Today marks the 4th anniversary of my first article on Alumni Futures. As on past birthdays of Alumni Futures, I'm stopping to check and (happily) reaffirm the goals I originally set for the site, when it was just a blog:
- To generate discussion about new ideas and directions for the advancement professions;
- To help education professionals learn from information exchanged here;
- To encourage readers to add their own ideas and visions for advancement.
Here's the annual peek at some numbers:
- There have been more than 174,000 page views in four years; 58,000 in the last year.
- About 1,800 individuals subscribe, and receive new materials from Alumni Futures every week. 400 of them signed on in the last year.
- I've published an average of 1.3 articles per week over four years.
- Best of all, Alumni Futures readers have contributed almost 600 comments to date, and as I always say, that's what makes the site work as a community for exchanging ideas.
Also in the last year, I added the Alumni Futures Jobs Page:
You can reach a highly targeted professional audience of advancement professionals with your job posting, which stays at the top of the list for 60 days. I also tweet new jobs to 1,177 followers of @alumnifutures on Twitter, and publish the job posting to the News Feed of the 415 folks who "like" Alumni Futures on Facebook.
One other service I introduced this past year (in addition to newly published original white papers), is the Twitter list of Alumni Associations, which includes the Twitter streams of 191 alumni organizations of various types as of February 2011.
Alumni Futures, the Business:
Everything above is about the web site. The last 11 months, for me, are about Alumni Futures as a full time business. I've enjoyed that time as an independent freelance consultant, speaker, trainer and author. 2011 is already packed with speaking and teaching engagements, but there's always room for a little more.
Finally, I owe thanks to my expert advisory group, and most of all, thanks to all the clients, subscribers, fans, readers and followers of Alumni Futures. I look forward to whatever else comes to Alumni Futures in 2011 and beyond.
