Running communications for Chinook’s Edge School Division is no small feat. This school division in central Alberta, Canada, is spread across 30 individual schools and educates over 11,000 students. 

Communications Coordinator Laurette Woodward oversees not only the division’s award-winning Facebook page (more on that, shortly!) but is also charged with training the social media managers at every school within the division! 

She shared, “My role includes website management and crisis communication. I also help principals and schools with their goals in communication. I’m trying to help our division and schools make communication more strategic: less tool-driven, and more strategy-driven.”

After Laurette took on this role in 2023 and began to wrap her head around all the responsibilities, she knew she needed to call for backup. That’s when she joined the #SocialSchool4EDU membership program and embraced a philosophy of mastering just one thing at a time, instead of trying to take on everything at once.

This excellent advice is just one reason I’m thrilled to feature Laurette and Chinook’s Edge in today’s membership spotlight! Keep reading to learn how Laurette trains social media managers at 30 separate schools, how she gained national recognition for the division-level Facebook page, and which three summer social media posts reached over 265,000 people.

30 Individual Schools, 1 Unifying Story

Looking at the diverse schools within the division, Laurette made the wise decision to empower each one to tell their own stories – while still under the umbrella of the division strategy. Here’s how she sums up her approach: 

“We’re trying to get schools to be specific about the types of content they post. The first step is to celebrate, and the second step is to start using our hashtags. We’re using hashtags to deliver three messages in our school division, aligned with our three-year plan: #CESDAcademicExcellence, #CESDSocialEmotionalWellBeing, and #CESDCareerConnections. I’ve heard from social media influencers that they appreciate this because it helps them know why they’re telling a story. Not all stories are connected to that, but I’m trying to get them to think about what evidence we have of doing this work and how we can show it to parents.”

(Did you catch that reference to “social media influencers”? That’s the fun honorary title that Chinook’s Edge has christened each school’s social media manager!)

Here’s how it works: Every principal was asked to choose someone on their staff to be in charge of collecting content and running the school’s social media accounts. The person varies at every school, including principals, teachers, educational assistants, and office assistants. But everyone chosen for this responsibility needed to have a few key characteristics: optimistic, excited about celebrating their students and staff, and of course, unafraid of social media. 

Nowhere in those qualifications did experience become a requirement! Laurette embraced beginner and veteran social media users and taught all of them how to make social media shine. 

At Chinook’s Edge, the social media influencers don’t get a stipend, so Laurette tries to make the responsibility as achievable as possible:

• Every principal is in charge of establishing a system for collecting content, so the social media influencer doesn’t have to take all the pictures. 
• The minimum number of posts to start is two per week, with a goal of working up to one post every day. 
• Facebook is required, but Instagram is optional. 

When it comes to which platforms each school is using, Laurette makes strategic decisions based on data. So despite the fact that most schools in the United States are on both Facebook and Instagram, Laurette has made it optional for Chinook Edge’s schools to run Instagram accounts, because “in Canada, over 70% of people have Facebook, so we emphasize that platform first. We surveyed incoming kindergarten parents, and it was clear that Facebook was their number one social media choice, over Instagram.”

Training Volunteer Social Media Managers

Laurette has taken a multi-prong approach to training her motivated social media influencers: 

• Half-day, in-person training once a year
• Google Classroom with content to access as needed
• Meetings with school principals to reinforce content flow
• Online training sessions throughout the year

The #SocialSchool4EDU membership program is the perfect place for Laurette to get content and resources to train her social media influencers. She curates the most applicable resources and ideas from the group and passes them along to the 30 social media influencers within Chinook’s Edge.

Winning a CACE Award of Distinction

Canadian Association of Communicators in Education (CACE) is similar to the National School Public Relations Association (NSPRA) in the United States. Laurette took everything she learned from CACE about strategic communication and applied it to the Chinook’s Edge Facebook page, and the effort paid off!

In 2024, the division won a CACE Award of Distinction for its Facebook presence. Laurette shared that in order to win, “I had to write about how I followed the RACE formula: Research, Analyze, Communicate, Evaluate. This means being clear about your audience, planning it out, carrying it out, and seeing how it went. I’m thrilled that professional communicators looked at my work and said it’s at a level of excellence. I had not run a social media page for an organization until three years ago; it was new for me. To be at that level of excellence is exciting, and I’m proud I could do hard things!”

I’m proud of you too, Laurette! Embracing social media as a powerful communications tool goes a long way in making your school division shine.

Simple Posts are Winning Posts

When you look at the Chinook’s Edge Facebook page and explore other pages within the division, you won’t see super flashy posts. Laurette leans into the fact that their posts are methodical and consistent, prioritizing celebration (75% of posts) over information at every opportunity. Reels are certainly fun and awesome for driving engagement, but she’s seen simple photo posts perform great, time and time again!

Between September 2023 and April 2024, engagement on the school’s Facebook pages (averaged) increased by 170%, and reach grew by 72%. Schools saw an 8% increase in followers across 29 pages. For the division’s page, from January 2023 to April 2024, there was a 743% increase in reach, a 1000% increase in engagement, and a 23% increase in followers. 

And all they’re doing is posting consistently and prioritizing celebratory content!

But the success isn’t just proved by the data. Laurette shared that there was one high school in the division that didn’t have a great reputation. However, after the school got a new principal, who helped them focus on consistent, celebratory social media, the community perception improved. 

Another challenge Laurette mastered was summer content. She said, “When I started, I wondered how to fill content in the summer, and our trades program gave me an idea. We organized teachers, who supervised students in their summer work experiences, to take pictures of students in their work gear, with a company sign or during an activity. The teacher also collected quotes from the students about their experiences, and we shared the ones we received in the posts. We didn’t expect much; we just wanted to keep the page alive, but this strategy surprised us. Of the 16 summer career posts, five posts broke 20,000 reach, and the highest hit 156,000. It was incredible! Posting stories that celebrate student success and fit a real-world theme are the most relatable.”

Check out three of those top-performing summer posts:

Ethan, Heavy Equipment Technician on a Farm – Reached over 156,000

Ashton, Mechanic – Reached over 61,000

Aida, Agricultural Equipment Technician – Reached over 48,000

You Can Do It; And We Can Help!

If you’re new to managing social media for a school and you feel like you’re drinking from a fire hose, I want you to take Laurette’s wise word to heart: 

To anyone out there feeling overwhelmed, you don’t have to do fancy things. Consistent posting and focusing on children will build an emotional connection with your community. If you can manage to be consistent and post about happy kids, that’s a great start!

And if you need more support, please consider joining Laurette and hundreds of other school social media managers in the #SocialSchool4EDU membership program, so you can stand out from other schools, celebrate your students and staff, and reach thousands in your community every day.