alumni futures

Community Marketing and Finding the Fish

More nuggets of wisdom from web strategist Jeremiah Owyang's excellent blog. This week he talked about corporate approaches to social web site strategies (i.e., "how should our company participate in social networks?"). Jeremiah wasn't writing about colleges and universities, but his comments on chipmaker Intel's approach apply to many kinds of organizations — including alumni associations.

In the context of the "build or join" dilemma — should we build our own online community, or join in on the ones our community members seem to be using? — Owyang quotes an Intel marketing manager:

[O]ne of the requirements of his marketing efforts was to not link to Intel.com. Rather than try to join a community then pull [members] away, the marketing efforts joined the community and stayed there — likely where the trust is highest.

Jeremiah has several survey-based sources of data showing that consumers trust their peers' views more than those of analysts, marketers or (ahem) bloggers.

Owyang then says something that I think it is critical to understand:

Savvy brands join communities where they exist, rather than solely trying to coax customers to the corporate website...

But how will we know if our participation in social sites is paying off? He says that we have to measure...something.

Marketers are often measured on the amount of traffic they generate to their corporate website, but in this case, Intel will have to measure using different attributes such as interaction, viral spread, and maybe even a survey.

Alumni associations should probably try to measure awareness, as well as whether alumni feel (and are) knowledgeable about the institution today. A kind of "net promoter" score is informative as well, as Carnegie Mellon's Judy Cole commented here way back in March of 2007.

Bottom line, to quote Jeremiah: "Rather than coax users to your irrelevant corporate website, savvy brands will fish where the fish are." 

I know, we think our association site is relevant to our alumni, because after all, they attended our school. But do they think it's relevant? Does it solve their problem? Fulfill their need? Represent something beyond an interesting curiosity? This is our challenge.

Photo of Icelandic fishing boat by Andy Shaindlin

02138 Not a Brand After All, Just a Zip Code

Back in May, I blogged here about the likely outcome of Manhattan Media's purchase of Harvard-related not-quite-an-alumni-magazine-but-really-more-of-a-brand 02138. According to the NY Times, the publisher had "visions of expanding it into social networking and event sponsorship, and then duplicating the operation for each Ivy league school."

This just in: that vision lasted 22 weeks. According to Media Week,

Manhattan Media, which bought Harvard grad-aimed magazine 02138 with the intention of relaunching it in December and increasing its frequency, announced today it would instead fold the lifestyle pub, citing the softening economic environment.

The company's CEO used some classic B-school jargon to justify the decision to shut down the magazine:

While Manhattan Media, and its financial backer Isis Venture Partners, are committed to long-term growth capital, the funds needed to execute our strategic vision would by necessity have grown significantly and beyond the company's risk/return profile.

Translation: This turned out to be a waste of money.

Why? For one thing, the magazine has insufficient relevance, and does not fill a need or solve a problem for Harvard alumni. As an aside, in an attempt to be hip 02138 uses a lot of four-letter words (in addition to "Yale").

Bottom line — as I said in May — "Harvard alumni have been doing OK overall for about 350 years. 02138 needs Harvard, but Harvard doesn't need 02138." QED.

[Updated with additional coverage:]

Chronicle of Higher Ed

Harvard Crimson

Yale Daily News

Guest Blogger Sheila Curran: 3 Ways to Help Students & Alumni in an Economic Downturn

[Note: This posting is by Sheila Curran, president of Curran Career Consulting. The coauthor of Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads: Finding a Path to Your Perfect Career, she has 30 years of experience directing human resources and career functions. Sheila was executive director of Duke University’s Career Center, and previously held a similar position at Brown University. Sheila will be delivering a CASE Online Speaker Series program in March, 2009 on The Changing Dynamics of Alumni Career Services.]

In six months, thousands of anxious and impecunious young men and women will join the ranks of alumni. These newcomers to the alumni population are college students, class of 2009, and they’re heading into the worst economy of the past fifty years. Small wonder, then, that these students will be facing unemployment in droves — with particular problems facing international students or those majoring in traditional liberal arts subjects like philosophy.

In good times, we didn’t have to worry much that our students — or alumni — might be lacking the strategies, skills and materials to do an effective job search. If they lost their job, they could easily find another. We can no longer afford to be so cavalier if we want to mitigate the bleak employment outlook. For those of us who care deeply about the career success of students and grads, this is no time for a “head in the sand” approach to preparation for a vastly different work world. 

Colleges and universities need to do three things:

• Recognize the desirability of a comprehensive approach to career preparation that starts at matriculation and ends a decade later. Every survey I’ve seen indicates that graduates will have had about 4 jobs and will have changed careers at least once during that period. The Alumni Association and the Career Center must work hand in hand to identify how students and alumni can get the help they need (even years after graduation) to negotiate the changing career landscape. If neither office can provide sufficient assistance or career advising, they should arrange for trusted professionals outside the academy to provide these services.
  


• Capitalize on the desire of alumni to be involved with students. This is a win-win for everyone. Students gain enormously when alumni share insights about their careers, identify helpful connections and — most important in this economy — illuminate where opportunities lie. The most compelling alumni stories may come from those who graduated in other recessions like 2001-2003 or in the early 1990’s.
  


• Add a section on alumni careers to both the Alumni Association’s and Career Center’s websites. There’s a lot of good information out there, and there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Quint Careers [site will open a pop-up window] is a great source for students and alumni. Lindsey Pollak writes a useful career blog, incorporating advice from a variety of experts and writers. Finally, anyone can link to my website. I’m constantly adding career questions for students and alumni.

It is often said that difficult times bring people together. Like families, colleges and universities must embrace the notion of a career community that helps students and alumni when they need it, and asks for their assistance as they are able. Our institutions will be stronger for such a collegial approach.

Photo: Recruiter and student at the U. of Illinois — Springfield. By Jeremy Wilburn via Creative Commons license.

 

Why Walled Gardens Fail: People Matter, Software Doesn't

While working on a writing project about the web, I suddenly had a clearer and simpler understanding of something fundamental about social tools in alumni relations.

Discussions about online "solutions" for alumni associations now focus on the social networking features of sites like Facebook. Many (including some software vendors) say that it is these features that draw users away from online communities hosted by alumni offices.

What's actually drawing users away is not the features of the software, but the scale, diversity, and breadth of the network itself — that is, the people.

Many people realized this some time ago, and have occasionally said it aloud. Stating it in this simple way helps me understand the potential effectiveness of activities like:

• building a Facebook application for alumni associations,
• creating so-called networking features on our own "walled garden" sites,
• building a private clone of Facebook that's exclusive to our campus, or
• grafting a standalone online community onto an alumni database.

I think the medium- and long-term prospects are limited. Networking features can be useful; but people don't want software features — they want other people.

These "other people" don't have to be schoolmates, they just have to be a trusted source of conversation, links, job advice, gossip — and yes, an occasional reminiscence.

This is why the enormous scale of the open social networks is erasing most of the utility that single-school alumni communities might have had.

Too simplistic? What do you think?

Note: After writing the post above, I came across Karine Joly's article in University Business titled It's the Community, Stupid! I think her argument supports my main point, but also goes much, much further. Check it out.

Photo of a real walled garden by Dana Graves via Creative Commons license

Alumni and the Social Web

Jeremiah Owyang is a web strategist with internet consultants Forrester Research. He writes the deceivingly simple-sounding Web Strategy blog, which is rife with useful ideas about social media.

A recent posting, however, called "What's After the Social Web?", just seemed like so much Silicon Valley namedropping. Jeremiah often tells us who he bumped into, who sent him a private message, who was texting him, and so on. But then I noticed that in a fraction of a single sentence he made three discrete references that are relevant to alumni networks.

Jeremiah wrote:

I received a private message from Tim O’Reilly himself, we got on the phone and he explained his intentions of the term [Web 3.0] ... and loosely, his vision is that the behavior of networks will populate databases in which organizations can retrieve the data and deliver content....

Let's unpack that and see what it means for alumni organizations:

• "the behavior of networks"
  O'Reilly, is talking about the relationships between individuals within a network; how they interact with each other; and how they connect with resources outside the network.

• "will populate databases"
  The network members' aggregate behavior will convey their needs and interests. The way in which they use the network will contribute information about the network's value to its members, and we'll store this information.

• "organizations can retrieve the data and deliver content"
  The organization will use this stored information to provide tools and resources that satisfy the network members' needs — tools that help solve their problems.

How might this apply to advancement? Can we observe, measure and record how people interact, and identify what they need?

If we can, we will activate the alumni network so alumni can use it to find answers to their problems and find resources they need to achieve personal or professional goals. And to do that, we need to stop worrying about whether we can attract alumni to our "online communities." We never could. But it's ok. We don't have to.

What do we have to do? Steve Rubel said it very simply on the Authenticities blog:

To succeed, brands and content producers will need to make sure their content is portable and can go where the people are.

I'll close with another quote from Jeremiah Owyang's posting (emphasis mine):

...most of my clients (large corporations) haven’t figured out how to fully embrace the social web — let alone think about what’s next...[T]he social web won’t go away, but will integrate, and soon a new type of technology will emerge to provide greater relevancy to content, people, activities and ideas.

If Jeremiah's right (and I think he is), that "new type of technology" has the potential to make us a lot more effective in helping alumni find the resources they need to solve their problems and get things done.

Alumni Program Grant for CASE Europe

[Updated 6 October, 2008 with listing of upcoming CASE Europe Alumni Relations conferences - see bottom of this posting]

According to the September, 2008 CASE BriefCASE e-newsletter,

CASE Europe has received a program grant from the European Commission to exchange and promote best practices among alumni organizations based in Spain, Italy, Austria and Germany.

The Alumni Go Europe program was awarded an €18,000 grant (US$25,000) from the EC in support of lifelong learning through the Grundtvig program. The initiative is designed to strengthen European involvement in adult education and lifelong learning. Programs include partnerships and training opportunities for adult education organizations, teachers and learners.

The Grundtvig program, by the way, is part of the European Commission's Lifelong Learning Programme, which "supports education and training across Europe [and] provides funding for all stages of lifelong learning; for activities at school, at college, at university, in the workplace and in the community."

The CASE item concludes,

Alumni Go Europe will bring together colleagues to "explore and compare the landscape of alumni organizations and develop new ideas about the services these organizations can offer," says Kate Hunter, executive director for CASE Europe. "It's also an excellent opportunity for us at CASE to help extend professional networks across the continent."

This is pretty vague, but the e-newsletter item was just meant to be a quick notice, not a detailed program description.

It's good for CASE to be on the European Commission's radar screen, even though that also means there's bound to be red-tape, panels of experts, and lots of "consensus building."

As for "extending professional networks," that's not the same as offering workshops and conferences. CASE should not only educate professionals and connect them to one another, but continue to reach out to national governments and to individual institutions. And to other organizations. For example the European Association for International Education (EAIE) is quietly but consistently exploring alumni relations programming and training as well and might benefit from a Continental connection with CASE Europe.

Meanwhile, to learn more about global issues in higher education policy and management, be sure to read two excellent blogs: GlobalHigherEd and Eric Beerkens' blog.

[Updated 6 October, 2008: Here are three upcoming alumni relations conferences presented by CASE Europe]

An Introduction to Alumni Relations
27 January, 2009

CASE Europe Schools Conference
8-10 March, 2009

Alumni Relations Master Class
20 March, 2009