Why blog as an administrator? - Part 1

Much attention has been paid to the value of teachers and/or students blogging. Today I kick off a week-long series of posts that discuss the potential value of blogging by K-12 administrators. Although my comments this week primarily will focus on principals, the same advantages are analogous to superintendents, technology coordinators, and other central office administrators. This series of posts stems from Chapter 4 of The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil. So... why blog as an administrator?

Reason 1: Sharing news and events

Blogs are ideal for principals to quickly post news items for their school communities. Upcoming special events, recent awards won by students or staff, classroom highlights, reminders, lunch menus, extracurricular activities, deadlines, and other newsletter-type items are extremely well-suited for blogs and are quick and easy ways to keep a school community informed.

• Here is an example of a news item blog post
• Here is another one

Reason 2: Progress monitoring

Community members often are interested in the progress of a school's ongoing activities. Examples might include building a new facility, implementing new curricula, hiring new staff, trying to pass a levy or referendum, and other school initiatives. Regular posts to update stakeholders on the progress of these types of activities can go a long way toward building goodwill and keeping community members informed.

• Here is an example of a progress monitoring blog post

Reason 3: Status alerts

Another type of blog post might be a quick message to alert the community of a short-term problem, event cancellation, etc. Status alerts will be most effective when the community knows to go to the blog for the latest news.

• Here is an example of a status alert blog post

That's it for today. Here's the schedule for the rest of the week:

• Tuesday: marketing and public relations
• Wednesday: community building and customer relations
• Thursday: branding and creating customer evangelists
• Friday: thought leadership, advocacy, and replacing the school web site