Alumni e-communications - Recently Updated Pages

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atiedemann — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:09:22 CST

Our purpose

This wiki seeks to capture and share the best practices for using the Web and other forms of electronic communications to reach alumni and build alumni communities.

The various categories for the wiki have been broken down further to ease navigation and editing.

Our contributors

The contributors are invited experts and practicing professionals within the Alumni Affairs and Development community.

If you are a contributor, thank you! Please write your entries in a feature magazine, conversational style. Tell us your successes (promoting your college is totally all right) as well as any hard lessons learned. Don't be afraid to quote yourself if you are offering an opinion or a story: it'll save us some editing time at the end of the day.

Our experts make this information available to you free of charge and you may use it in your published reports, share with others, or incorporate it into other presentations without compensation to the authors (but please credit them).

We hope you find the information presented here useful!

Sincerely,

Andy Tiedemann

eCRM

AmandaK — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 15:39:03 CST

I'm curious to know what e-mail and eCRM (electronic customer relationship management) tools that other universities use.

Metrics and measures of success

DPhilabaum — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:37:20 CST

Best practices and general thoughts on using the Internet within an alumni communications program

Let's start analyzing our online stats so we have something to take to management so we can get more funding and stafffing. Numbers drive funding. You need to have 80 percent of your alumni registered in your online community. The only way to get there is to begin to set goals, benchmarks and track your numbers. Let's build out what we need to track.....

Percent of alumni registered, this to last year.
Number of email addresses NOT registered
Total unique visitors per month
Average stay
Average visit per alumni per year
Number of pages viewed
Total data updates
Percent of millenials registered

Number of resumes posted
Number of jobs listed

Total online contributions
Ave contribution per registered alum

Total broadcast emails sent
Percent bounced emails
Average click through rate

Games

DPhilabaum — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:30:51 CST

Online games are one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet. Is there a place for them in alumni affairs and development?

Yes! Big time. Did you realize the gaming industry is BIGGER than the movie industry? It's a 10B industry. This would be a fabulous way to engage and involve alumni. Imagine them playing from home (or work) against your rivals and having playoffs. This could engage MORE alumni than traditional events. Share your thoughts, I've been mulling through this idea for the past 4 years. Let's take it to the next level!

Alumni in Second Life

DPhilabaum — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:26:19 CST

For those who haven't heard about it, Scond Life is an online community that boasts about 6 million "residents." Some 20,000 to 30,000 people are "in-world" at any given time. Second Life is a three-dimensional environment that is built almost entirely by the residents. Just about everything you can do in Real Life (RL), you can do in Second Life (SL). This includes having educational events, parties, gambling, selling items of various kinds, and, yes, fundraising.

So far, the organization that seems to have the strongest fundraising presence in SL is the American Cancer Society. They run "relays for life" in SL, and conduct a variety of other events there. I have been in contact with Randal Moss, their SL developer, and he has agreed to participate in the November AFP conference in Boston. The twist is that he will be in Ohio, and his "avatar" will make the presentation on a computer screen in Boston.

Avatars are three-dimensional representations of yourself that you use to move around in SL. An interesting factor here is that sometimes people adopt other genders or ethnic identities to present themselves in SL.

SL could probably be an interesting place for alumni affairs and development communications in the future. As the system becomes more sophisticated, one can imagine SL reunions and fundraising events there. Here at Harvard, the Harvard Alumni Association is talking about having an "alumni college" about Scond Life. For those who are interested, you can fire up an avatar and explore SL for free at www.secondlife.com.

This would be a powerful way to hold young alumni meetings. Think about it. You can use their software to host a virtual meeting of young or newly graduated alumni focused on networking or to feature a faculty talking about a breakthrough idea or concept. Using technology they understand will help you engage them. Think about the cost of holding events. Now think about the cost of holding a virtual event. The future of alumni relations is online. Try a student networking event and let us know how it went!

Setting business objectives

DPhilabaum — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 05:01:42 CST

What is the purpose of your online community?

A decade ago as colleges were adopting online communities for their alumni associations, the primary reason was to capture more email address and address changes so they could communicate more frequently with less effort. Jerold Pearson, a researcher for the Stanford Foundation did very exhaustive research to discover the more you communicat with alumni about the good news on campus, the more alumni give, and those that give, give more money more frequently!

However today, your online community HAS to be built around the needs of your alumni. In 2000 your only online competitor was Classmates.com. Today you have Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin and thousands more. So what the heck is so great about your online community? To your graduates it stinks! They prefer Facebook. To your Boomers, its' a waste of time. You have to think about what your online community is going to do that is different than others. Consider developing your online community around the following:

1) Become more of a career/mentoring community! Encourage alumni to help each other do business and find jobs
2) Provide "nostalgic" moments. Scan your yearbook and enable alumni to rate and interact with the photos
3) Life long learning. YOU are in the learning biz. These are your customers. Deliver more education to them

If you don't have an "alumni" focused purpose, you'll end up wasting a lot of time developing your online community because alumni will not use it.

Online giving

DPhilabaum — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 04:52:31 CST

How are universities building awareness of campaigns, annual giving, and planned giving using the Web? What are the best practices in online giving?

Good questions! I wonder if there are any? No just kidding. Here are some more questions to ask yourself?

What Web 2.0 tools are you using to thank alumni. For example, are you using video to share your need? Are you using video to thank contributors? Do you use blogs or video testimonials to give contributors a way of sharing why they gave. How are you using podcasts? Are you doing a daily podcast to share the results of the campaign to date, the highlights? Do you encourage alumni to come to your "giving" page and challenge others? How are you using Wiki's to engage contributors? Non profits are adopting Web 2.0 tools rapidly. Are you taking but not giving your alumni a chance to be engaged in the giving process?

Staffing and budget considerations

DPhilabaum — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 04:45:10 CST

Changing culture is often difficult but there are some basic strategies centering around job descriptions/performance and accountability that can help change an organization.

Every employee should have a line or two in their job descriptions on their web responsibilities. Even clerical staff can be responsible for deploying content within the CMS, Intranet, etc. We should be mentioning this at the onset of the hiring process.

The other piece is accountability. If someone is reponsible for a web site, are they evaluated on traffic? Are they required to provide reports that are included with the rest of the monthly reporting cycle?

Advancement offices are stuck in the "Leave it to Beaver Era"

If you were in charge of your business and had limited resources, where would you put your time and effort? Think about the time and effort you put into events and activities. How many people do you interact with on a yearly basis at these events. What's the cost per person for all this interaction? Now think about the number of alumni you can connect with online each year? What are you spending per alumni for your online "events" or interaction? If I were in charge of your alumni association, I'd ramp up the staffing and budget. I'd have at least as much budget as the magazine has and as many staff members!

How do we provide the right professional development to make an organization more "web centric" overall, rather than just having communications or technology staff understand the concepts? Guest speakers, webinars, conferences?

We've only just started seeing the uptick in job postings and descriptions that reflect how the communications world is changing. Some examples: Online Engagement Manager, Director of Interactive Communications. Positions specifically related to e-communications help ensure that the budget is applied directly to these activities, rather than having "soft" budget amounts related to the "other duties as assigned" line in the job description.

Here's a good one that is related to Facebook:
Data Analyst Facebook is seeking a Data Analyst with strong communication skills and a mild obsession with extracting useful information from data. The ideal candidate will read Matthew Hurst, the Juice Analytics blog, paidContent.org, information aesthetics, and Many-2-Many; that is, they will be interested in the business and product of an online social network while having a passion for data analysis and visualization. The position is full-time and based in our main office in downtown Palo Alto, CA. This position will report to the Senior Manager of Data Insight. Responsibilities: * Work closely with business users and product managers to determine how the data we collect could help solve their problems * Apply your expertise in statistical inference, data mining, and the presentation of data to help inform and support our business and product decisions * Work with the data infrastructure team to translate the business requirements into technical specifications * Possess a thorough understanding of our data collection methods * Develop reports and monitor the validity of the data being reported Requirements: * Data junkie * The ability to communicate the results of your analyses in a clear and effective manner * Crazy Excel skills or experience with data reporting and analysis tools such as Spotfire, Business Objects, Cognos, Tableau, et al * Experience with R, Matlab, SAS, SPSS, or a similar tool for data analysis * Understanding of the methodologies of the major internet audience measurement firms: comScore Media Metrix, Nielsen//NetRatings, Hitwise, Quantcast, Alexa, Compete * Basic knowledge of relational databases and SQL * Strong willingness to contribute to a small team

The business world is on "fire" for people with online community skill sets or experience in social media. Anyone who is in this area, would benefit from the advice shared above.

Videos and podcasts

tristan_davies — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 07:47:08 CDT

The pros, cons, and best practices of incorporating videos and podcasts into an alumni communications program

It's worth watching Bill Gates recent CEO Summit address to help think about how video and other media changes are going to progress on the Internet over the next few years.

While the address is obviously geared to vision and not as tied to technology that is necessarily widely implemented, it presents an interesting foray into a whole set of strategic directions that the world's most successful sofware company is heading in the new media arena.

http://www.microsoft.com/ceosummit/default.mspx

If our alumni web presences are going to be at all competitive with other more appealing web properties such as news sites, we really need to bring more interactive media into our space, and be particularly creative as how we do it. We need to begin to actively recruit and develop these skills in house.

The good news is, we're surrounded by great stories. From new discoveries to interesting classes, from community service to outside speakers. Most people and places run into three big hurdles:

1. The Gear. Recording and audio or video that's good enough to show the world requires decent equipment. Invest in a good "prosumer" video camera; in today's market, you're probably looking at $2000 to $4000. Spend another $400-$500 on a wireless microphone so that when you interview someone, their voice is clear. Harvard's AA&D communication office uses ______. Your video gear can also double as an audio recorder, if you just use the audio track. To edit audio and video, you'll need a relatively new PC or Macintosh and some editing software. For beginners, iMovie on the Mac works great. On both platforms, Final Cut (available in several packages at different prices) is the standard. For advice about equipment, and training in how to use it, check with your communications faculty.

2. Intimidation. As any new journalist will tell you, it's really hard to walk up to a stranger and start asking him or her questions. It's even harder (and the stranger's answer is more likely to be "no") if you're carrying a video or audio recorder. To get over the hump, start with people and stories that you know well. As you graduate to new stories, spend some time without the camera running first, so your subjects will get to know you, and vice versa.

3. Covering Your Institution's Butt. Before you start recording someone and sharing their image with the world, you need permission. Draw up a release form (or adapt one used by another instutution, if they're willing) and use it. If you want to tape seminars or presentations by outside speakers, the best approach is to include the release language in your institution's standard speaking contract. Most speakers don't mind, but every now and then one will.

Blogs

tristan_davies — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 07:40:29 CDT

The pros, the cons, and best practices of incorporating blogs into an alumni communications program

At a dozen years old, blogging is at least middle-aged by Internet standards—maybe even elderly. Its roots are in academia: one of the earliest bloggers, Justin Hall, launched his online journal in 1994, when he was a student at Swarthmore. Over the next 11 years, his life was on display, including a tearful 2005 video farewell that some dubbed "the breakdown." The term "weblog," was coined in 1997. By the time it was shortened to "blog" a couple of years later, the popular blogging sites LiveJournal and Blogger had launched, and the phenomenon was upon us. By April, 2007, Technorati was tracking 70 million active blogs, adding 1.4 million posts a day, with a new blog being created every 43 seconds. Despite those numbers, explosive growth of blogging has actually begun to ease a bit in the last year, suggesting that the technology is maturing.

Indeed, the traditional idea of the blog as an online diary is blurring quite a bit. Blogs, video-sharing sites like YouTube, and social networking sites like MySpace and The Facebook, are becoming more alike. Modular "widgets" make it easy to incorporate audio, video, photos, related links, keywords, and other bits of extra information into ones site. Today, the market advantage goes to the sites who make it easiest, which is why MySpace is so successful (and worth $580 million to Rupert Murdoch).

The nature of blogging in higher ed often depends on the blogger. College students and teenagers made Facebook and MySpace insanely popular. In ways that are sometimes puzzling to older generations, they thrive on the whizzing snippets of greeting, gossip, anecdote and opinion that are the life of social networking sites. MySpace pages, cluttered with "pics," flashing song players, videos, ads and lists of links, play the same virtual role as the jumbled drawer of treasured knick-knacks in the bedroom. (What many teenagers seem to forget, however, is that unlike the drawer, anyone may be able to look at their online mementos.)

Faculty blogs can span quite a range, but usually they are less about the flash and more about the substance. Academic blogs are great forums to informally present ideas and encourage discussion. When formed around a particularly popular and influential teacher, a blog can become a welcome point of contact, for alumni as well as students. (An example: Greg Mankiw's blog at Harvard.) On the Internet’s anonymous, flat playing field, students, dilettantes, acolytes, crackpots and scholars begin on an equal footing. The freewheeling discussions become incubators and testing ground for ideas that otherwise might lie beyond the pale.

Administrators should join the blogosphere. The audiences we are trying to reach—students, alumni, donors—are more selective about what sources they choose to monitor. Perversely, opinionated sources can be more trusted than the objective media; CNN, MSN and the New York Times are among the most popular web sites, but as the popularity curve tails away, you will find many more visitors going elsewhere for information. A comfortable online space, connected to pleasant memories of college, can be quite attractive.

Aside from simply being an atoll in the sea of blogs, administrators’ sites can celebrate what goes well, or talk about the challenges facing an institution, in ways that invite participation and sharing across a community. Following the massacre at Virginia Tech, the university set up a website with message boards, video tributes and bioographies about the victims, and links to support and counseling services.

Colleges, universities and schools have some important questions to consider, however:

Do you host blogs on your own website? Several popular blogging programs can be installed on your own servers. Doing so gives you the ability to control the look of your school's blogs. You can brand them with a logo or school colors, if you wish, or include standard links, say to your homepage.

This technical question quickly becomes an ethical one: If you host the blogs, what do you do if someone posts a photo that is offensive or illegal? What if a blog links to a site with that kind of content? Do you monitor comments, and censor profanity? Do you remove comments that are unflattering to the institution or its faculty and staff?

Who blogs? The short answer to this question is, whoever has a passion for it! The single most important part of a blog is updating it. A blog that withers after a few entries loses readers, credibility and impact.

Are any of your blogs the official voice of the institution? Good blogs (and good bloggers) are personal and opinionated. If the president blogs, many people will take it as the party line, and he or she should be aware of that. What about provosts, vice presidents, coaches?

At the same time, don’t become paralyzed by fear of making a mistake. Some universities are so worried about saying something a little wrong, they miss the opportunity to say a lot of things right. If you make a mistake, you can fix it. Listening to your online community and responding openly and collaboratively are signs of strength and confidence. They are also a fundamental expectation in the era of Web 2.0.

And just remember: if you don’t provide a place to talk about your institution, someone else will, and you might not know about it until it’s too late.

Alumni e-communications overview

atiedemann — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:54:22 CDT

Introduction to come.

Using RSS

megmaker — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:12:05 CDT

The ins, outs, and how tos on RSS

Appendix: Useful people, blogs, resources

atiedemann — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:17:25 CDT

Blogs

Alumni Futures, written by Andy Shaindlin at Cal Tech, latest news and ideas alumni directors and communications staff should know
http://www.alumnifutures.com/

Here's a blog by Karine Joly aimed specifically at college and university communications professionals who are using the web
http://www.collegewebeditor.com/blog/

Websites

Great website with lots of advice offered by CASE colleagues. The Web Sightings page has the most relavent content in relation to Alumni web sites.
http://supportingadvancement.com/

CASE itself
www.case.org

Free content management, open source software
www.drupal.org

Website building and content management software favored by bloggers
www.wordpress.org

Books

"Don't Make Me Think," A common sense approach to Web usability, Steve Krug, Second Edition, New Riders Publishing

"What Customers Think," Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Business School Press

People

Opinion Dynamics, based in Cambridge, Mass., has built and conducted alumni surveys for universities. Contact John Gorman, 617-492-1400.

Hilary Marsh has a company that specializes in selecting and implementing content management. The site contains a number of resources that may be of interest.

http://www.contentcompany.biz

Internet communications consultant and website design, Michael Stoner
http://www.mstoner.com

Quickbase is a web-based product sold by Intuit for managing communications projects, schedules, and budgets. Contact Keira Bromberg at keirab@comcast.net

Podcasts
Who's on Second?,
http://www.rabble.ca/rpn/podcast.php?id=wos

Social networks

brianwdowling — Sun, 20 May 2007 07:50:54 CDT

The pros, cons, and best practices of incorporating social networks into an alumni communications program.

Here's an interesting approach from Fresno State. They are using both YouTube and MySpace to build community. They initiated a video contest in order to generate interest. www.iamfresnostate.com

Social networking is here to stay and we need to be able to take advantage of some of the features, plus allow ourselves to understand the differences between the "old" ways of communication and what's happening in the Web 2.0 world.

So what about gleaning data from these social networking sites?

Here's a copy of a recent posting from a listserv asking some of the ethical questions about data collection:

"We have an alumna who started up a regional Yahoo Listserv after a successful networking event. She and I started it, and then with the assistance of the alumni office, she invited increasingly larger groups of alumni to participate. Occasionally, I will post information about events or other relevant information.

As new alumni join, they frequently give updated information about their employment and families. We see this as an excellent opportunity to update our database accordingly, but legal/ethical issues. We have consulted the College's legal advisors about this and will follow their advice which is to contact the individuals and ask if we can update their file accordingly.

Questions:

1) do you have an alumni-sponsored listserv? (as opposed to one that is offered and monitored by the institution)

2) If so, are you "on" it and do you collect relevant data off of it?

3) If you do collect data for their indivitual files, what exactly do you collect? strictly biographical data or more?

4) Do you keep the emails, too?

5) Have you raised the legal/ethical question with your legal council?"

This is both an ethical and a question about perception. Although the information is generally considered public, and anyone on one of the sites could access it .... Any comments?

Google and Microsoft enter the market

atiedemann — Fri, 18 May 2007 08:27:44 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Email and enewsletters

atiedemann — Thu, 17 May 2007 11:04:59 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Polls and surveys

atiedemann — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:08:18 CDT

Email based surveys hosted on secure websites have been popular since the late 1990s, but their success rate lately is on the wane. Too much email; too little time. What is the next generation of polling and survey techniques and how do they add value?

Volunteer tools

atiedemann — Wed, 16 May 2007 13:06:26 CDT

One huge advantage of the Internet is the ability to offer far greater support to alumni volunteers than was ever possible before. What are the best tools and services currently being provided? What are volunteers using the most/least?

Content management

atiedemann — Wed, 16 May 2007 08:41:26 CDT

The pros, cons, and best practices of incorporating a content management system into an alumni communications program