THE EXTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS PLAN

(by: MR. EDGAR D. DENAGA)

The External Communication

Any message addressing someone outside of your school or trust — be it

parents, prospective staff, the press, or the local community — is an external

communication.

The purpose of external communications varies more so than internal

messages, in part due to the very different audiences they may be addressing.

However, in general, external communications issued by schools and trusts aim to

enhance their reputation, improve public sentiment toward them, and position them as

the area’s first choice for both pupils and staff.

Due to the unstable nature of perception, sentiment, and reputation, achieving

these aims is difficult and requires near faultless external communications.

Transmitting the right message and using the most suitable tone are crucial, whether

you are sending a press release or posting on a school social media account.

Two of the most important focuses of external communications are positivity

and clarity. Every message should portray your school or trust in the best possible light,

focusing on your successes, hard work, and commitment to meeting high standards.

You should take any opportunity to spread the word about your organization’s good

work and your pupils’ successes — something that schools often struggle to do.

As for clarity, you should reaffirm with the audience what the message means

for them. For example, if your school has recently been awarded the Values-based

Education Quality Mark, your external communication should announce the

achievement, then explain how this means pupils at your school learn about key human
values and are nurtured to exhibit these positive attributes in all aspects of their life.

This catches the eye of parents, who want their children to grow up as model citizens,

and receives the approval of the community, who want to live in a peaceful and

respected area.

External messaging must be distributed through the right channels — although

it is important for different reasons. If you distribute an external communication

through the wrong channel, it may simply never be seen by the target audience, making

it a waste of time, money, and resources.

TYPES OF COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

 With effective external communications, you can position your school or trust

as a successful organization that is committed to excellence, delivers a high standard of

education, and is a great place to work. If you take a misguided approach, you may

experience difficulty in recruiting the best staff, reduced admission applications, and

negative media attention.

Common External Communication

 Advertisement of an organization or institution.

 Response to a stakeholder.

 Press conference.

 Annual reports and letters.

 Print media.

 Face to face meetings

 Tender documents.

 Brochures.

 Feedbacks.

 Questionnaires.

COMPONENTS OF A COMMUNICATION PLAN

1. Communication Goals
 Your communication goals are the broad objectives you hope to achieve
with your marketing plan. Later in the plan, you will outline the specific tools,
actions and strategies that will help you achieve these goals.

Examples:

 Increase enrollment by 20 students

 Introduce two new programs in the upcoming
school year
 Increase parent involvement by 5%

2. Unique Selling Points

In this section of the plan, you will outline the best features of your school,
or the unique offerings of your school.

Examples:

 State-of-the-art classroom technology

 Diverse student body
 International Baccalaureate Programs
 A seamless education, from preschool through
graduation, all on one campus
 STEM programs (Science, Technology, Engineering
and Math)

3. Key Messages

This part of the plan includes key messages you have crafted that highlight
the Unique Selling Points of your school as well as any additional features your
school is proud of.

Examples:

 Each of our classrooms provides a state-of-the-art learning

environment, including Promethean white boards, modular
desks and natural lighting.
 64 percent of our teachers have master’s degrees.
 Our Academic and Career Pathway students have the
opportunity to switch their area of focus if they find out their
current pathway is not right for them.

4. Strategies

Highlight the strategies and tools you will use to implement your marketing
and communication plan.

Examples:
  School Web site
 Fact sheets
 Staff e-mail
 Automated phone calls
 School newsletters
 Letters to parents
 Brochures
 Information packets
 Signs/posters
 School marquees

5. Target Audiences

In this part of the plan you will identify the key audiences you hope to
reach with your marketing strategies.

Examples:

 Current students
 Current parents
 Feeder school families
 Second language families
 Leadership Team
 Principals
 Secretaries

6. Communication Matrix
REFERENCES:

https://communication.aurorak12.org/marketing/school-strategies/school-
communication-plans/

https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/
communication-plan/main

https://allc.asia/elements-of-a-communication-plan/

Prepared and Submitted by:

MR. EDGAR D. DENAGA

MAEDK-IA NEW

Submitted to:

DR. JESICA B. ARENGA, EdD

Subject Professor

REFLECTION ABOUT THE TOPIC

(EDGAR D. DENAGA)
 A school communication plan serves as a blueprint of our school marketing
strategies for the year. The communication plan will keep us on track throughout the
year to ensure that we meet your school marketing goals.

Developing a communication plan can help focus our message and reach our
target audience. A plan can also influence the efficiency and simplicity of our
communication methods. This section looks at what a communication plan entails,
how and when to create one, and how to use a communication plan to raise awareness
about our issue or project.

Communication is the process of transmitting ideas and information. For a

grass roots initiative or community-based organization, that means conveying the true
nature of our organization, the issues it deals with, and its accomplishments to the
community.
Communication can take many forms, including:

 Word of mouth
 News stories in both print and broadcast media
 Press releases and press conferences
 Posters, brochures, and fliers
 Outreach and presentations to other health and community service providers,
community groups, and organizations
 Special events and open houses that your organization holds

To communicate effectively, it helps to plan out what we want from our

communication, and what we need to do to get it.
Planning is a way to organize actions that will lead to the fulfillment of a goal.
Our goal, in this case, is to raise awareness about our initiative's long-term benefits
to our community.
To develop a plan for communication, we have to consider some basic questions:

 Why do we want to communicate with the community? (What’s your

purpose?)
 To whom do we want to communicate it? (Who’s your audience?)
 What do we want to communicate? (What’s your message?)
 How do we want to communicate it? (What communication channels will
you use?)
 Whom should we contact, and what should we do to use those
channels? (How will you distribute your message?)

The answers to these questions constitute our action plan, what we need to do to
successfully communicate with our audience. The remainder of our communication
plan, involves three steps:

 Implement our action plan. Design your message and distribute it to our
intended audience.
 Evaluate our communication efforts and adjust our plan accordingly.
 Keep at it.
 Communication is an ongoing activity for any organization that serves, depends
upon, or is in any way connected with the community. The purpose, audience,
message, and channels may change, but the need to maintain relationships with the
media and with key people in the community remain. As a result, an essential part of
any communication plan is to continue using and revising your plan, based on your
experience, throughout the existence of your organization.
WHY SHOULD YOU DEVELOP A PLAN FOR COMMUNICATION?

 A plan will make it possible to target our communication accurately. It gives us

a structure to determine whom we need to reach and how.
 A plan can be long-term, helping us map out how to raise our profile and refine
our image in the community over time.
 A plan will make our communication efforts more efficient, effective, and
lasting.
 A plan makes everything easier. If we spend some time planning at the
beginning of an effort, we can save a great deal of time later on, because we
know what we should be doing at any point in the process.

WHEN SHOULD YOU DEVELOP A PLAN FOR COMMUNICATION?

As soon as our organization begins planning its objectives and activities, WE
should also start planning ways to communicate them; successful communication is an
ongoing process, not a one-time event.
Communication is useful at all points in our organization's development - it can
help get the word out about a new organization, renew interest in a long-standing
program, or help attract new funding sources.
https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/participation/promoting-interest/
communication-plan/main