MANAGEMENT
NEWSLETTER EVOLUTION
When newsletters stop being new…
O
SIMON HEPBURN, founder of Marketing Advice for Schools, looks at the evolution of the school newspaper and shares his top tips at making them as effective and helpful as possible
ne of the biggest time drains on school office staff is the newsletter. Most schools I work with produce one every week, ranging from a simple one-page summary of key dates and facts to a dozen or even more pages of news, internal adverts and the latest thoughts and reflections of senior leaders. But are they effective and helpful? Most of the time when I survey parents for schools, newsletters are read, but when questioned in detail, parents want different content – more about their children, more created by their children – and a different format with fewer words and more pictures and video. The first change that schools can make to save time and better meet parent needs is more proactive content creation. Create a simple grid with the three or four key messages you would like to share across the top and the number of newsletters you plan to produce in the next term down the side. Then fill the
24 September 2023
gaps with stories that you can create in advance – for example a review of a sporting team’s season, a look at the best work produced in your maths classes or a student review of your drama production. You’ll find that you have time to produce higher quality content, perhaps using video. If you add key dates in advance, you’re well on the way to removing those frustrating Fridays when a promised article hasn’t appeared or you’re waiting to see if you have permission to use a specific photograph. Alongside changes to content planning, the good news is that there are also a growing number of free, effective solutions for schools to share multimedia newsletters. Tools such as Microsoft Sway (sway. office.com), Canva (https://www.canva.com/ education/) or Adobe Express (https://express. adobe.com/) produce web-based newsletters that can be easily shared via messaging apps, email or social media.