any changes they recommended, so you may as well be transparent about the outcomes.
Ultimately, I’d love to see independent schools create a broader culture of asking questions of its constituents. People are eager to share their opinions, and giving them a forum where they can do so is a simple way to instill a sense of partnership — something often lacking in parent-school relationships.
This post is adapted from the September 2022 issue of Refill, published by Fine Point Communications.
