This episode features Patrick, who has a tremendous background in communications, discussing his recent work at Pleasanton USD leading strategic communications. According to him, paying attention to reach and engagement is crucial for a communication professional.

Check out his story:

Introduction

0:33 I’m a product of public education and I was able to find success because of you know, a number of, a number of teachers through my K12 and higher education career path.

And when I started to look into the field of communication, I just came back to education, I think it’s the single most important thing that we can do for the future of our communities and the opportunity to work with some of the most incredible teachers and students and just an amazing, we’re blessed to have an amazing and supportive community here in Pleasanton California, so it’s a pleasure and a privilege to, to come to, you know, it’s work, but it’s more of a vocation.

I have three kids that are also going into to public schools and you know, it’s, it’s interesting before when they were very young you know, you always, you always hear and see them, you know, pick their favorite superhero characters, they like to, they like to you know, pretend that they’re police officers and firemen but before all that, the thing that really just hit on my, my heart chords as, you know, my son’s first superhero was a teacher that’s so, so it’s education is just something near and near and dear to my heart and I always kind of go back to the my approach in my role as always. You know what a lot of people were, what we tell, you know, our kids and what a lot of people grow up hearing is that we have, we have two years in one mouth and I’m not doing my job if I’m not spending more time listening than speaking and that’s really where data plays into really everything that I do in my role here at the district when we look to.

Favourite campaign

3:32 I always, I always think in terms of, you know, both homes were when we’re telling stories as well as, you know, the last three years has been you know, change has been our only our only constant.

And you know whenever, whenever we look to make it a change in our organization, whether it’s, you know choosing a, choosing a new communication platform or just looking at looking at where we’re telling our choosing to tell our stories and how we have to pay attention to, we have to listen, we have to listen first.

You know, both in both in finding out where our audiences are and what the most effective platforms, our to reach them as well as how we, how we craft our messages and our stories. So they resonate with the people that were looking to serve and the information that we’re trying to convey.

 

Metric to measure

5:19 So we measure, I think, you know, this goes back to, you know, the concept of, of change. And one of my pet peeves that I see a lot is that people choose to, you know, change adopt a new platform.

They choose to do things just for the sake of doing them and for the appearance of doing something but unless you’re, unless you’re listening to the people that you’re, that you know, employees as well as your, you know, parents and your media stakeholders. Unless you’re paying attention to what their values and needs are, you’re not really doing your job as a communications professional and, and we also spend a lot of time, the same can be said after, you know, after you, you know, you tell you tell a story, we always look at metrics. So how many and, you know, in on, you know, for social media, it’s how much, you know, engagement, for storytelling, it’s how many, you know, how much traction did we get, you know, both media coverage and you know, what that dollar, what that translates to in in real dollars because you know, the public relations to, you know, getting, getting a story on the news is essentially, advertising your advertising your brand.

So paying attention to the, to the reach and engagement is really important and, and what we do every day and how we choose what we do.

Favourite tools

8:26 We use a variety of, of tools.

We live in an interesting, pocket of the, of the community, where we still have a lot of local media outlets so whereas communities like Oakland and in San Francisco, are, are more geared towards the, you know regional and, and national outlets.

We operate more locally so we don’t currently have you know, a platform to, to track media coverage. We do that more organically.

Not organically, but just, you know, just on our own and using, you know, our own, our own internal tracking methods and, we pay attention to the, to the, you know, potential reach and value of, of that coverage.

We also have a couple platforms that utilize just going back to,, You know, the concept of data and two way communication and engagement. We been over the over the seven years that I’ve served at pleasant and unified. We’ve shifted from an organization that pushes out information 2-1 that has established systems in place where it’s more two-way engagement and that’s and that’s intentional.

So we can track what, what questions or concerns people have, which helps us calibrate and inform what we need to, what we need to communicate and focus on as part of our larger communication strategy and planning.

Role of PR in Marketing

11:29 You know, public relations, there’s a lot of names for the field, but I always just go back to communication and community engagement and if you don’t have people and systems to engage both your internal community and which builds, and it’s an investment in building positive culture within your organization, as well as the external communication engagement, which helps build and it is an investment and, and in how your organization is seen by, by the community that you serve that becomes more important as people are having to make you know, you mentioned the, you know, that there’s talk of a, you know, an impending an impending recession, but that’s that that’s what companies can choose to live work, liver fail.

So, investing in people that can help you do that work is very, very important.

During normal times, it’s more important during very difficult times and we know all about this, we’ve, I think we’ve experienced just about everything over the last three years and going back to going back to data, it’s really paying attention to I always look at challenges as opportunities.

So how can we leverage this, this situation, this this issue and you know, get something out of it or learn to do something better than what we’ve been doing before and we’ve learned that in education where we were forced, we were forced into a remote learning model and what our district found was that well while a lot of students need that classroom environment to thrive and when we reopened schools, we just saw our schools come back to life and a lot of our students come back to life.

But what we also found was that a lot of students thrive on the more independent remote learning. So we now offer a virtual academy for students that thrive in those, those environments And Pleasanton has been a destination district for long before I before I’ve been here. And this new this new model by paying attention to by paying attention to the students that actually thrived during what was a very difficult time for a lot of people, we’ve been able to reimagine what education looks like and can be to meet to me the needs of students who learn differently.

My two cents

15:49 One of the incredible things about communication and what kind of drew me to this field is that you can really, that there’s value in communication across, you can work in any industry that you that that you want.

I’ve had the benefit of working in healthcare in in the tech industry and now in in education and while the, you know, the role changes based on the, not only the industry, but the organization you serve, and what their what their priorities and mission and vision are. It’s just it’s an incredibly rewarding field. You get to engage with a wide variety of people, you’re not just working in a in a silo or in a single department, you know, for a long time, I was a department one and I get to work with just about everybody across our organization as well as in our community and it’s just, you know, it’s a new opportunity every day. And yeah, there are challenges, but you know, you also learn and grow from those from those experiences and that that’s something that I count myself very, very fortunate to have those opportunities and the other thing I would say is that you know, you have to, sometimes this this takes time and it’s hard to do but in communication, you’re also often bringing a perspective and a point of view that no one else in the organization has.