Well we're off and running with a number of schools now using eNews to create their newsletter. The look is very contemporary, it's easy to create and most importantly, look amazing on a mobile. So much more readable than a PDF on a phone. Click on the schools below to view their eNews.

Laburnum Primary
Albion Primary
Bonbeach Primary
Caralee Community School

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You may want to share a slideshow with your community.  There is an easy way to embed your Powerpoint slideshows into your site so that parents can click through the content.  Follow this guide. Check out the example below:

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Videos are becoming a standard feature on school websites of late.  Ranging from school tours, messages for the students and remote lessons.  If you are embedding videos that you have posted on YouTube, you might find that related videos pop up at the end of your presentation.


There is a way to stop the related videos from displaying - unless they are also from the same youtube channel!  It's pretty easy too!

1.  Follow the Uploading Videos from YouTube cheat sheet.
2.  When you are pasting in your iframe code please make one minor addition to the code:  Add rel=0

<p><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tN-ZPxQuanU?rel=0" width="854" height="480" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>

There you go - the only related videos that are displayed at the end of your presentation belong to your school's YouTube account!

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COVID-19 is creating many community anxieties and schools are certainly not immune from the effects. By using the communication principles of Public Relations, you can go a long way to allaying community concerns. There are 2 steps.

PR strategy is about staying on message, with repetition. Now love them or hate them, politicians are masters of this technique. I don't suggest you learn the art of ducking and weaving, but I do suggest you have a plan about what communication outcomes you want to achieve, especially in these very worrying times.

A few years ago, I conducted school newsletter research with one of the learnings being that schools only produce two types of content; logistics and PR. Logistics I describe as 'what you want parents to do' and PR as, 'what you want parents to feel'. 

In this current climate, parents are feeling concern over many things regarding their children and education. You can play a significant role in allaying these concerns with a bit of PR 101. 



Step 1: Key Messages
Gather your leadership group, and also seek the council of several parents. Draw-up a list of issues regarding the impact of the virus on children and their education. Let's suppose your list includes the following;

• the educational impact of remote learning
• remote learning and technology
• student behaviours in a remote setting
• children's general anxieties about a world with virus'

(Please excuse my attempts of understanding your world, but you get the gist.)

Step 2: Write and Repeat
Once the list is ratified, whenever you have the opportunity to write, be informed by the list of key messages. Writing on each topic once is not enough; remember, PR is also about repetition. 

And now the obvious question is, "where do I find the time to write?". Become a 'content curator' - more on that next time.

Denis Masseni 

Denis is sponsor-ed's director and Monash University sessional lecturer in digital communications (bio)

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