Back to school means a new cycle of content creation for your independent school’s website, e-newsletters, social media, magazine and other marketing outlets. Mapping out your strategy now will make writing and posting engaging content much easier once the busy school year begins.
Get Your Content Calendar in Order
A content calendar is a key editorial tool to keep all your content straight. Make it a shareable spreadsheet and include:
- Name of content
- Author(s)
- Deadline for publishing and when it is published/posted
- Content type (blog post, web news, social post, magazine story)
- Outlets (web, magazine, email, social media, other)
- Images (photos, video, infographic)
- Hashtags you are using for the posts
- What the response was (for social media to track comments, likes, shares)
You may choose to create additional categories that align with your school culture, such as divisional or All-School content, allowing you to track news about specific divisions or programs. If you are sharing messaging around a new head of school, for example, that would be a key area to track.
Getting your content/messaging themes set for the year is critical. Talk with your head of school and leadership teams in advancement, admissions/enrollment management and academic divisions. What are the key themes and strategies for the year? Keep track and ensure your content aligns with these themes.
Not every piece of content you write this year will hit the themes, but most should. Connect your content to your school’s mission, messages and goals, and your readers will connect with them, too.
Explore our recommendations for creating a content calendar. Hootsuite, Adobe and others offer free social media marketing calendars, too, that you may adapt for your purposes. The goal is to identify and utilize a system that meets the needs of your marketing and communications team. It’s much easier to post/publish when you plan it all out!
Create Great Back-to-School Content
Kicking off a new school year provides excellent content. Get creative, plan ahead and roll out interesting, engaging content that tells the story of what makes your school special. Here are a few ideas to get your juices flowing (and that embrace a work-smarter-not-harder-ethos):
Do a “Get-to-Know” for each new faculty and staff member. Make these short and sweet: name, grade/department, what they’re excited about for the new year, favorite thing about being an educator and a fun fact. Add a photo and post as web news that can be linked in e-news. Do this individually or by division—depending on the number of new hires you have.
For your social media sites, create a short video of your new faculty member saying, “Hi. I’m [NAME] and I’m the new [TITLE] at [SCHOOL NAME]! Then ask them for two short sentences about what they’re most excited about for their new role at your school. Make sure you brand your video and post it. How long this is depends on how many new faces you have.
Does your school have a Convocation or back-to-school event? If your head of school, dean of faculty, student government president or others give a speech at a Convocation, ask for copies in advance. Film the speeches for excerpt clips (great social content) and post the excerpts as web news.
Do a summer camp wrap-up. Ask your school’s camp department for key figures (how many campers, how many camps, etc.) and photos.
Most schools have summer professional development. Ask faculty what they did over the summer (conference, grant-funded curricular work, tech training, etc.) These make great news stories and social posts. Your audience sees engaged faculty who are passionate about their calling. Faculty love the recognition for their hard work.
Back-to-school traditions tell great stories! Do your seniors paint their cars one morning before school in the school parking lot? Take photos and tell the story. Do new students come in to decorate lockers? Is there a tradition for the first sports home games? All these connect your audience with your school’s spirit and culture, pulling at their heartstrings, a bonus for posting some archival shots of these traditions from years past.
First athletic events make for easy, fun content. Do a web news Q&A with the coaches about the new season. Include a link to the fall schedule. If it’s a game with a longtime rival, are there archival pics of your school’s team playing in the game? Yes, #tbt is still a thing and archival photos are lots of fun for students and adults.
Introduce your student leaders. Early fall is a great time to let your leaders’ voices shine, whether sports captains, student government leaders or the heads of student clubs:
- Through email (with coaches cc’ed), ask the fall sports captains what they are doing to promote team unity and what they love about playing for your school. Ask them to take a team selfie/pic. Create short news articles and/or posts and be sure to include links to the fall sports schedule.
- Ask student government/club leaders what their goals are for the year and what they are learning about leading and about themselves through this position.
If you published a summer magazine, ask your magazine designer to create digital “tear sheets” of articles for you to post and create downloadable PDFs for your website. Ask to have the page number removed and any facing pages that aren’t part of the article you want. It’s a great way to repurpose your magazine content in new ways.
Email teachers for their best back-to-school advice for students and parents for a news story. Ask seniors for their best advice for underclassmen. Consider using Canva to create engaging checklists or infographics of this.
What are the students’ summer stories? Ask teachers (through email, at opening faculty meetings) to share any news they have of current students or recent alumni who did exciting things over the summer (travel, out-of-the-ordinary summer job, etc.). Gather this information and create a single news story (or several) and social posts showcasing what your students are doing. Trust us: students and families will be happy to share photos and videos of the experiences.
Facility updates are always interesting to current families, but consider a student-focused approach instead. What did your school do over the summer to enhance the student experience (security updates, new classroom technology, etc.) Photos and quotes from those who lead those areas will pique the interest of parents and prospects.
Do a cheeky interview with your school mascot. A short Q&A with your mascot is perfect for the start of school. What’s the mascot’s name, history and favorite thing to do at games? How does your school’s mascot define spirit? Include a photo gallery of the mascot in action.
First-day-of-school short-form videos with easy questions. On the first day of school, do “man-on-the-street-style” video during carpools and class breaks and in the dining hall. Simply ask: What do you love about [SCHOOL NAME]? Edit the responses together (you don’t need names) into fun social content. Your community will be able to answer the question authentically. (And shoot it on your phone in horizontal format with branded graphics and a title slide What We Love About [SCHOOL NAME].)
Showcase teacher personalities. A few days before school starts, poke your head into classrooms and faculty offices to find unique teachers’ desks or classroom setups. These photos offer an opportunity to see what makes your teachers fun and special. Need other profile ideas?
Watch the calendar. Do a search on national days and months to get the seemingly-inexhaustive list of days to find ways to celebrate something important, silly or just plain fun every day, week and month. Noting those that connect with your school, along with a photo, make great social posts. A few September days for consideration:
- Constitution Day and Citizenship Day: September 17; ask your History teachers for some fun facts in advance and include a photo of a history class.
- National Cheese Pizza Day: September 5; ask your lunch personnel when they’re serving cheese pizza. Take a few pics of happy students with pizza and post accordingly.
- International Literacy Day: September 8; ask your reading specialists for tips on encouraging reading in young children and/or showcase what your Language Arts classes are doing.
- National IT Professionals Day: 3rd Tuesday of September; use this day to introduce and thank the hard-working folks in your IT department with a link to your school’s tech FAQs.
- National Play-Doh Day: September 16. Photos of your school’s preschoolers playing with Play-Doh would be very cute!
Rally Your Content Creation Team
At opening faculty meetings, introduce yourself and explain to faculty and staff the importance of sharing information and images. Let them know your process for sharing information and the most efficient way to share photos with you.
Encourage participation with a follow-up email that includes a link to your photo-sharing folder and clear instructions. Post flyers with this information in the faculty rooms. In news items, give a photo credit to the faculty or staff member or student who sent them.
Get the calendar for faculty meetings. Attending those regularly is a great way to keep your ear to the ground for story ideas.
Schedule a meeting with the yearbook advisor and the yearbook staff. Talk about how to collaborate with and use their photographers to help share photos of school life. Share photo credits and spirit swag to encourage “cub” photographers.
PRO TIP: Now is the time to organize and archive your photos from the last school year, if you haven’t already done so. Make sure your folders are labeled by subject/event and include the school year 2024-2025. Set up your folders for the 2025-2026 school year with similar categories. This makes it easier when searching for photos to post and for publications later in the school year.
With planning and purpose, you can capture the people and stories that showcase the distinctiveness of your school.
Does your back-to-school rush leave little time for creating meaningful content? Kalix Marketing Group is just a conversation away. Our experts are ready to help make your content shine and engage. Connect with us here!
