alumni futures

Do Events Have a Social Graph?

In a recent article titled The Next Big Thing, social network analyst Valdis Krebs pointed out that just as a person has a "social graph" that depicts how they connect and interact with others, a book can have a social graph too. His network map displays connections between the purchasing behaviors of individuals who bought a specific book on Amazon.com: 

Below is a network map of a very interesting new book – Too Big to Know [2B2K] by internet scholar David Weinberger. David's book is shown by the magenta node in the center of the network. Directly connected to his book are the books that Amazon mentions that customers also bought [green nodes], in addition to 2B2K. These books are probably more similar than different to 2B2K. The blue nodes are books that are 2 steps away from 2B2K, they are probably more different than 2B2K, but retain similarities also. The arrows show the direction of the majority of also-bought activity. 

His conclusion? Amazon is building an "Interests & Passions network...under the radar."

"Social Graph" of the book Too Big to Know on Amazon.com, via The Network Thinkers - Click to enlarge

It occurs to me that if a thing (like a book) can have a social graph, so can some of the "things" we use to engage alumni and donors. For example:

Events can have a social graph.

Is someone who attends a particular event more or less likely to attend certain other events? The answer could improve our target marketing for events.

Volunteerism can have a social graph.

Is someone who volunteers for a specific role more or less likely to fulfill another, specific role? The answer could improve volunteer recruitment.

[If a book can have a social graph, why can't an event?]

And directionality matters here too. For example, arrows would show which volunteer roles lead to future activities.

This is hardly a new idea. Overlay behavior onto a social graph and you're creating an interest graph. That's how several popular online services work, in a general way: Zappos, Netflix, and of course Amazon. But these sites mostly aggregate past users' behaviors to influence the next user's behavior, without those users being connected otherwise. A true "interest graph"–based system would interpret your behavior to help organizations understand why you attended that additional event, or how you felt about your volunteer experience.

Intrigued by this idea? Then see this article by Derrick Harris: The personalized web is just an interest graph away.

Do events, volunteer roles, and other engagement tools have social graphs?

If they do, should we be capturing and analyzing them?

Why – or why not? 

Related articles

• Amazon is building a social graph under the radar (thenetworkthinkers.com)
• [2b2k] Too Big to Know's network (hyperorg.com)
• Looking Beyond the Social Graph, Capsule Aims To Map the 'Experience Graph' (prweb.com)
• The personalized web is just an interest graph away (gigaom.com)

EdSocialMedia Summit, San Francisco

[Updated May 30, 2012: A video of my talk is now online for free viewing:

Balancing Creativity with Leadership: The Challenge of Social Media]

Next month in San Francisco I'm speaking at the EdSocialMedia Summit. The event is for "professionals involved in any way with social media in their organization." The focus is on schools, universities, and non-profits.

The sessions, along with great networking opportunities, take place during a single day:

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 

NOTE: Alumni Futures readers earn a 20% discount on registration.
The link at the bottom of this posting takes you to the registration page.

Seven presenters (including me) will examine current trends and roles for social platforms from a pretty diverse range of perspectives.

The other speakers are:

Brian Carter (author of The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money with Facebook)

Georgy Cohen (co-founder of Meet Content)

John Hill (higher ed evangelist at LinkedIn)

Erin Swanson (marketing programs manager at Water.org)

Ian Symmonds (president & founder of Ian Symmonds & Associates)

and

Rand Fishkin (CEO and co-founder of SEOmoz)

[Alumni Futures readers get 20% off the registration fee]

Topics
Everything from viral video to inbound marketing, from integrated social fundraising campaigns to Facebook marketing, and from brand story-telling to alumni networking online.

Great Venue
Beautiful historic Fort Mason Center overlooking the Marina and San Francisco Bay.

My Talk
I'll review some recent research in experimental psychology to show why "strong leadership" doesn't usually seem compatible with innovative efforts such as social media. And I'll suggest what decision-makers can do about it to succeed. 

I hope I'll see a few Alumni Futures readers at this event next month.

Register

Register for the EdSocialMedia Summit – April 4, 2012 – San Francisco

Note: 20% discount ($40 off the regular cost of $199) is built in to this link, but you can always click "Promotional Code" on the registration page and type in: AlumniFutures

And...EdSocialMedia will donate 25% of profits to local charitable education organizations.

See you there!

 

Photo: Port of San Francisco sign by Andy Shaindlin

 

Career Services, 1920s Style: "Called here for girl."

Many think of "alumni career services" as a recent invention – born of necessity as institutions struggle to provide graduates with practical, useful services.

Not so. 

In 1996 Paul Lukas stumbled across hundreds of discarded student records in a disused New York City school building. Luckily, he recognized that what appeared to be a few hundred old report cards were valuable historical documents. Understanding these records became an obsession that, in Lukas' words, changed his life. He pursued their origin and their meaning.

You can read the entire tale here:

Permanent Record: How I Found the Report Cards, and How They Changed My Life

[What he uncovered makes great reading –
part history lesson, part detective yarn, part human interest story]

One fascinating aspect of the story is Lukas' description of the way in which the school, called the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, helped its graduates find work, and continued to do this for many years after the girls had become alumnae. He writes that the school

had kept track of its students' employment history for years after they graduated, which provided a look into the students' post-school lives and also painted a striking portrait of the Depression-era labor market. 

Later, he goes on, he found out the reason they kept these records:

The school had its own job placement office – essentially an in-house employment bureau – and had helped the students secure those jobs...Many graduates continued to obtain work via the school for years—sometimes for a decade or more—which speaks to the unusually strong bond the school had with its students.

How did the school maintain such strong bonds with students who generally attended for just two years, usually between the ages of about 14 and 17? One motivation for staying connected with alumnae was the intent of its first director, Mary Schenck Woolman, who established the job placement office in part "to build up a series of records that shall be of general sociological value." To build up those records meant maintaining ongoing contact with graduates, in some cases for a decade or more after they left.

[How did the school maintain strong bonds with students who attended for just two years, between the ages of about 14 and 17?]

But what mattered most was the result of this effort to maintain contact: a two-way relationship between the school's administrators and its alumnae.

Lukas describes how, 15 years after leaving, alumna Mary Meyer contacted the school to fill a job opening for a seamstress at her own company. The notation on her alumnae record states that she "Called here for girl."

Lukas writes,

...even if the school didn't supply Mary with an employee, the mere fact that she asked them to do so feels like a validation of Manhattan Trade and its mission. "Called here for girl"—it's my favorite entry, my favorite detail, in the entire report card collection.

Mine too.

It represents the mutual understanding between school and graduate, that a brief period as a student gives way to a lifelong identity as an alumna. This provides future opportunities on both sides: a source of employment for students and a source of qualified talent for the alumni employer.

It's as true today as it was in 1921, when Mary Meyer completed her own dressmaking education and entered the workforce as an alumna of Manhattan Trade School for Girls.

 

Image: Student record from Manhattan Trade School for Girls

Related articles

• Permanent Record: How I Found the Report Cards, and How They Changed my Life (slate.com)

White Paper: 10 Best Practices for Organization Twitter Profiles

I'm pleased to announce a new white paper from Alumni Futures, available as a free download in PDF format [1.2mb]:

Alumni Organization Twitter Profiles:
A Quick Guide to 10 Best Practices

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.

Related resources

• Download the white paper: Alumni Organization Twitter Profiles [1.2mb PDF]
• Download the Twitter Profile Worksheet [45kb PDF]
• Twitter list of alumni organizations (maintained by Alumni Futures)
• Other white papers from Alumni Futures

Matrix Update: 2 More Uses for Online Social Networks

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?).

     Download Social Networks' Impacts on Alumni Organizations v6 [98k PDF]* 

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: [email protected].

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,

1) click through to the blog post on the web page: http://www.alumnifutures.com/2010/11/matrix-more-uses.html then

2) right click the link to the PDF and 

3) select "Save As..." or "Save Link As..."

 

Overseas Workshops and Presentations: France

As I mentioned in July, I'm heading to France this week to co-present a workshop for the European Association for International Education...

 
EAIE Workshop in Nantes, 15-16 September:

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. 

This year, Dan has developed an ambitious workshop called How to Strategically Deploy Web 2.0 Platforms, Tools and Communities. 

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:

 

 

 

All The People You Know Who Know People

The mania over social networking is really a mania over the online component. Social networks have been in place for millennia. And reminders of this pop up in unexpected places all the time. Like in Truman Capote's classic novella, Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

The earnest, plodding young narrator follows all the rules for getting his writing published. He mails each manuscript off and passively waits for rejection letters by return post. But he gets a casual dose of common sense networking from his neighbor, Holly Golightly, who says that she can help him land a Hollywood script deal:

"I'm going to help you," she said. "I can, too. Think of all the people I know who know people." 

There's the strength of weak ties, clearly articulated in a fictional conversation, 15 years before Granovetter published it as a scholarly finding.

And there's something else here. Holly and her author-neighbor are not connected by a common alma mater or some other granfalloon. They're connected by something that Holly herself determines is relevant:

"I'm going to help you, because you look like my brother Fred. Only smaller."

This can serve as a cautionary reminder about how little it often takes for groups to form, with or without your alma mater as a focal point. And now that forming groups is so easy, looking like brother Fred is sometimes much more important than sharing a school connection. 

That should be a wake-up call to alumni organizations, which no longer (necessarily) play a central role in connecting people to one another and helping them organize around their interests.

A Revised Matrix of Social Network Effects on Alumni Relations

[Updated: The matrix of impacts now features 20 use cases, up from the original 5 posted below. See:

http://www.alumnifutures.com/2010/11/matrix-more-uses.html

for the newest version of the chart below.]

 

Back in February, web strategist Jeremiah Owyang blogged about "impacts to alumni organizations in a world of social networks." Part of his posting was a matrix that showed these impacts in five different use cases. His excellent summary was designed as a brief analysis of the risks and potential rewards for alumni organizations approaching online networks in various ways.

I found this matrix very useful, and well thought-out. As I read it, I found myself annotating it with additional points based on my own experience. Jeremiah encouraged me to blog a slightly expanded version, and I did. It appears below.

My additions and changes to Jeremiah's original version are written in italics in the matrix accompanying this blog post. I hope you can use it, and I hope you will add missing factors in the comments below, or point out aspects with which you disagree. 

Click image to enlarge:

 
Jeremiah embedded in his matrix a couple of links that are worth listing separately:

• Stanford's tagged directory of alumni-written blogs (opportunity to aggregate alumni voices)
• Jeremiah Owyang's checklist for developing advocacy for your program (ambassador/marketing opportunity)

Here's my original posting about the matrix.

Thanks to Jeremiah for encouraging me to build on his efforts.

White Paper: Alumni Networks and Twitter - An Update

Today I'm excited to announce the publication of a new white paper, co-authored with Elizabeth Allen. The paper is titled Alumni Networks and Twitter: An Update. It's a quick look back at changes since our January 2009 paper, which examined Twitter's potential to influence alumni relations and higher education advancement.

We repeated the non-scientific survey on Twitter awareness and usage in alumni relations, so there is now basic comparative data to show changes in Twitter's role in our professions. This year we also added questions about Twitter Lists to the survey.

To download the paper (PDF format), click on the link below and the document will be downloaded to your computer.

Download Alumni Networks and Twitter: An Update [713kb PDF]

Leave comments about the white paper below this posting. To notify your own Twitter followers about the white paper, click this link: 

Tweet This White Paper

Or use the "Tweet this White Paper" button on the second page of the PDF. 

Thanks for reading; we hope you find it useful!

Social Networks' Impact on Alumni Associations: Jeremiah Owyang

Update: I updated and revised the matrix somewhat, and blogged about it here:

A Revised Matrix of Social Network Effects on Alumni Relations 

***

This morning I was lucky enough to hear Altimeter Group's analyst and consultant Jeremiah Owyang address the Council of Alumni Association Executives (CAAE) on "Social Marketing and Research Strategy" for alumni organizations. I have quoted Owyang here on occasion and it was great to have a chance to discuss directly his ideas for alumni groups using social technologies.

Every alumni professional should read the blog post that Jeremiah wrote to accompany his presentation:

Matrix: Impacts to Alumni Organizations in a World of Social Networks

His comments are self-explanatory, but the reader comments are illuminating as well. And be sure to read the five use cases in the matrix, which shows a simple snapshot of the risks and rewards of various approaches.

I'll post a follow up article here soon, discussing some of Owyang's specific comments about the opportunities available to alumni organizations connecting with alumni where they live online.