How to Increase Engagement With School Newsletters and Social Media Posts
Have you ever spent a lot of time writing a newsletter or blog post for your students and or their parents and then felt like no one read it? I have. It’s frustrating, but there are some things we can do to try to make sure that doesn’t happen too often.
Over the last decade I’ve published more than 15,000 blog posts so it’s probably not a surprise to you that I’m often asked for advice on how to get people take notice of newsletters, blog posts, and social media posts. My advice has changed over the years as the landscape of the Internet has changed. The two actions that I recommend to today are to be consistent and to include videos.
Consistency
Publishing your school/ classroom newsletter or blog post on a consistent schedule and in a consistent format goes a long way toward getting people to read it. For example, if you publish your school newsletter every Sunday evening then over time people will expect it on Sunday evening. Furthermore, if that newsletter or blog post follows the same format then over time people can begin to scan it for the information that they need or want from it. The principal of the Sigsbee Charter School (a school I worked with last year) did a fantastic job of being consistent both in timing and in formatting which lead parents to rely on her weekly newsletter.
Quickly Turn a Newsletter Into a Video
You don’t need to shoot a video with your face in it. You can use a tool like Lumen5 or InVideo to have your writing quickly converted into a blog post. Both services will take the text of anything that you’ve written and turn it into an audio slideshow video for you. You can then use those videos in your newsletter, your blog post, or your social media posts. In all online settings and especially on social media, a video will slow a person’s scroll which increases the chances of them clicking through to your article or staying on your article a little bit longer. In this video I demonstrate how to use Lumen5 to quickly turn your writing into a video.
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