139. Marketing in Small Schools – Live Panel at the Small School Leaders Conference

The following content has been automatically generated by an AI system from the audio recording of this podcast. We cannot guarantee the accuracy, or completeness of the information provided, and we apologize for any errors.

[00:00:00] Welcome to Mindful School Marketing, your go-to podcast for personal and professional growth. We’re school marketers, business owners, and moms passionate about connecting other school professionals with tools and strategies for success. We love solving problems, exploring new ideas, and thinking outside the box.

Let’s transform your school and life starting right now.

Tara: Hello everyone. Welcome to Mindful School Marketing. This is a live podcast. I’m Tara Clays of Design, TLC, 

Aubrey: and I’m Aubrey Burch of Easy School Marketing. 

Tara: Today we are doing something different. If you can’t tell, we are doing a live episode here at the Small School Leaders Conference hosted by Aubrey and her amazing team.

It’s been now we’re on day three of the conference and it’s been chock full of amazing presenters and information and great questions from what I’ve seen. But today we are going to have a little panel discussion. 

Aubrey: Yeah, I think what we realized was [00:01:00] that, you know, school marketers are always, you know, looking for those real honest insights from other schools.

Like they wanna know what really works, what’s working, what’s worth the time, what have you tried and it was disastrous, or what have you tried that moved the needle. And that’s why we really wanted to bring this panel to the conference and to our podcast listeners, we hear you out there. We see you.

We’re excited to have this. Amazing group right here of school marketers here today to talk through a few of the hottest topics in independent school marketing right now and what it actually looks like in their day-to-day roles. 

Tara: Yes. So before we get started, just a little bit of housekeeping. We know you’re gonna have questions along the way and we wanna hear them.

This is a great fun for us. We don’t usually get to, you know, hear from people in real time, so please drop your questions in the chat or the q and a and we’ll answer them at the end. And now let’s meet our wonderful panelists. Thank you so much for being here today. Let’s start today with Lori Kriegel.

Lori: Good morning everyone. Or [00:02:00] so say, I’m sorry. Good afternoon, depending where you are. Um, Lori Kriegel. I am the Chief Communications Officer at Wooster School, which is located in Danbury, Connecticut. It is a co-ed day school for students in grades five through 12. We have about 325 students and I am actually near 14 at, at this school.

So. 

Tara: Fun fact, I grew up right near Danbury. Oh 

Lori: goodness. Okay, so next time you’re, you know, back in the area, we ought to do it face in real time. In real time. 

Tara: I was born in Danbury Hospital. As a matter of fact, small world 

Andrea: says hard. Well, I. I think I’m up next. I’m Andrea Jenkins and I am the director of Enrollment Management and marketing and communications at St.

Luke’s Episcopal School in San Antonio, Texas. I we are a pre-K three through eighth grade school of 260 students and growing by the minute, uh, which is so exciting. And, um, I have been in education, independent school education for 20 plus years. As a teacher come through the [00:03:00] education site as a teacher, curriculum director, lower school director, but this is my second year working with enrollment and marketing.

Barb: Great. And I, uh, I guess I’m the last one. Um, I’m Barb Doyle also logged in here from Connecticut today where it is freezing, freezing cold. It’s been brutal. Um, I am the director of marketing and communications at Renbrook School. We’re located in West Hartford, Connecticut, and we are a co-ed day school, preschool through grade eight.

About 375 students and I’ve been, um, at Renbrook for seven years now. Been in independent school marketing for over 10 and been in marketing in general for longer than I care to admit. Um. And I guess the other thing to mention too is Lori and I are both part of the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools.

We are on the Commission for School Advancement, and the goal of the commission is to provide professional development opportunities and colleague [00:04:00] community opportunities for all of the advancement professionals for independent schools in the state. Lori and I co-chair that together and, uh, we provide conferences and learning opportunities and all of that for, marketing, communications, enrollment and development professionals. So we’re very much engrossed in this world every day. So 

Tara: it’s a great organization. You guys do wonderful things. Alright, let’s kick off our panel discussion today with a big question. If you could wave a magic wand and outsource one thing tomorrow, what would it be and why?

Lori: I’ll jump in on that one. So, you know, we’re all small shops, right? So the biggest thing I would outsource in a heartbeat is all of my data. Now, don’t get me wrong, I get data from my partners, of course, from like different partners that we work with in, in our marketing world. But my everything just outsource everything, make my life easier so that I can make decisions faster and quicker.

Everything from my spend, my [00:05:00] strategy, my ROI, all of it. Gimme one person who can, one person, one shop, to do all of that instead of my various partners. And then combining it with the things that I’m trying to pull on my own and keep up with on a day-to-day basis as well. So gimme that data in a tiny little bow and I would be very happy.

Barb: I echo that one, Laurie. Absolutely. Um, data would be, would be for sure. And, and the other thing is that, that I already do outsource. So I’ve been doing this for a long time. But I think being small shops, we are only as strong as our partners, right? That we have working with us and the digital advertising, I, who knows how to place those kinds of ads.

It’s, I think it’s a big challenge. And so we do outsource that one. Uh, give a little plug ’cause they’ve been on here too for, uh. To enroll Media group out of Worcester, Mass. So they’re terrific at digital marketing, Angie Ward and her whole crew, and that takes a tremendous amount off my plate to have them just manage that and for me not to.

Andrea: We, we also, uh, outsource digital marketing, but [00:06:00] one of the things that we outsource as well is our photography and video production and publications. So those are all things that we work with, um, local partners on. Having their expertise come in. Now we are also looking at, you know, the benefits of us also having more knowledge in those realms.

So we’re not all always having to outsource, but that was, that is something that we are outsourcing because they can just do things so much faster and easier than we can. Doing all that with all the other things we have going on here.

Aubrey: So interesting. Thank you for sharing. This is kind of along the same lines but a little different. If your marketing budget doubled, what would you fund first? People, content ads, tech or research? And walk us through your picks. 

Andrea: Yeah. Uh, I’ll take this. I absolutely would fund a first and first because I feel like in our small school every employee is sort of like a Swiss Army knife, if you will.

We, we do [00:07:00] way so many more things outside of our roles. And so the benefits of having a person, it serves the, the role of, uh, supporting our marketing team, but also does a lot of. Other things too, helping with events. Even things like carpool, you know, those, those things that you can’t get when you outsource something or that you, you know, you have a tech piece for that.

So first and foremost it would be hiring another person and building out our team. Um, but very strategically. 

Lori: I would agree with you, Andrea. I would do the same thing, like mm-hmm. Gimme another person. Because one, we’re all learning and growing in this lovely world of marketing every day. So like another person to come along and grow with us.

And then it’s just to be able, it’s always like you just wanna do more and produce more. And so having another set of hands on the ground in-house here. Not just someone externally, but the person knows your culture, knows your school, and is on the ground with you, would [00:08:00] be like super important.

Barb: Definitely. Yeah, same here. It’s, uh, you know, we, we know that marketing depart departments are often underfunded and under resourced. So, um, one of the things that our group that for the CIAS group we were just talking about this week, is keeping a list of all the things that you never get to, right. Um, because we wear so many hats that can then support your request for, uh, an additional body or half person or whatever it might be would be super important.

Marketing departments tend to be pretty small. 

Tara: Great answers. Seems like y’all are on the same page for everything. Let’s see if we can get you to, to have some different thoughts on this next question. Um, what’s your content system right now for staying consistent without recreating the wheel? 

Lori: So, uh, I’ll jump in on this one.

So, I, first of all, I’ll say we’re a Google School, so I’m gonna preface this with a, a Google product, and it’s how my brain thinks as well. So I’m a big fan of, [00:09:00] um, sheets to use for my content tracking and, and creating, tables and categories in order to do that. So we have a a sheet that I’ll use, for instance, that has, I’m gonna say five different main content buckets or themes that we’re gonna focus on this year.

So they’re color coded and named bucket 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then, and using that sheet to track along the way. What’s the focus, specific focus? So like if one bucket area is community, who’s not talking about community on the campus, right? So, but what are the, what’s the focus of that? And what’s the placement?

What’s the day of the week? What’s the date that it went and where is it being used? So is it, um, a testimonial focus, for instance? Is it, um, then is it used more? Is it used in social? Does it live on your website? Is it part of a blog post? Is it part of your email outreach and all the different places that it’s used?

Um, and so, by seeing then using a sheet to track that I can make sure that I’m spreading out our content themes. In the, the, I’ll say the pie chart that we want them spread out through the year. So part [00:10:00] of the strategy in, in our, in our planning stage of what we wanna talk about. And then I’m using this tracker as a way to kind of make sure I’m, oh my gosh, I haven’t talked about community in three weeks.

Wow. How did that slip through? Um, but this doesn’t let it slip through. It’s the point so that, and I’m using my hands ’cause I’m looking at it. But like, this is, this is how I kind of like track out what we’re using and when to make sure that we’re not missing the important threads that we wanna make sure that we’re talking about in our marketing pieces.

Yeah. 

Andrea: And like Lori, we are a Google school as well. And I, Lori, I think I want a copy of your spreadsheet. I feel like I need this like, as a resource for myself. But 

Barb: wait, 

Andrea: but one of the things, wait 

Barb: friends. 

Andrea: Yeah, there we go. One of the things that we’ve, uh, used here, uh, is we’ve really u utilized Google Calendar in a lot of uh, in a really robust way.

We figured the, the. Features within Google Calendar allow us to collaborate and track out what we are posting [00:11:00] to social, the emails we’re sending, the text we’re sending, so that we can look to see also how frequently are we communicating with our families? Are we sending three texts on the same day to families or are we spacing out our communications?

What. What are, are we highlighting everything that is all in one grade level? Are we putting really kind of spreading the love of what we’re spot spotlighting to show our entire community? So making sure that in using Google Calendar to help with that, we use the description part a lot more.

We can link to photos we can do. And put blurbs for different texts and stuff. So we use that as a collaborative tool, um, which I think has gone largely underutilized in the past. And so that’s been really helpful for us. 

Barb: That’s great. One of the things that, that I like to think about more from a, a higher level, rather than the specifics of the, the tasks that you do is you know, we’ve heard the acronym from many of our other marketing [00:12:00] friends core or cope.

Some people, you know, use it different ways, but it’s create once repurpose everywhere or create one’s post everywhere, whichever way you wanna talk about it. It’s a great way to keep track of are you hitting all your channels? Are you, you know, if you’ve, if you’ve written a really great blog post, you can repurpose that for Instagram, for Facebook, for LinkedIn.

You know, it, obviously it’s living on your website, but I like that whole idea of core or cope, create once and post everywhere. 

Aubrey: That’s so interesting. I think what you all just shared was that you’re all doing different things, right? You’re doing what works best for you given the platforms you have and given like the scope of your work.

So that’s great. And I wanna mention that Lori very generously threw in a template, uh, ’cause I just asked. You know, do you have a template for, you know, that system? So thank you, Lori. Um, 

Lori: and I say I, I’m just gonna preface that like that’s built with how my brain works to keep it organized and, and you know, with working different departments and people on your campus, make it whatever works for [00:13:00] you.

So it’s just whatever way that will help keep you organized, just find the best way to do that so that it just helps you be more efficient in the long run. Don’t feel like, oh, I have to do it that way. Like, just do what works for you. 

Aubrey: And I think that is, that’s so true. What works for you and what works for your community.

I always think of the people who are like, I use Google, but we have an out outlook. We have a Outlook community. Like that’s, that doesn’t always work. Right. We’re a Microsoft 

Barb: school. 

Aubrey: So, uh, curious, this is gonna be a hot one here. How are you using AI right now in marketing slash advancement, and how has it changed your workload and priorities?

Barb: Oh my gosh, I, I’ll, I’ll tackle this one first. AI has tremendously changed the world of marketing. I feel like it is moving at the speed of light. Um, and it’s really changed the world of independent school marketing, marketing in general. Particularly over the last year. So I’m using it daily and I, I think it’s you know, two sides of the same coin.

It’s saving me tremendous amounts [00:14:00] of time in some respects, but at the same time, it’s driving me to have to produce differently and more than I was previously. So I, I think back to, um, we redid our, our website. Three years ago with Tara, by the way of design, TLC. Fabulous website. Take a look at it. Highly recommend working with her.

Um, a little side plug. But anyway, we, when we redid that website, we really thought about it three years ago and we said parents are not clicking. Three, four clicks, and they’re not reading all of this content. They’re not reading paragraphs of text. We wanna streamline this. Well now fast forward three years and AI is driving us to have that content somewhere, right?

And in order for us to show up in the, you know, it’s no longer just SEO, it’s GEO as well. So for the generative engine optimization which is that paragraph that shows up at the top every time you search for something. Now that has forced us into what [00:15:00] they’re referring to as a zero click environment, right?

People are no longer scrolling down that list of 10 schools. They’re reading the paragraph at the top. So my question is always, am I showing up? Paragraph at the top for the things that parents in my region and my, you know, geographics are, are they finding me? Well, in order to find me, I have to prove to the AI bots that I am the expert, or I renbrook school and the expert in what they’re looking for.

So, I don’t know if you’ve all heard the acronym, EEAT, but that’s a new acronym in ai. So that stands for experience, expertise, authenticity, and trust. And that’s what the chat bots are looking for when they are finding and generating the answer. For the much more complex questions that parents are asking these days, right?

So how do I show that I’ve got, you know, Renbrook has experienced it’s got the expertise. It’s very trustworthy and it’s very authentic. [00:16:00] Through content, right? So it, there’s your full circle comes back again that I’m using AI to help me drive that creation of content in a much more efficient sort of way, but it’s also driving me to produce more than I was producing, given its parameters, if that makes sense.

Tara: I’ll jump in here just for a quick second, even though I’m not officially a panelist, just to say that, you know, what, what I’m seeing is, is that AI is actually picking up giving schools better results than organic search. So you may come up with, in an AI search and not come up high in an organic Google search, uh, just because of the way that, that the algorithms are working.

So I, I would. I would highly recommend that people go and do a couple of ai search tests for their school and see where they’re coming up. And this is where you’re, what you’re saying Barb, is, you know, people always want say, we have too much content, we have too much content. And [00:17:00] I usually push back and say, if you don’t have the content, then Google’s not gonna know what you’re about.

Mm-hmm. So, you know, it’s finding that balance is a, is a really good point that you made, Barb. 

Barb: So true, Tara. I think two of the main ones we’re finding are blogs. I, I are essential and FAQs are essential, but not just one FAQ page, but sprinkled throughout your website that that’s the kind of thing that the bots are going to find.

I we’re all looking at, we’ve had more conversations about everybody who’s looking at installing chatbots on our site at this point, right? So parents can get these quick answers. We wouldn’t have thought of doing that five years ago. We’re definitely doing it now. So I’ll, I’ll share one little tip with you about the, um, the blog posts that worked really well for me.

Uh, at the beginning of the school year, I said at our faculty and staff orientation week you got up to do my marketing piece. And I said, okay, I’m gonna ask something of you you all this year. And I handed out these little pieces of paper a. Like four to a eight by 10. And it had several things to fill out.

Your name, [00:18:00] your department, your, your position, what you teach, or what, you know, what administrative department you work in, and then a topic that you feel you’re an expert on and you’d like to be able to talk about, whether that’s curriculum related, administratively related, financial aid related. It could be any, anything.

Um, and then I, the, the last question I asked is, what’s your favorite treat? So I had everybody fill these out and I have a spreadsheet now that I work from, and I go and meet with people on a regular basis, bring them their favorite treat for spending time with me. And I sit with my phone and I record you know, not an interview style, but just tell me about this.

Tell me your area of expertise. I then take that recording. I have it trans, you know, transcribed into text. I put that into my chat. I, I. Prefer chat, GPT. Right now, there are a lot of platforms, but if you don’t have a paid platform, I highly recommend one, um, in marketing, whatever the choice is for you.

Um, but I put it into chat along with, let’s say for instance, I just did one with our director [00:19:00] of our math program. Ended up being a great blog post and really feeding this EEAT, and I sat with her and then the things that she referred to like math counts or Olympia Math and things like that. I put the links for that in the chat along with the prompt that, you know, act as the Renbrook School marketing director and create me a blog post.

It was amazing what it can come up with. And I even tell it to make sure, to give me my, my keywords and my meta descriptions and make sure I’m, you know, I’m all set for my SEO on that. And so I just keep doing this on repeat and it has been a wonderful way to generate content beyond kind of what’s in my brain cells, right.

So that’s been really helpful. 

Lori: I’ll spin it a little different direction. So in some ways that I’ve used AI is in my market research. So I’ve used ai, which saved me a ton of time and hours. I’m just pulling up like a thread that I [00:20:00] saved and. Analyzing competitor messaging. And so it then helped break it down and I asked it to identify it for me.

Yeah. What are my competitors main value? Props? Their key programs are emphasizing the emotional tone of their messaging and any unique positioning that they’re offering. And through the whole conversation back and forth with ai. All the things that it’s noting. I mean, by the end it’s kicking out patterns, gaps in opportunities for my own school.

Mm-hmm. Things that we can, you know, I, I never negative bash against another competitor’s school, but things that they’re doing and we’re doing differently and how we can position ourselves as the better offering for X or whatever it is. Mm-hmm. It, it outlines gaps and opportunities. These are things obviously we could find on our own without ai, but the time, I mean, this was like instant.

That this would come forward versus me scrolling through competitor X website and analyzing by hand all of their messaging and trying to figure out all the things they’re pushing out on all the different platforms out there. AI did it really fast for me. So, um, [00:21:00] and these are just, and it’s, and it’s more learning how to prompt it the right way so that you can get the results that are gonna be beneficial to you.

Now, have I taken every one of these things and said, this is what I have to do at Wooster School? No, but it’s given me things to think about with our team here and what strategically, um, is the right messaging and things that we wanna put out there that puts our value proposition more at the forefront for our audience, for our families that are looking to come to a school like ours.

Barb: That one’s a great one to do. Laurie, I’ve done the same. And if you haven’t, those of you listening on the call today, if you haven’t done that, just plug that in and ask it to do a, an a competitive analysis for you. It is absolutely. 

Andrea: Yep. 

Barb: It, my eyes were bugging out. 

Andrea: One of the ways that we have really. Leveraged chat.

GPT. First of all, I agree with Lori and Barb of, you know, if you, if you’re not using the paid version, use the paid version. It, you’ll get, you’ll find so much value in it. But we, um, I actually spent time this this summer building out a GPT. [00:22:00] About on Brandand for us. So it’s our, so, uh, having it learn our brand profile and and that way we can take things like emails or messaging that or, you know, the different.

Things, programs that we’re doing that our teachers may, they’re, they’re not thinking necessarily about how can this, you know, be marketed. They shouldn’t be. That’s not their, you know, that’s, that’s my job is to think about how do I, how do I take this, put it on brand, make put our brand voice, and make sure that this is aligning to the messages that we want to send out there.

And so building, um, having a GPT that already really knows us and it, and it’s, and it knows our brand voice is really critical. And so, um, I appreciate that. That’s already been, I took the time to build that out, so now it’s working with me and in tandem to the work that I’m doing. 

Barb: That’s a great point, Andrea, and I think another one is train your model right now.

[00:23:00] Yeah, just That’s right. Specifically train it to say, here’s my website, here’s our mission statement. Here’s this, here’s that, you know, know Renbrook school extremely well. And, and, and then just keep prompting it to say well here’s one of the things that I do with every single chat that I do. I always, always, and I credit to Brendan Schneider for this.

I always say, ask me any clarifying questions so you can best answer this prompt and it will throw me back some questions that I hadn’t thought, things I hadn’t thought to put in there. So he calls it the Race plus Q Theory. Brendan does it’s how you and you can look up his race plus Q Theory.

It’s how to prompt your chat and but always at the end ask it. Please ask me questions so I can do the best job I can. 

Tara: Yeah. Brenda shared some great tips or a couple of days ago, I think it was. Mm-hmm. There was also I forget who it was, Aubrey, who did the one on automations too, [00:24:00] which is another amazing use for, for ai.

Yeah, so many. I, one of the really interesting things that I think it was during Brendan, someone asked about students who don’t have a consent form. To have their photographs shared, and you can use AI to take one student out of a picture you know, you can use it for so many things. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, it is. Yeah, carefully. 

Barb: Carefully. Yes, there are downsides and it’s, if you’re not involved, I actually am sitting on the, uh, steering committee at my school for developing our policies and all, and I, and I think it’s not a bad role for marketing people to be involved in that at some level where, however, that works for you at your school.

But we need to do it carefully, responsibly. It can be an incredibly powerful and wonderful tool, but it certainly does have its downsides.

Tara: All right. I know we could probably talk about AI for a long time because there are so many amazing things that it can do. I think I did a talk on it a couple of years ago and it’s so obsolete now. Um, but yeah, there’s just, there’s so much. [00:25:00] Um, let’s talk about. Paid advertising because we did, you guys all touched on the fact that you all do it, and I know a lot of small schools don’t.

It’s very intimidating. But what are you doing with paid ads right now and, and is it working for you? How are you, first of all, how are you knowing if it’s working for you? Obviously, if you’re enrollment’s going up, right? I think, you know, looking at engagement numbers is one thing, but having. New students applying and enrolling is another.

So what are, what are you, um, using to drive traffic and, and what are you finding, working or not working? 

Andrea: We love our, our digital marketing, um, paid advertising partner that we have. So we partner with Truth Tree and it’s been wonderful. It is definitely providing, a a a not only getting the paid advertising out there, but they’re a thought partner with us, which has been really, really incredible.

And so, I [00:26:00] definitely see them as an extension of our team. Uh, one of the, one of the things we’ve been really successful with with them is we had a a. Big speaking event where we brought in some really well-known speakers on parenting and our, we had opened this event up to the community, so it was a recruitment event of sorts, but really to engage the larger community and bring them to our campus.

And so. Truth tree worked with us on how to design ads for it, how to pull people into it, and so that people who weren’t getting those word of mouth, um, invites that still drive so much of our people coming to us, uh, that it was reaching outside of that. And so we, we did really targeted. Event specific marketing and truth tree was fabulous in helping us design ads in a way that were really compelling, but also really [00:27:00] sound in best practices.

And those are the things that we don’t necessarily are, aren’t necessarily always up to speed in the best practices, especially with AI and other, elements that may be constantly changing. And so having a partner walk alongside us with that has been a real game changer. And we definitely ask the question, how did you find us?

And we are getting more and more people finding us through, um, search and through our our, uh, Instagram and or meta ads. 

Barb: Mm-hmm. Great. Um, same. We’re, we love our Google ads. I, I, I mentioned earlier that we’ve been working with Enroll Media Group. I’ve been with Angie and her crew for about three years now.

Between that and my new website, we are at our highest enrollment in 10 years, which is amazing. We get really fabulous response from our digital advertising. Both our Google ads, uh, display ads, and uh. As well as our meta ads and, you know, we do the whole thing. I’m very curious and really want to add to [00:28:00] that some mobile targeting.

And also I think we, we need to all start looking at the CTV, right? You know, people have cut the cord and they’re streaming and that, that presents us with many opportunities now. But I think if you’re not investing in digital advertising these days, it is a huge miss. And having a strong partner.

We, we we’re small shops. We are only as as strong as our best vendor partnerships. It’s an extension of who we, who we are and how we do our work. 

Lori: And definitely, uh, I’ll chime in. Yeah. Your digital partner is so, so important. We use Final Sight. We’re a final site school and we use them for a chunk over digital advertising as well.

And they’re very happy with our relationship with them for a long time. But beyond that, um, I think it’s so important that as small shops that we also find each other, right? That we find our network, we find our peers. Mm-hmm. Like, who’s your tribe? Who’s your go-to people, right? So like Barb actually is one of my go-to people like we’ve met years ago, do our work.

We a lot work with Connecticut. We do bond a lot. So it’s Who’s your go-to person that like, you know, it’s not your [00:29:00] partner that you’re paying, but who can I just text, pick up the phone, email, call, like a quick question, a quick go-to. Yeah. And I have a small group like that. There’s a group through.

Through Easy School marketing, Aubrey, we, there’s a small group, like I, they’re go-to people and that I say, have your tribe locally. Have your tribe not locally, right? ’cause it’s really important to kind of have that vantage and that input from just outside like your world as well, your, your immediate recruitment world of your, for your community.

So I think that’s really important to have that peer support. 

Barb: Definitely we’re, we’re very lucky here in Connecticut. We have a very active, um, learning community through our Connecticut Association, um, of independent schools. The commission that Lori and I sit on and we meet every two weeks. And the key to that, and I would encourage every one of you to adopt this, um, approach and view of this, we are colleagues before we’re competitors.

If for the most part, I’m not gonna lose, you know. A hundred students to my competitor down the street because we talk and we, we support [00:30:00] one another. So having a really great network, I think is, you know, we’re a niche market and having a a great network is so important. 

Tara: I love that. 

Aubrey: Yeah, that’s so important I think, uh, because it can feel isolating.

I’ve, I’ve been in the role, I know it, it can feel so isolating. So having those networks and those communities is key, not only for the support, but also for the information and the constant. I mean, marketing is one of those, the fastest changing roles in schools, I think. And like we we’re trying to stay on top of it all, and like with like one person or half a person or a small team.

And that’s, that’s. Unrealistic if we don’t have these outside communities. Mm-hmm. Um, I’d love to shift to some q questions that came in. Uh, I know we have a few minutes left. I wanna make sure we listen to our audience too. So one member said, do you source photos or content from teachers who are already capturing and sharing content with classroom parents?

If so, if yes, do you have a system? 

Barb: Yes. Yes, and yes. [00:31:00] I, we couldn’t do it without our teachers. Mm-hmm. Capturing, we can’t be everywhere at once. Right. It’s just not possible. So we actually created a, um, an email. Um, so it’s, you know, just marketing@renbrook.org. And so the teachers can write from their phones just as like a text.

They can send us things right from their phones. We ask them to add a line of content, uh, so we know what’s going on, but our mailbox is full. Every day with that. And, and we also, you know, we really try to take the time to thank those people and you know, just they’re part of, they’re part of our extended team.

I don’t know what would do without them. 

Lori: And I rely on, I’ll say like my heavy hitters, my go-to teachers that I have, you know, it’s, it’s all about the relationship, right? Like who do you have, it’s important to have relationships with your faculty on your campus. Mm-hmm. And so those that that have the best relationships with are the go-to ones where I’m like, here, here’s a fuller on Google Drive.

Go ahead and plop it up. I have one teacher that says. Can you gimme that folder again and I’ll just keep snapping pictures and put ’em in there and [00:32:00] just let you know when I add something, I’m like, fabulous. Great, thanks. So it’s providing an e whatever the easy way is for them to do it so that it, it works for them, and then they’re happy to contribute and share things with you.

Barb: And we, and there’s always gonna be some that stand out right? That are just definitely gonna do it all the time. Yeah. 

Andrea: Yeah. We use, um, Seesaw in our lower school. Mm-hmm. We are, the marketing team is, has sort of admin level per permissions on Seesaw. So we can go in and grab a lot of the pictures that teachers already doing.

Again, not asking teachers to do something. Additional or different than what they’re already doing in the first place. Um, but us going in and saying, okay, looking at that calendar I had talked about before where we say, okay, we really haven’t spotlighted second grade in a while. Let’s say. Um, so let’s go into second grade Seesaw.

Let’s find some different content that is already living there and. Using those a platform like that to, to pull [00:33:00] photos, but also, um, the blurbs and the, you know, a writeup about what’s happening in those photos. 

Barb: We do the same. Andrea, we have Seesaw in our beginning school and homeroom in our lower school.

So we can, we have admin privileges and we go in and pull from there. Yes, upper school is a little bit more, we rely more on the faculty to send it to us. Um, but the other thing that we do is we are part of, um. Our calendaring meeting. We have a calendar meeting every two weeks that really encompasses every department of the school.

And Heather, my social media manager, goes to that calendar meeting and if she looks at her calendar and says, uh, I’m not gonna be able to be at that event, she can write there, ask, kind of task someone, can you, can you get a few, can you snap a few shots off this? So that, just, that connection, right, as Laurie was saying, right, those relationships, make sure you’re there and you’re present.

Andrea: Yeah, Barb, we have, um, our calendar meetings. It’s funny, they are led by our communications person as well, so yes. 

Barb: Yep. 

Tara: All right. I’m gonna tee up a quick last [00:34:00] question so that we can wrap up in time for the next session. So maybe only one person will get to answer this, but someone asked if marketing staff use their personal phones for pictures and posting, do you have a recommendation on a policy, you know, uh, stipend or storage?

And I also wanna add to that, do you have a process or a policy for adding them to your website? 

Barb: We have an iPhone. We purchased, I budgeted for that, and we bought a marketing iPhone. So we have a phone that we, that’s what we use. We also have great camera equipment too. You know, really nice. You know, S SLRs, but the marketing phone is just so easy. It’s got a, you know, the good three cameras. We invested in that and it’s just a great way to go. We then archive, um, at the end of every week we archive our photos to teams. We are a Microsoft school, so, and then we also archive to an external hard drive and make sure that those are all labeled.

We have a naming convention with everything so that you can go back and find things. 

Aubrey: Great. Thank you Barb. And thank you to our panelists for today’s, uh, mindful School Marketing Live episode. It’s been fantastic. [00:35:00] I think we’ve all learned something new. You know, Barb, Lori, Andrea, where can people find you, connect with you and learn more?

Barb: I. I think you put it in there, right? Our, our yes web addresses are on there. You can certainly find me just by going to renbrook.org. Happy to chat with people further. I love to expand my community, so reach out if you have questions of things you wanna talk about. I love talking AI 

Lori: and you can also find me, um, beyond our website.

I am on LinkedIn, so that is my professional platform of choice, so you can definitely find me there as well. 

Barb: Same, 

Andrea: same, same for me, same for me as well. I’m on LinkedIn. Please send me a message, please. Also, I’m the uh, looking at messages every

day on our Instagram channel, and I encourage everybody to follow St.

Luke’s Episcopal School on Instagram as well. We’d love to have you check out all the great things happening here. 

Aubrey: Awesome. Y’all are, this are amazing. Yeah. Another great episode and another great panel. Thank you to our panelists for making it happen and thanks for sharing all your [00:36:00] expertise.