How do you build and sustain an effective professional network?
Specifically, he asked to hear from
...those who have been in the field [of international education] at least 5 to 10 years re: successful approaches...to building and sustaining your professional connections. Has it become easier or more difficult over time? Do you think the focus and context of our work creates unique opportunities to build professional connections?
This made me think about my own practice in this area over the past decade or so, and here's my answer:
I don't think there's anything unique about my profession's opportunities for building professional connections.
[This made me think about how to build – and sustain – an effective professional network]
For me, network-building and maintenance come mostly from the following channels, methods and sources:
1. Speaking at conferences
Presenting ideas and experiences attracts input and collaboration from people with similar problems and interests.
2. Publishing in the profession
Writing for my peers in journals, magazines, websites, and blogs (such as Alumni Futures) generates global interaction, brainstorming, and debate around shared interests and challenges.
3. Using tools to connect with others
LinkedIn is a perfect example of a tool that accomplishes a traditional function (professional networking) in a new way (online).
4. Serving the profession
As a volunteer leader or as a contributor via professional organizations such as CASE, EAIE and other groups, on organizing committees for conferences, and in other capacities, I have met countless others who share my interest in developing deeper connections and a broader network.
How do you build and sustain your professional network?
Leave a comment.
Image: Visual representation of my current LinkedIn network, from LinkedIn Labs. Click to view larger.
This week they share some specific outcomes from these efforts, as well as a few challenges and success stories.
Key Outcomes from LinkedIn Thunderbird counts 25% of its 40,000 alumni among its LinkedIn Group. Here are key results, with "how to" tips:
Outcome 1: Countered the impression that Thunderbird didn't do enough to help alumni obtain jobs Katie Mayer, alumni relations coordinator, says: "Complaints about this issue have decreased from several per week to virtually none." How did they do it?
Posting jobs and career tips regularly
Giving real-time access to Career Management Center staff
Encouraging alumni to post job openings
Actively matching alumni with one another for networking
Outcome 2: Identified and tested a new giving opportunity How did they do it?
A Campaign appeal via LinkedIn, through a Group notification (which hits e-mail boxes and posts automatically as a "Discussion"). The appeal was a direct ask from Mayer, their community manager.
"This was the second-most successful appeal of any kind all year, resulting in more than 100 gifts in a few days, plus numerous comments – all positive."
Not over-reaching. Mayer: "This tool is powerful, so we’ve decided to use it only once per year. There was something about asking as a person, instead of as the institution, that touched this group."
Outcome 3: Created a closer relationship with alumni Thunderbird now communicates with alumni more via LinkedIn than via e-mail. Mayer: "There's a more personal connection because of the profile photo and bio. Alumni feel that they already know us when we meet in person."
Outcome 4: Generated more balanced Group conversations A larger number of members means more diverse viewpoints, instead of a handful of vocal alumni.
[Thunderbird communicates with alumni more via LinkedIn than via e-mail]
Key Outcomes from Twitter Half of Thunderbird's content is purely informative and focused on international business – it is a global management school after all. Thunderbird's Mayer and colleague Samantha Novick subscribe to various digital news outlets to get timely content to share with followers.
For fun sometimes they'll post trivia questions from The Economist Book of Facts. Novick: "Since more than half our students are international, we Tweet holidays around the world. We schedule Tweets for certain times to take care of our alumni who are in time zones throughout Europe and Asia."
Outcome 5: Positioned Thunderbird on Twitter as a source of insight on relevant, important issues "It bolsters our credibility and fosters lifelong learning," says Novick.
Outcome 6: Increased alumni engagement Fast responses, retweets, favoriting their tweets, lists, mentioning them when they mention Thunderbird, and remaining transparent – even in controversial issues – all these factors increase interaction.
But what about Facebook? Mayer: "We are focusing our Facebook presence toward prospective students, and haven’t generated as much interest with our alumni via Facebook." In other words, they have chosen specific channels and are pursuing an intentional strategy that fits their communication and engagement goals.
["It was an honest – and at times upsetting – discussion"]
Case Studies: Experiments Good and Bad
Mayer mentions two controversial experiments that generated mixed responses.
A rap video (with student callers and Thunderbird's president dancing) generated negative student comments on YouTube. "They felt it looked unprofessional for an MBA school. Alumni mostly found it humorous, but the project was time-consuming and we couldn't measure its impact, beyond a brief increase in web traffic."
Thunderbird's Director of Annual Giving asked the LinkedIn Alumni Group, “Why wouldn’t you give?” This generated more than 100 comments, some criticizing the school and others defending it. Mayer says it was "an honest – and at times upsetting – discussion that resulted in institutional changes as well as some online gifts."
Finally, Mayer tells a cross-platform success story:
"We divided alumni globally into geographic regions and pitted them against one another. Some regions were very competitive – there was a buzz about it across platforms. The best aspect is that it allowed us to discuss giving every day without angering or upsetting anyone. A tweet might say, “D.C. knocked New York out of first place this week! Who will win it in the end?” We updated a leaderboard every week and the winning region's donors' names were published in Thunderbird Magazine, they got a letter signed by the school’s president, and formal recognition at Homecoming. And little prizes along the way kept it fun."
These tangible examples show that online channels can drive meaningful, measurable engagement with alumni around the world. I found the lessons useful – did you?
Add to these ideas, or react to them, by leaving a comment.
Photo: Thunderbird campus (Glendale, AZ, USA) by Kristen Jarchow. Used with permission.
This article is written by Andrew Gossen (@agossen), Senior Director for Social Media Strategy in the Division of Alumni Affairs & Development at Cornell University, and informal advisor to Alumni Futures.
QR ("quick response") codes are finally entering the North American mainstream. Just a year ago, most advancement professionals had never heard of them. Now all you need to do is read a magazine or check out the Twitter activity around #qrcode to discover how much interest there is in the codes' unique ability to connect physical objects to the mobile web.
As is often the case, higher education lags behind the private sector in adopting a new technology. It’s an encouraging sign, therefore, that people are experimenting and beginning to take advantage of QR codes. QR codes add additional dimensions to the static print pieces that have been staples of institutional advancement for so long – business cards, postcards, posters, and more. Most of the attention thus far has focused on the connection between the real and online worlds. However, Asian and European designers have realized that QR codes have potential as visual objects in their own right. This approach, called design QR, has enormous implications for branding in higher education.
[Design QR has enormous implications for branding in higher education.]
The QR code gets the job done, but there’s not much to recommend it graphically.
However, these basic QR codes contain much more data than is actually needed for a scanner to read them. This means we can alter a percentage of the image without making the QR code unreadable. And code designers can include colors and logos or illustrations in their designs. As long as the colors stand out in sufficient contrast, the scanner doesn’t care if it’s black and white or purple and blue.
Combine these two variables in the hands of a good graphic designer, and you have a branding opportunity. Here at Cornell, we’ve begun to experiment in this area.
For Reunion, we wanted a new, unconventional QR code for our Reunion Mobile website. University Communications’ Design Director Clive Howard worked the iconic McGraw Tower into the design, adding visual pizzazz and a Cornell theme (click the images to view larger versions).
By selecting sufficiently contrasting colors, he provided a number of choices for the design. All of them point to the same site:
Thanks to these options, our marketing collateral appealed to alumni more than last year's merchandise. Which of these t-shirts would you rather wear?
He used Cornell’s red and white color scheme over a silhouette of the city skyline and the Statue of Liberty, elegantly evoking the prospect of a formal Cornell technology and applied science presence in New York City.
The use of QR codes in North American higher education must continue evolving in this direction – it simply makes sense to do so.
[What are the challenges of using Design QR in your marketing efforts?]
Clive shared his thoughts on the practical challenges of design QR:
The goal is to create a strong graphic that is easily understood but that does not add to the busy-ness of the existing QR code.
Once you have selected a visual element (such as McGraw Tower), you delete elements of the original code and test to see if it still works. The added graphic should be as large as possible without interfering with the code's translation. Test the code on as many devices as possible and monitor successful web page launches.
Color contrast plays a huge part in readability by scanners. The code needs enough contrast to register the differences. Once again, test to verify that it works.
Color also plays a large part when reproducing the QR code on promotional pieces. For example, for Reunion 2011, we adjusted the screening process for the t-shirt application to make sure that the QR code could be read on fabric.
The mobile web is growing rapidly, and QR codes effectively connect the physical world to the Internet. At the same time, they can serve as an additional component of an institution's or an event’s graphic identity.
When I first read about the Library of Congress’s Flickr project, I couldn’t wait to check it out. It made me think about how schools could benefit from digitizing their photographic archives. I spoke with others at my alma mater, Proctor Academy, about putting our archives online for public viewing. Scanning the collection would make it more much widely available but I thought that the impact could be even greater. Could we turn these assets into a form of social currency?
I hoped that pushing photos from Flickr out to our Facebook and Twitter networks would start conversations and increase the sense of community online. The photos would serve as conversation starters, or ‘icebreakers,’ putting people at ease and creating a reason for them to engage.
Before we could begin we needed to get organized. We set up a Flickr account, and started scanning and posting photos one hundred at a time. Initially, rather than focusing on ‘conversations’ (currency), we set out to simply build our collection (assets). After we had about two thousand pictures posted, we began publishing links to the photos on Facebook.
Early on we learned a number of valuable lessons. Many photos failed to generate interest because they were from too far in the past, or because they had uninteresting captions. Relying heavily on the ‘Insights’ from our Facebook page, we refined our photo selection process and overall approach. The gender, age, and location of our audience helped us better determine which photos to post.
Before long we felt comfortable taking risks with our images and captions, trying hard not to take ourselves too seriously. Humor through photo or comment was often the best icebreaker. We realized humility was also key to starting conversations. Mistakes happen –occasionally we misidentified people, places or dates, and sometimes found that our mistakes led to the best conversations of all. We also selected photos from upcoming reunion years and focused on programs we knew our alumni were invested in and would love to respond to.
It might sound a bit illogical not to announce what we were doing. In fact, we just started and let whatever would happen, happen (read Seth Godin’s latest book, Poke the Box, if you’re looking for inspiration). Once a week or so we posted links to archive photos on our Facebook page or tweeted about a photo. It was great to realize our initial hunch was correct – that there was endless opportunity in digitizing archives. And as we found out soon enough, the rest takes care of itself.
In a Bloomberg article titled Ivy League Alumni Quit Admissions Interviews as Success Slips, Ivy admissions volunteers complain that they have less "influence" than ever in the undergraduate admissions process. They recommend many students for admission, hardly any of whom are selected by the university. According to the article, an alumnus interviewing applicants for the University of Pennsylvania saw
his acceptance rate [fall] in the past five years. None of his recommended students made it in. The frustration was part of the reason he stopped donating to the school a few years ago, he said.
I will refrain from sharing here my thoughts on this donor's logic. Meanwhile, though, the University's web site describes the volunteer's role as "an exceptionally meaningful way" to remain involved with the school. So there's a conflict between the intended outcome (a meaningful way for the alumnus to be involved) and the actual outcome (a disgruntled alumnus publicly criticizing the university).
For several years I was an alumni interviewer for Brown University. As an experienced alumni professional and as an admissions volunteer, I have always been baffled (and frankly, irritated) by alumni who complained that they "didn't get anybody in this year."
The volunteer's job isn't to "get people in." It's to meet candidates and share their impressions with the admissions staff.
The Director of Admissions is the one who "gets people in."
[Alumni interviewing is not really an admissions function...]
A seldom-mentioned aspect of alumni interviewing is that in most cases it's not even an "admissions" function. Alumni admissions work is a volunteer opportunity first and foremost. It keeps alumni engaged with the school, without handing them enough responsibility to make the professional staff uneasy. The biggest risk is that it alienates people like the Penn alumnus quoted above, who think their job is to be an advocate for almost every would-be undergrad they meet.
As volunteer roles go, alumni admissions work has much to recommend it. But institutions should be transparent about just how much influence alumni will have in admission decisions. Failure to lower alumni expectations may contribute to the problem at institutions where alumni are complaining.
[Failure to lower alumni expectations may contribute to the problem...]
Alumni should see the admissions volunteer role as a way to meet smart, ambitious young people in their own community, and to help admissions professionals calibrate their definitive judgment about individual applicants.
Alumni and admissions staff members, for their part, should be honest about the relative importance of alumni interview reports and try to find other, more meaningful volunteer roles for alumni who think of the process as a contest whose goal is to "get kids in."
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.
One vigorous discussion at a recent meeting of the CASE Commission on Alumni Relations was about alumni organizations trying to be "all things to all people." The consensus was that, historically, alumni associations have tried to gather the greatest number of alumni possible under one large programming tent. And for a long time, that worked.
I have spoken to many professionals recently who say that alumni shops must assert their tangible support for institutional priorities (such as fundraising), and that this need is changing how alumni offices identify and engage their target audience. American University's Tom Minar addresses this topic with great clarity in this month's CURRENTS magazine(login required). I share Minar's profound dislike of the term friendraising when applied to alumni relations, and he articulates his thinking on this topic very well.
Instead of programming for a mythical "average alumnus" who is interested in most of the institution's engagement opportunities, alumni professionals are focusing more narrowly on two groups: the tiny fraction of alumni who are already loyal members, donors and volunteers, and the larger, more fickle group of alumni who are willing to engage with alma mater, but only if they see opportunities that speak to their personal and professional needs.
With this conversation fresh in my mind following the Commission meeting, I read a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine on the flight home. In the September 6, 2010 issue I found James Surowiecki's article, "Are You Being Served?" And in it I read:
[Businesses] carefully monitor call centers to see how long calls last, how long workers are sitting at their desks, and so on. But none of this has much to do with actually helping customers, so companies end up thinking that their efforts are adding up to a much better job than they really do. In a recent survey of more than three hundred big companies a few years ago, eighty per cent described themselves as delivering 'superior' service, but consumers put that figure at just eight per cent.
Think of this in terms of your alumni outreach – membership marketing, event invitations, and e-mail newsletters for example. Do you think you're providing alumni with interesting content that's relevant to them? How big a gap do you think there is between your assessment of your effectiveness, and what alumni would say about it if asked?
The problem, Surowiecki continues, is that companies don't focus on engaged audience members, and that
they're always more interested in the customers they don't have...The consultant Lior Arussy calls this the 'efficient relationship paradox': it's only once you've actually become a customer that companies put efficiency ahead of attention, with the result that a company's current customers are often the ones who experience its worst service.
Alumni relations may not be this far out of alignment, but there has long been anxiety about getting the extra few per cent of alumni to attend a regional event, to give to the annual fund, and to pay association dues. And every minute spent trying to gain a new customer is a minute spent ignoring the needs and interests of someone who has already self-identified as an engaged, interested graduate.
As pressure steadily increases to show that alumni activities are aligned with institutional needs, alumni organizations will be prudent to shift some of their attention from courting the marginally interested and the outright uninterested, and to spend it instead on serving those who are already demonstrating their commitment to alma mater.
Related Resource:
Video: Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh in conversation with Lisa Napoli. He discusses the "call center" phenomenon briefly at the 0:17:00 mark, and talks about the long-term nature of returns on customer-service investments at 0:25:00. If you have time, the whole discussion of running a customer-focused business is interesting. The full video is one hour and two minutes long.
Thank you to my wife Martha for making me aware of this video.
Two weeks ago, a small group in a big room in France had a compact conversation about several expansive topics.
The Web 2.0 workshop I co-chaired for the European Association for International Education included 27 individuals from organizations across 14 countries. Their roles ranged from advancement to public relations, but emphasized student recruitment. Sweden and the Netherlands were the most prominently represented, with one-third of the participants between them.
Participants absorbed a number of case studies, showing how various institutions have used Web 2.0 tools to engage wide-ranging audiences (with equally wide-ranging degrees of success – a couple of them being outright failures). Along the way, we discussed the trials and tribulations of relying on user-generated content, trying to obtain institutional support, and receiving uncertain returns on investment.
A few key ideas cropped up, and I share them here for consideration or comment.
Despite the talk about "user-generated content," many of the cases and examples discussed involved universities talking about themselves on user-dominated platforms. There's a difference between a university's communication officer using Facebook to share information about the institution, and alumni or students using Facebook to share their opinions about the place.
Some questions arise:
Will university managers eventually adapt to the collaborative, networked aspects of the Internet?
Will they eventually stop relying on one-way content, using social platforms to broadcast magazine articles and press releases?
The research side of the academy relies heavily on network effects to share and publish information. Scholarly journal citations are proxies for connections in a network – they connect authors whose work depends on mutual relevance. Furthermore, they publish publicly and as widely as possible so as to benefit everyone. But many of the international student recruiters at EAIE are publishing information primarily (or solely) to benefit their own institution.
When will institutional leaders fully support and invest in distributed communication (like the content on social platforms), instead of assuming it's something "young people do"? Probably not until the people currently in lower- and mid-level management positions rise to the top ranks of institutional leadership themselves. They're the ones who best recognize, through first-hand experience, the outcomes that widespread use of social technologies is generating.
A final thought occurred to me as the group dispersed and our workshop discussion faded from the hall.
Which of these two alternate futures is more likely?:
Scenario 1: At some point soon, mere marketing will cease to attract any attention at all. Ads that rely entirely on manufactured images and broadcast "stories" will be invisible to an audience increasingly accustomed to so-called authentic voices and content. This will make the recruiter's or fundraiser's job one of brokering true stories that reflect users' experiences, instead of manufacturing fantasies designed to appeal to people's desires.
Or...
Scenario 2: Marketers become so adept at manipulating content that users will be left wondering what is authentic and what is hype, which stories, profiles or brands are the real thing, and which ones are made up to fill a niche created by the demand for the services or programs they are in the business of providing.
Are you facing these dilemmas already?
How are you approaching them?
Are you succeeding?
How do you know?
Leave a comment...
Photo of EAIE reception in Nantes, France by Andy Shaindlin
I will co-present with Illuminate Consulting Group's Dr. Daniel Guhr at EAIE's annual meeting. I've been lucky enough to deliver workshops and training at EAIE programs in Norway, Hungary, Spain and France, and am grateful to be invited back.
ICG research interns have compiled a number of detailed and diverse case studies that will form the basis for part of the workshop. In a few weeks I'll let Alumni Futures readers know how to purchase copies of the reports, which I have been editing for ICG.
AFF Breakfast Program in Paris, 21 September:
Next week, on Tuesday, 21 September in Paris, I will deliver a breakfast talk sponsored by the Association Française des Fundraisers (AFF). The topic is Alumni Community Management. I will discuss how to use social networks and the web (including blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms) to listen to alumni and build a dialog with them. You can still sign up online.
The presentation will be in English, although I can stumble along in French as well, if needed. I am very grateful to Céline Morel for helping to make this event happen.
Note: I'll be away from the blog for a couple of weeks, but will return at the end of September. Until then, in the spirit of social media, enjoy this series of alumni-related messages from a Twitter user last winter:
[Updated: with link to blog post about "why crisis management and social media must co-exist," and interview with Cindy Lawson. See resource list at bottom of posting.]
How can engaging alumni through social media and email help an institution during a media crisis? The alumni & parent relations staff at Reed College believes that doing so is beneficial, perhaps integral.
This article was written by Mike Teskey, director of alumni & parent relations at Reed College in Portland, OR (USA), and Robin Tovey, Reed's assistant director of alumni & parent relations.
This past spring, two Reed College students died. While the circumstances of the deaths differed from one another, the college found itself the focus of local, then national media attention. The story had numerous twists and turns, and lasted for several news cycles.
Background
During spring break, 2010, a student was found dead in her dorm. The coroner did not immediately list a cause of death, but ruled out illegal drugs or alcohol.
Shortly after spring break ended, a student living off campus died of an accidental heroin overdose.
Prior to the annual year-end student party (known as Renn Fayre), Reed College president Colin Diver was called into a meeting by the County district attorney and the U.S. attorney for Oregon, and was told that undercover law enforcement agents would likely be present at the upcoming party.
The first death generated local news coverage. The second death resulted in local as well as national attention. The action of the U.S. attorney and the County DA created national headlines (see links at the end of this article).
Commentary There are many nuances and additional elements to this story, but here we're focusing on the role of social media and alumni relations in the crisis-communication process.
We believe that informing alumni promptly through email, Facebook, and Twitter and getting ahead of the mainstream news media aided the college in managing the message and the public discourse online.
Key elements included:
Access to Information: In situations like ours, what is known and what can be shared are often different. Student privacy is paramount, and the college cannot (appear to) be insensitive to this. Still, as soon as a death occurs and the coroner is called, it becomes a public story. And as soon as the public relations staff become involved, the alumni relations team needs to be brought in to help disseminate information.
Delegation: It can be challenging when, in the institution at large, there is a lack of consensus about how to respond to the crisis, along with widely divergent levels of comfort with digital communications. In a small college, no single office is equipped to handle all the related issues, so the alumni office must be empowered to share information (with appropriate approvals) and respond to alumni questions.
Empowerment: By the same token, it helps to empower the alumni as well, arming them with invaluable information to use in their own conversations with others. Our alumni added salient comments to the online mix, becoming our best advocates, and we believe they benefited from having the full spectrum of documentation available via our news feed.
Timeliness: Getting ahead of the news cycle is hard, but sharing information promptly engenders good will, provides context, and creates an "information posse" that can work to your favor when the inevitable online comments appear following a story.
Persistent monitoring: As the stories are posted and reposted, it is important to monitor what is said and, to the extent possible, who is saying it. It was quite validating to see loyal alumni chiming in and sharing a perspective that staff cannot offer. In fact, the most popular link we reposted was a letter from two young alumnae to the New York Times, that served as an astute rebuttal to an earlier article.
From the first publication through the last related posting from us, this crisis communications effort occupied nearly four weeks. It was rewarding to know, to arm, to answer, and finally to trust our alumni audience, so that they could engage others and be the institution's best advocates in the larger community – online, as well as face to face.
