I keep telling school marketing teams to stop reporting and start telling stories!

I keep telling school marketing teams to stop reporting and start telling stories!

But they keep going back to reporting.

I think I know why. Reporting is easy.

“Grade 4 visited the museum today.”

“Our students celebrated International Day.”

“Congratulations to our basketball team.”

Get the photos. Write two sentences. Post.

✅ Done.

Storytelling is harder. (No kidding)

You have to ask:

Why did we do this?

What did students actually learn?

Why should a parent care?

What does this reveal about our school?

What expertise inside our school could actually help families?

Because prospective parents aren’t scrolling your feed hoping to find out what happened at school on Tuesday.

Current families also want to know why they should care about the events.

Both of them are trying to answer much bigger questions.

Will you understand my child?

Will my child belong?

What will they learn here that they won’t learn somewhere else?

Can I trust you?

So don’t just show me your bilingual program.

Find the expert in your school who can help parents understand how children actually become bilingual.

Don’t just post photos from Digital Citizenship Week.

Give your technology specialist a platform to help parents struggling with screen time.

And when you cover an event, don’t stop at what happened.

Tell me why it mattered. (Please!)

Your school is filled with expertise, experiences and stories.

The marketing team’s job is to find them and make them visible.

Reporting is easier. (But it’s not effective.)

But nobody ever chose a school because its Instagram account kept them well informed about last Tuesday.