4. Additional Tips to Communication

Here are some extra tools and practices to help!

Monitoring Metrics

What communication gains traction? To answer this, monitor the metrics such as the number of retweets, Facebook likes, hits to the website, and Abre likes. Use this information to inform future article creation.

(Image of Google Analytics)

Gather News Stories from your Stakeholders

Schools have stories! Highlighting successes in the classroom, sharing engaged learning, and celebrating culture are worthy news events. Yet, it can be challenging to gather stories regularly. One way to solve this challenge is to use Abre Headlines and Forms to allow for story idea submissions.

The Form

1. Go to the Forms App.
2. Create a “Newsworthy Form”. This form is to collect stories from staff.
3. Specify the fields you want to use. For this example, we have 3 fields plus and upload button for featured image.
4. Apply the form to “Staff”.
5. Add folks who should have access to the responses under Form Settings/Share Responses With.

The Headline

From time to time, activate an Abre Headline to “nudge” folk to submit stories.

1. Create a Headline.
2. Either include the form within the Headline or include a link to the form.

You now have a means of collecting stories (albeit in “raw” form) to draw on to create communication stories.

Other Tools that can Help

For Planning

Instead of using a Google Sheet for planning, we’re also fans of platforms that have built in content workflows. Some examples:

• Notion
• Airtable
• Trello
• Monday

For Editing

We think it’s very much worth installing Grammarly on your computer. The paid version is excellent at helping with grammar, phrases, audiences, and so much more.

Multimedia

• Canva: Use Canva for creating beautiful images, video, presentations, and handouts
• YouTube and Vimeo for video hosting