When newsletters stop being new…

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

One 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 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.

A few years ago, they moved their newsletter, the ‘Wilnecote Warbler’ from a printed newsletter to a PDF document.

However, they took the decision to review this following the COVID lockdown. The school realised that a lot of parents were using mobile devices that didn’t work well with PDF documents and had to pinch and zoom to read different parts. And the school had also moved to video for regular communication –something that didn’t fit well with the PDF format.

Carl Savage, marketing manager, explains what happened next. He said:

“We tried a range of solutions and firstly went with Microsoft Sway which is really good and used by a number of primary schools in our trust. It is very mobile friendly and great for those who are new to this.

“I wanted to evolve it further though as Sway can restrict creativity. Canva for Schools is free, and I’ve used their website creator to make each newsletter a separate website. This makes it very mobile friendly, and we’ve also added audio versions of articles as we have a lot of parents who can speak English well but find reading less easy.

“Now this is up and running and we’re creating two newsletters every half term. With drag- and droptechnology it is easy to copy and reuse things and it now takes me around a day to produce each one. I’ve also been able to share templates with primary schools in our trust so they can use them easily.

“We push the newsletter down lots of channels and Canva gives feedback, so we know that the first one was read by 900 people – not bad when our school has 900 pupils!”

See the latest issue of the Warbler at https:// warbler3.my.canva.site/warbler-issue-8

Has also changed to a digital platform for its newsletters, using Microsoft Sway.

James Tucker, deputy headteacher, explains why: ref=Link&loc=play “ 

“We’ve found our metrics are much improved having gone fully digital with newsletters. Using Sway allows us to share far and wide via social media and literally puts our content in front of parents and carers without the need for emails or downloads. Most families have some form of social media presence and therefore the content just appears as they scroll.

“Since the need to send more nuanced messages during the pandemic, we have tried to stick with video messages which online publications make far easier. Auto-translation makes a huge difference to those families where English is not the predominant language used at home.

“More recently we’ve used the Sway platform to share our wide extra-curricular offer. It’s really easy to live edit, so can be adapted term-by-term as dates, times and events change. It’s a much slicker and more professional look than a constant stream of emails and notices. Here’s an example: https:// sway.office.com/6avxxY4NGzHKmEVv?

Simon Hepburn is founder of Marketing Advice for Schools (www. marketingadviceforschools.com)