The first day of school is almost here, and it can seem almost impossible to capture all of the excitement. Well, one high school district in Illinois figured it out, and this week I’m going to share it with you! This is part of the Feature My School campaign, where I get great stories from schools across the country and share them with you.

District 214 (@District214) is a nationally recognized high school district in Arlington Heights, IL. It serves 12,000 students. With just one look at the school website, you will be inspired with ideas that you can take to your own school district. I might be able to write an entire book on all of the things the district is doing right, but this week we’ll just focus in on its one day Twitter campaign.

Jennifer Delgado, Media Manager from District 214, first shared the reasons why they focus on social media. “We utilize platforms like Twitter to help change the narrative on public education. We have the power to showcase the innovative teaching and learning that is going on in our schools. We can really engage with our community and create an online conversation.”

Social media is part of everyday communication, but generating these one-day campaigns has been powerful. “Telling the story from the district perspective is one thing, but when you can involve your students, staff, and even the community in the narrative, it takes it to a whole new level. The first day of school is such an exciting time for everyone. Collecting all of those experiences and emotions in one spot—that is what our #214firstday campaign does!”

During a presentation at the annual NSPRA event in Chicago, Jennifer shared her experience with a room packed with school PR people from across North America. The basics of the campaign can be broken down to five steps.

1. Social media ambassadors – Empowering your staff to embrace the social media effort with their own accounts is the first step. Focus on training. Twitter is such a powerful tool for educators! Encouraging consistency is key to getting staff comfortable with the platform. District 214 always encourages its staff to use school hashtags and tag the district account with their tweets. Having these ambassadors in place before trying a one-day campaign like this is key.
2. Logistics – Once you’ve decided what you want to highlight, which in this case is the first day of school, you’ve got some basics to decide:
   • Pick a hashtag that best fits your goal
   • Make your hashtag memorable and short
   • Consider branding (like District 214 did with #214firstday)
   • Identify the exact date
   • Make sure you understand what the waiver says
3. Communications plan – Now that you have a plan, you have to get the word out! Communicate it to administrators, staff and students (emails, posters, tweets, student announcements, etc). You can also reach out to parents. Identifying some of the key influencers in your district is important. Make sure that they are personally notified so that they can help spread the word. You can even schedule tweets that tag specific accounts to remind them.
4. Maximize your time during the campaign – It can be a bit overwhelming on the first day of school as the one in charge of social media. Jennifer suggests to join the conversation right away, so tweet! She also makes sure to get out into the schools in person. Hiding behind her desk with lots of content coming in might seem like the best strategy, but it isn’t. You need to soak up some of the emotion of the first day in person too! You will need to make sure to follow the hashtag throughout the day. Like, retweet and engage with your community. They deserve some district recognition for their stories!
5. Share the story with the community – Once the day is over, the work is not done. You need to share it with the community. Remember, not everyone is on Twitter (I know, I can’t understand it either). Jennifer suggested compiling the posts into Storify (which no longer exists, but you can use Wakelet). This is a free platform to cature and share your social media activity. You can send this to staff and parents via email. You can also post a link on all of your social media accounts.!

Now that you have the recipe, will your school be participating this year? If so, let me know your start date and the hashtag so I can follow along!

If you are looking for more ways to share your school’s story on social media, check out my free download with 100 inspiring ideas! You can make this the best year yet for your school.