A Head we know has a ‘leaky roof’ photo graph that appears in the local newspaper whenever ANY article features their school.
Can you imagine what that must do for their public persona? We’ve all got dreadful pics buried away or better still deleted but when you’re a Head and the press have a photo of you, well, why pay someone to go out and take another one where you’re smiling?
A story reached us a wee while ago of a parent who was unhappy that their child was going to be attending a particular school that wasn’t her number one choice. She didn’t hold the Head in particularly high regard because of ‘something she’d heard’ and the bucket photo that featured regularly in the press certainly did help matters.
The parent rang the school to let them know she wasn’t happy and so the rainy face day Head invited her in. Now, between the meeting date and that phone call the prospective parent found the school on Facebook. She ‘Liked’ the page and began to tune in to what what was going on, what was on offer and more importantly what the head was saying during the week.
School photograph day arrived and being a thoughtful Head, who knew the value of a good photo, she light heartedly updated the parents via Facebook to remind mums not to let the dads do the hair today because its photo day (smiley face etc).
This soft communication meant a lot to the prospective parent. So much in fact that this pivotal update meant she turned up for the school meeting with a smile and change of heart. Combined with all the other good things going on in Facebook she felt satisfied that her child was actually going to be part of a rather good community.
Incredible how much of an impact soft communication can have sometimes.
Transparency and a sense of ‘access all areas’ you might say also did this. We’d say that controlling their own press also had a big part to play too. Why not harness social media for good and give your parents something better to look at than ads and rainy day photos?