This week, we are featuring a BIG district with a big name leading its social media efforts!

Tuscaloosa City Schools is a district in Alabama with 10,651 students spread across 21 schools, which makes it by far one of the largest districts we have been in touch with.

Rather than having one social media coordinator for the whole district, Tuscaloosa has a team of PR representatives, including teachers and librarians, who take on the role of social media coordinator in addition to their other responsibilities in their schools.

In charge of TCS’ many communicators is Public Relations Coordinator Lesley Bruinton, APR, who also just so happens to be the president-elect for the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) – we were so honored to speak with her! Prior to working for TCS, Lesley worked in television journalism and is, therefore, an expert in relaying succinct messages on the district’s social media channels.

Read on to discover how Lesley’s background in reporting has helped her run Tuscaloosa’s well-oiled school communication machine!

What strategies do you use to gather content for your social media channels?
Our content-gathering strategy for the district Facebook page and for communicating with the media and school personnel is pretty unique! We have a desktop application installed on all district computers called News Tips, and this links to a survey for all of our educators and PR representatives to use. The survey contains one field for events that have already happened, in which case the information can be reported on Facebook in the past tense.

The other field allows anyone to send out an automated press release by choosing from drop-down options for the location, date, time, etc. of the event. Then, they are tasked with writing a blurb about the event in 500 characters or less. After they have submitted the form and chosen whether they want to share the information with the media, the school board, or another group, the News Tips automatically generates a professionally-formatted email and sends it out immediately.

Although we have gotten questions about allowing our employees to send out information without having it proofread it, I believe that we should treat everyone as professionals and hold them accountable for providing a well-written and typo-free announcement.

What is your most effective social media channel and why?
For us, as for many districts, Facebook remains the most effective platform, as we have over 13,000 followers and are devoted to crafting engaging, shareable content specifically for this channel. We also have a strong presence on Twitter, but I would urge districts not to be overly concerned with this platform; only around 16 percent of adults are on Twitter, and it is not growing nearly as much as Instagram is for younger generations. Focus your efforts on Facebook, and if you feel comfortable and have enough resources to branch out from there, go for it!

What is one of your biggest success stories surrounding social media?
In August of 2018, our Central High School Principal Dr. Clarence Sutton gave a Ted-Talk style speech that went viral and inspired not only members of our district, but also others! He has since been asked to give keynote speeches and addresses as a result of the popularity of this video. To date, it has reached a whopping 170, 842 people on Facebook and has 6,182 reactions, comments, and shares. One of the tag lines from this speech was “be amazing,” and this lead to the creation of our district-wide hashtag #BeAmazing, which we use in addition to #TCSLearns.

What advice do you have for other schools using social media?
From my experience in journalism, I firmly believe in “writing tight.” This means providing the who, what, when, where, and why of a moment in as few words as possible; this is especially important for social media platforms where people are scrolling through quickly and will not read long stretches of text.

I have focused on this ability with my team of PR representatives and educators, but I also understand that they have a lot to do. Providing tools and training for everyone involved in your district’s social media efforts is key for telling a high-quality, consistent story. For schools with big PR team, I can recommend my “Mad Lib” technique; I will write out the framework for a story and provide it to the other PR representatives to fill in with the details. This way, everyone has a baseline of good-quality stories they can customize.

Social media isn’t always easy… What have been one or some of the struggles that you have faced?
One challenge has been getting our LinkedIn strategy off the ground. As Tuscaloosa is a college city, many graduates turn to this platform when looking for jobs within the district. I believe that while Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram should be used by our PR team, LinkedIn form of social media that our HR team could use. We can present stories with the same thesis statement, but instead of focussing on our students, what we post on LinkedIn can be reframed to put our educators and employees in the spotlight.

If you had to give an elevator pitch to summarize effective school communication, what would you include?
Be strategic about what you share on social media. Instead of simply capturing a moment, you can take this a step further by connecting it to a larger project or goal in which your system is engaged. This means that you aren’t just reporting on a one-off event, such as a National Principals Month or graduation, but you are tying these to larger trends and messages you want to share with your community.

For instance, National Principals Month can be used to underscore the excellence in leadership education your district strives for, and graduation can be presented as the culmination of everything your district provides its students. Linking the stories you share on social media to the overall goals of your district will make your communication that much more impactful.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us about the #TCSLearns social media strategy, Lesley! We wish you all the best as the president-elect of NSPRA and in continuing to lead the next wave of school communication.

A guest post from Hannah Feller, our youngest account manager! She is currently completing the BA program in English Literature and Linguistics at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. She is thrilled to be able to apply the theory she works with at university to social media for schools.