How do you reach out to your school community? What tools do you utilize? What’s working and what’s not? How can you strengthen your communication pipeline?

There are so many amazing communication tools available today that enable you to stay in touch with your school community. Since these tools are constantly evolving and new ones are being added all the time, it’s important for you to stay on top of them. Here is our rundown on some of the most important home-to-school communication tools that you should be utilizing.

  • Parent Alert : Our own emergency notification service allows you to communicate with your school community via text message or phone call. Whether you need to quickly inform parents about a school closing, delay, or an unexpected emergency, Parent Alert gives you (and your school’s parents) peace of mind.
  • School Blogs: A school blog allows you to consolidate existing work into a single, online resource. Most schools still publish weekly newsletters, monthly email newsletters, a school newspaper, and so on. By focusing those efforts into a school blog, you not only provide value and convenience to your existing parents, but you’ll also get a marketing and SEO boost too. Read these tips to start blogging with students.
  • Canva: Canva is an awesome, drag-and-drop tool for graphic design. It allows even the most novice user to create beautiful graphics. Use these graphics on Instagram, Facebook, or in your email communications.
  • Instagram Stories: School marketers talk often about “telling a school’s story.” The beauty of Instagram Stories is that you get to show it instead! The more casual photo/video format allows you to capture the everyday moments that make your school special. And, even though the content disappears in 24 hours from your Stories feed, you can categorize content into Highlights on your Instagram profile for later viewing.

With these tools you’ll have an excellent starting point for opening up the communication channels between school and home. Most importantly, be sure to get the word out about what platforms your school is using and be sure to provide training to your staff on how to best use these tools.