Promoting Your New School Blog
Posted on November 17, 2008
Filed under Music
I spent the better part of the summer creating a blog for my two buildings and working to see how they could be utilized in the classrooms. I figured our high school site would be interactive; blogging, posting rehearsal tracks, etc. The elementary site would be more of a website for information to parents, posting student projects and the like. During the first professional development day of the year I created a handout and worked with the music teachers in our district to create sites of their own. I had set up a site for each school ahead of time and imported my pages, posts, etc. into theirs. This made it possible for each teacher to customize and edit as needed as opposed to having to start from scratch.
One of my colleagues made the statement “How do we promote these pages? What good is having the site if no one knows about it?” What a great point! I gave them a list of ways to promote their site and thought it might help to throw them out there in hopes that you can use a few of them and also add to my list!- Send your address home in a music newsletter. If you are used to sending one home monthly, quarterly, etc., drop it in there. Put it in the header, sidebar, footer, and anywhere else it may come up. You’ll find that the more you place it in there, the more they will see it 
- Put it in your email signature. See mine below. My information is changed to protect the innocent, but you get the idea. People may click on it after you’ve sent an email, plus you are sending your site to every single person you communicate with!
Theresa White
Music Educator
School District
Insert Website Here
Phone Number
Email address
- Email it to the classroom teachers. At the beginning of the year, I sent an email out to each grade level with their in-school and after school concert dates and times as well as the website address. My website hosts all of the information that goes home to the students and more. The alleviates the problem with phone calls the day of the concert on what Johnny has to wear. Sure, there are always some, but hopefully fewer!
- Have the Office Manager put it in the school newsletter. Parents read the school news. If your website is in it, they’ll find it.
- Link it to the school/district site. This may be something your principal will have to do, but it is easier for students to find if they can just get to it from their school home page.
- Post it all over your classroom. Mine is posted on scrapbook paper on the door, written on the top of the chalkboard, and the homepage on our student computer which I let run throughout the day.
- Get it in your syllabus. My vocal music handbook has the website in bold letters and 18-point font wherever it was appropriate (and sometimes when it wasn’t!). It is on the front page, the signature page and everywhere in between. My high school students have NO excuse for not knowing the address to the webpage.
- Create business cards to give out to parents. My building has three music teachers, and I consistently get questions about their programs. I created a business card (on Microsoft Publisher or Word and printed with Avery business cards) with our names, which grades we teach, email addresses, voice mail extensions and the blog site to hand out at conferences, curriculum night and open house. When I couldn’t be at an event, I placed them in an envelope on my door for parents to grab in my absence. I’m thinking of attaching magnets to the back and creating a piece of advertising that will stay forever (or at least the school year)…
- USE IT! If you don’t use the website/blog, the students won’t either. Here are a few ways that I incorporate ours into the daily classroom:
- Posting make-up assignments for absences
- Calendar of events
- Daily Announcements
- Field Trip forms
- Posting student projects
- Links to popular places you might use during class
- Give a short-answer blog post for them to respond to
- Use it as much as possible in your classroom so they get used to seeing it
- Post lesson plans and weekly happenings so students know what they missed
This morning I posted all of our Solo & Ensemble information and used the computer to show them what they needed. We have a projector set up in our room, so I pulled the page up on the projector and went through it all online. They now have the information and know exactly where to find it and what it looks like online. Let’s see if it works….
I’d love to hear any other suggestions you may have to add to my list! I’m sure my colleagues would appreciate it as well.
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Education in Music by Theresa C White is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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[...] Promoting Your New School Blog [...]
Promoting a site is never easy, there are SEO specialists out there who make a fortune explaining how to do it, some great basic tips in your post though, thanks for sharing
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You may always try searching for music teacher’s software available on the internet or just browse some resources and tips in music teaching.
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