"Chiclets" are the ubiquitous little squares you see on websites, carrying the logos of various social media tools and RSS feeds. They're named after the brand of chewing gum that comes in small pillow-shaped pieces (photo below). Internet chiclets make it easy for site visitors to subscribe to your blog, become your Facebook fan, follow your Twitter feed, and interact with you online in a number of ways.
Chiclets are multiplying across the Internet. Originally, they were limited to the orange "broadcast signal" button signifying an RSS subscription. (RSS was one of the very first things I wrote about when Alumni Futures launched in early 2007).
Now, organizations provide a chiclet for following them on every social platform where they have an account (the samples accompanying this article come from various websites). The most popular are F (Facebook), IN (LinkedIn), and T (Twitter).
The problem with these buttons is that the content doesn't always live up to the promise. In the last week I've seen a non-profit with a Flickr chiclet, but no photos uploaded in the last 5 months; an alumni association linking to a Twitter account which it has never used; and a college annual fund asking me to add them to my Gmail page with Google Buzz.
Making it easy to follow your content across the social web is smart. But remember: you need a social media component in your communication strategy, to ensure that your content actually appears on social sites. Go ahead and design some attractive chiclets, but figure out how you can actually use social platforms to reach your target audiences.
Then develop a content strategy to feed those channels with relevant material, written to match the medium.
Chiclets are delicious, but they're not a communication strategy.
In early 2010 I asked, "What big issues are alumni professionals facing?" Here's a quick look back at how the answers played out during the year (with helpful comments from astute Alumni Futures readers).
What – if anything – has changed in a year?
Worth noting: When I wrote my original article, I was the alumni director at a private university; in March I moved into independent consulting full time. My perspective has changed a little, but the issues have not disappeared.
1. Mattering Faced with external and internal changes (e.g., competition for scarce resources), do alumni organizations continue to matter?
This question arose in some form everywhere I discussed alumni relations in 2010: conferences; private workshops; blogs; discussions in Asia and in Europe; and among CASE's Trustees and Commission members.
Awareness of the need for relevance generates valuable discussion and healthy debate. And as Willa McCarthy pointed out in a comment on last January's posting, it begs the question, "to whom must we be relevant?"
Short answer: less and less to alumni at large, and more and more to the institution, as well as to alumni who are either already engaged, or most likely to engage. And that means playing an explicit supporting role for fundraising.
2. Organizations as conveners People self-organize more and more. What is alumni programming's role beyond brokering people's mutual interests?
The broker role seems to be growing. Professionals understand that the institution's resources and community form a referral network that steers students and alumni to resources that address the individual's need. Willa's comment includes some great case study programming directions:
student-alumni mentoring
showcasing alumni outcomes (i.e., alumni as "brand ambassadors")
lifelong learning (to highlight institutional funding priorities in teaching and research)
driving alumni giving
Other more traditional activities overlap with several of these areas (for example, mentoring is one form of volunteerism, but so is alumni admissions work, and so is legislative advocacy for public institutions).
3. No more monopoly over data People are almost universally findable online, via search and social networks. Can you deliver information that alumni need, and that they cannot easily find somewhere else?
I see increasing willingness – even enthusiasm – for using third-party platforms to connect alumni to each other and to the institution (almost entirely via LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, but with some groups moving to open platforms such as WordPress to replace their traditional online community).
The remaining challenges are to assess the resources needed to manage the network, to map this work to your organizational chart, and to assign it to staff – if you have the staff. The "community manager" role is now better-known in education, but as the 2010 CASE Social Media survey revealed, there is no clarity around how advancement shops will build social media management into their strategy for 2011 and beyond.
As mentioned recently, I surveyed the Twitter profiles of 150 alumni organizations that use (or have used) Twitter. I asked 10 questions about each profile, gathering information on links, photos, logos, account names and more. Then I drew on that information to generate 10 easy-to-replicate best practices.
The first part of the white paper reviews the ways that alumni organizations commonly configure their Twitter profiles. Those of you who just want to learn the best practices can start on page 7, where the 10 suggestions begin.
Note: This is not a survey of the content that is in the tweets – I'll look at that early next year. In the spirit of taking a narrow topic and exploring it in depth, this white paper looks only at the Twitter profile information.
I hope it helps you configure your organization's profile to be more effective. If you like it, click the "Tweet this White Paper" button on page 2 of the paper to tell your Twitter followers about it! (Do this from your individual account – your alumni probably won't care that much...)
Bonus: Twitter Profile Worksheet! (Score your profile to see where you can improve!)
As a fun (and fairly subjective) aid to self-improvement, I put together a simple Twitter Profile Worksheet[45kb PDF] for organizations to use. Download and print the PDF, then for each of the 10 best practices from the white paper, mark how your alumni office Twitter profile measures up. There are four levels for each practice. Yes/No choices, however, give you just two options. For example, you either have a URL in your Twitter profile, or you don't.
To find your score: Mark the number of times you selected each response, apply the multiplier and add the resulting scores to get your total.
A quick look at the practices where you scored "1"s and "2"s (i.e., the lowest scoring areas) will guide you to the quickest improvements.
Hope it helps – and if you feel like sharing your result, leave a comment telling us how you fared.
You can follow this list and check on it to see what alumni associations and alumni relations offices are sending out into the Twitterverse (the list format saves you from having to follow them all individually. A 'daily newspaper' version is here, which is great for people who don't use Twitter: Alumni Relations Daily).
This weekend I took a look at how 150 alumni organizations set up their profiles on Twitter.
Why the Twitter profile matters
The profile (account name and "real name," photo, bio, location, and URL) is a small part of an organization's Twitter identity, but
managing it effectively can help people find your organization through search and referrals, and
its tone and content can project an image that appeals to your target audience.
I checked on ten characteristics of alumni organizations' Twitter profiles, and summarize my basic findings below.
More detailed descriptions of the findings, as well as a list of ten best practice recommendations will be forthcoming in an Alumni Futures white paper. Meanwhile, here are the answers to 10 questions I asked about each of the 150 organizations, along with some unscientific observations.
Ten characteristics of Alumni Organizations' Twitter Profiles
1. Is the word "alumni" in the Twitter account name?
89% of the accounts maintained for alumni relations purposes have some version of the word "alumni" in the name of the account (e.g., @caltechalumni, @ScrippsAlumnae, or @FresnoStateAlum).
2. Is the institution's name part the Twitter account name?
50% used an acronym or an abbreviation (such as @ASU_Alumni or @UNTAlumniAssoc). 34% used the school's fully identifiable name (@EmoryAlumni and @AquinasAlumni for example). 13% used a nickname (@VandyGroup, @KStateAlumni).
3. What appears as the "real name"?
For an organization, it's not always obvious what to list as "first" and "last" name. 51% managed to include both the word "alumni" and the parent institution's name or nickname (e.g., "Penn Alumni," or "Appalachian Alumni"). 44% used an acronym, initials, or an abbreviation ("SAS Alumni," "CUSSW Alumni"). 5% listed the school's name and didn't use the word "alumni" there.
4. Does the profile include a picture?
Of the 150 profiles I looked at, just one did not include a picture. This organization (a US public university business school) tweeted twice in 2008 and hasn't used the platform since then.
5. What is the profile picture?
Should you display a logo? A heraldic crest? Generically happy people? Or something else? 41% of profile pictures showed the alumni organization's logo or symbol. 17% had the logo or mark of the parent institution, and 12% each showed either a campus photo (usually a well-known building), or an athletics-related image (such as a costumed mascot). Actual people showed up in just 4 of the 149 profile pictures (2.7%).
6. Does the account include a "bio"?
Twitter lets each account holder write a 160-character self-description. 92% of the alumni programs used this opportunity to say something about themselves.
7. What organizations or people does the bio mention?
62% mention the association's name, while others say the name of the parent institution (67%). Some (obviously) mention both. Only about 8% mention the name of the individual(s) writing the tweets, which supports a hybrid individual/organizational identity. 12% of profiles mentioned something like the mascot ("Go Devils!"), students, or "friends" or "supporters" as a group – going beyond the alumni audience.
8. Does the bio say the account is "official"?
I checked to see if the word "official" appeared in the account description. 18% made the claim, suggesting awareness that individuals other than staff members may create accounts using institutional identity, with the name and image of the school.
9. Does bio language actively encourage alumni engagement?
I checked for the presence of at least one word from a list of alumni engagement-related terms. I was looking for a call to action, designed to encourage alumni to interact with each other. I scanned for words such as:
engage
share
connect
network
participate
interact
27% of the account bios encouraged this use of the Twitter account and the connections it enables.
10. Where does the bio link to?
Twitter lets you add a link to your profile, driving traffic to a web site that you specify. 93% of the organizations used the opportunity. Of the 140 schools with a URL in their bio, 92% sent the user to the alumni organization's own web site, while a few sent them to the school's homepage. Two institutions linked to a Facebook Page, and one to a staff-written blog.
I hope this informal survey provides food for thought as you configure your alumni organization's profile on Twitter. I still plan to review the actual content and characteristics of the Twitter feeds from these organizations.
Once again, I've updated the matrix of Social Networks' Impacts on Alumni Organizations. This collections of ways in which alumni organizations can use online social platforms now lists 20 different cases.
The primary purpose is to help you spur creative thinking about how to use online networks to help your institution achieve its mission. It can also serve as a management checklist, to see how you are doing overall. And you can use it as a road map when crafting the online components for your alumni communications strategy (you have that, right?).
The updated matrix adds two additional uses for social networks:
1. Conduct alumni prospect research Cornell's Andrew Gossen recently analyzed the pros and cons of using graduates' social network profiles for prospect research. While each service has its own characteristics, the most important thing to understand about all these platforms (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and others) is that the ethical and legal landscape is murky. Proceed with extreme caution, and in the company of legal and research experts before collecting alumni data from individuals' online profiles.
2. Manage crisis communications This addition was spurred by further conversation with Reed College's Mike Teskey. Mike and his colleague Robin Tovey blogged here last August about their own experiences in this realm, and you can read their original article for Alumni Futures to understand some of the specifics.
Leave a comment with your own observations and additions to the matrix. Or email me: andy@alumnifutures.com.
Note: The matrix is designed to print on US legal size paper, 8.5 x 14 inches.
* If you are reading this message via email or RSS and cannot download the 20 Use Cases,
As Twitter (apparently) continues to grow, more and more organizations have official accounts, sending out news, event announcements, and other updates in varying proportions.
In the next couple of weeks I plan to look more closely at associations' use of Twitter: what kind of updates they publish, how their numbers shape up, and whether there are any discernible trends. The likely result will be a short white paper and posting here about what I discover.
What do you think I should look for? What do you want to know about how alumni organizations use the microblogging service? Do you think it matters whether an alumni organization uses Twitter?
Note: This won't be a scientific survey, just a snapshot in time of some publicly observable organizational behavior.
Meanwhile, the most interesting question about associations' use of Twitter won't be answered by looking at their Twitter content. That question is, "What is the result of using of Twitter?"
Organizations should attempt to measure the outcomes of their social media usage. Quantitative, traditional marketing metrics will probably not show a huge benefit from Twitter use (for example, new donors, additional memberships, increased event attendance).
But for associations, Twitter isn't really a marketing tool; Twitter is an engagement tool. Associations not using Twitter may be conspicuous by their absence. It's a unique channel, its content appears in real-time, and is increasingly consumed on-the-go (i.e., it's a highly mobile channel steadily converging with location-based services).
How is your organization using Twitter? And what outcomes – if any – can you cite?
I maintain a list of Twitter feeds from about 135 alumni organizations. You can see at a glance how a cross-section of alumni associations use the service:
In a recent online discussion, Ivan Low of Singapore Management University asked fellow alumni professionals the following question: Do graduates of short-duration executive education programs qualify as alumni?
The definition of "alumni" is arbitrary and varies among institutions. It's not unheard of for people who have completed, say, a six-week executive education program to be included as "alumni" of a business school.
I recently discussed this with some advancement professionals who expressed concern that treating executive education participants as alumni somehow cheapens the MBA or PhD degree from the business school.
Does treating certificate students as alumni detract from the value of the graduate degree?
Not necessarily. Resources allocated to supporting the activities and services provided to the six-week folks should be proportional to
the scale of the students' academic effort;
the fraction of the overall alumni population they comprise; and
their overall importance to the institution.
This last point is tricky, as it carries clear implications for fundraising. If a Fortune 100 CEO dropped in for a 6-week refresher on your campus, he or she would be a legitimate target for relationship-building, cultivation, and ultimately, fundraising.
Do you agree or disagree? What's missing from this brief analysis?
Photo of lecture hall at the Sorbonne by Pierre Metivier, via Creative Commons. It has nothing to do with executive education alumni, but I thought it was a good photo. Click it to see full size.
Prolific web strategist and social tech blogger Jeremiah Owyang once again summarized the online community manager's world in a simple table (or "matrix," as he calls his ubiquitous charts). This one is called Challenges of the Social Technology Industry, July 2010 Edition. He calls the matrix an "opportunity list" for those of us using social technology to improve our business.
Look at the full matrix and at least read through the challenges Jeremiah identifies. I've listed them below (with my own comments on how they might apply in educational advancement).
Print out the chart, and highlight the challenges that you face.
Then work with your organization's leadership, staff and volunteers, and draft a plan to address who in your organization will lead the effort of solving these challenges – assuming you don't already have a roadmap.
10 Challenges of the Social Technology Industry (via @jowyang); comments from @alumnifutures (Andy Shaindlin):
Noise overwhelms signal: Filter alums' tweets, blog posts and status updates so that quality and relevance prevail. Limit your organizations's output to conversational, relevant posts, with lots of question and a few fun polls.
Amateurism threatens expertise: Invest in training dedicated staff whose job description includes social media monitoring. Reach out to alumni, students or donors who have created their own social network groups in your institution's name, and partner with them to increase quality of group activity.
Power shift to participants: Don't talk all the time. Remember what a community manager looks like: small mouth, big eyes, big ears. Online communities are listening stations for organizations.
Fast moving industry creates confusion: Once you assign responsibility for social media management in your organization, schedule an update and reassess your progress within 60 days. The space is moving that fast.
Risk of overhype: Don't sign up for every site or service that gets "hot." Watch trends, and try to anticipate, but remember: deploy social media tools to help you achieve your organization's pre-existing business goals. Merely seeming "up to date" doesn't help you.
Lack of qualified talent: Don't have an expert in house? Create one. Invest in training and professional education so you can promote from within, or hire someone who understand how students and alumni are using social technology (see #2 above).
Measurement elusive: It's possible to measure return on investment, return on attention, and lots of other payoffs from attending to social channels. Start with this article from the Journal of Interactive Advertising or this post on Mashable about "measuring social media health."
Disparate data and irregular standards: Don't worry so much about benchmarking against other institutions. Start measuring outcomes and impact and track changes internally over time. Your data, benchmarks and standards will differ from your institutional competitors'.
Culture shift creates an internal rift inside institutions: Institutional leaders are concerned about being criticized by bloggers, tweeters and Facebookers. Social media-crazed staff members worry about falling behind the social media curve. Seek a compromise (and give your boss a copy of Open Leadership by Charlene Li).
Privacy woes scare companies and consumers: Advancement shops are pretty good at protecting the privacy of the donor database. This is no different. Learn what information is private and what is public in the platforms your organization uses, and respect absolutely the privacy and shared data of your stakeholders. Their loyalty will remain intact.
Back in February we saw the first version of web strategist Jeremiah Owyang's useful chart, Impacts to Alumni Organizations in a World of Social Networks. A month later, I posted a revised version of the chart, which I had updated by incorporating more specific aspects of alumni relations.
Now, with help from Cornell's Andrew Gossen and Liz Allen of Adaptivate, I've built out the matrix to incorporate almost every possible use case I can think of for social technology in alumni and donor outreach.
The chart is detailed and lengthy, and so it is hard to read within the Alumni Futures web page (although to get an idea of the content you can click the image above for a snap shot of one section).
As a management checklist to see how you are doing in engaging constituents with interactive tools;
For brainstorming new ways to engage your audience, in partnership with other campus units (such as student affairs, career services, community relations, development or communications);
To create a strategy roadmap that guides your inquiries and planning as you allocate resources to new initiatives.
Finally, I hope others will update and add to the matrix in the way that Jeremiah has encouraged me to do with his version. As the technology changes, advancement professionals need to update their vision and plans, and incorporate new ideas to expand the range of possible futures.
Leave a comment telling me what you think about this resource, and feel free to share your own additions in the comments or via email: andy@alumnifutures.com.
Note: The matrix is designed to print on US legal size paper, 8.5 x 14 inches. If you are reading this message via email or RSS and cannot download the 18 Use Cases, 1) click through to the blog post on the web page: http://www.alumnifutures.com/2010/07/expanded-matrix.html, then 2) right click the link to the PDF and 3) select "Save As..." or "Save Link As..."
I was inspired last week to revisit some remarks I delivered last year at a "Thought Leader Seminar" hosted by Illuminate Consulting Group. The impetus to review what I had said came from a comment left by Santa Clara University's Kathy Kale on the Alumni Futures posting last week. Kathy asked,
What is the call to action for alumni organizations? What are we supposed to do to respond to or interact with loose social networks that include our alumni? We may not play a central role but what role do/can we play?
The word we have been hearing for years is "relevance." This is increasingly central to alumni organizations' missions and activities. It was the first bullet point I addressed when I wrote about "mattering" in my first posting of 2010.
So here's an update to what I was saying about this a year ago. I had the perspective then of nine years in my role as executive director at one institution; now my perspective includes time as an independent consultant to education. My views overall haven't changed that much.
New Notions of Community: Ten Years Out As the value of some traditional alumni relations activities fades steadily, and as new ways to self-identify, to communicate and to collaborate internationally continue to grow, advancement professionals must rethink their notion of what it means to “have a community” of alumni, friends, and donors.
Alumni offices can become brokers of information that alumni need from one another (and from the institution): making potentially valuable connections discoverable should be among their strategic goals, and deploying helpful tools according to a structured, but flexible, framework will enable them to succeed.
Career and professional help, fundraising, communication and marketing (as well as alumni relations and admissions/recruiting) will overlap more and hybrid offices and job titles will appear on campus. I can imagine something like the following:
Director of Alumni Relations and Career Services
Major Gifts Officer and Alumni Network Broker
Annual Giving Coordinator and Community Manager
How we measure our success will also change, moving toward outcomes and success stories, network value, and visibility online. Alumni organizations will measure success, in part, through alumni connections and influence in other organizations (government, education, and business).
Getting started in this direction may require only a modest reallocation of existing resources, and willingness by advancement professionals to stand up and point out a new direction.
Leadership opportunities abound, and as with every truly new effort, for most that enter this field there will be no “wrong way” to go – but there will be many unexplored avenues to pursue.
