Engaging alumni online: today's alumni want increasing control over content and delivery of information. Higher ed institutions are delivering what they need-electronically

University Business, Dec, 2006 by Caryn Meyers Fliegler

IN 2001, ADMINISTRATORS AT PLYMOUTH STATE UNIVERSITY BEGAN PONDERING the notion of giving alumni access to their own web portal, just as undergraduates at the New Hampshire institution had since 2000. The idea was for the portal to provide alumni with a simple way to connect with the university and with each other.

Then, in 2003, a little thing called Facebook arrived on the college scene.

"We had gone through our entire design process, and then Facebook and MySpace explode," says Joe Long, director of alumni relations for Plymouth State. "It didn't change what we were building," says Long, referring to the popularity of social networking sites, "but it made us change our expectations for the product. It gave us a good chance to narrow who we wanted to be engaged with and how we would provide it for them. What is our competition out there? How has it changed?"

Good questions--and ones that are being asked by alumni affairs administrators everywhere. How can alumni offices stay on top of technology offerings without getting too trendy? How can administrators know what online tools next year's students (and therefore soon-to-be alumni) will want?

These questions are popping up fast with the rise of Web 2.0, the second burst of innovation and adoption in the online world. Knowing how to answer them will place administrators in greater positions of power.

"This is really the second big online wave for schools, the first being putting up online alumni directories," says Fred Waugh, director of marketing for Convio, the internet software and services company that serves institutions of higher education and nonprofits. It's time for IHEs "to revisit their strategy and decide what they need to be over the next five years," says Waugh.

Seamless web portals, targeted e-marketing, and partnerships with professional networking sites are just some of the options available to alumni relations offices looking to connect with graduates. Here's how a few institutions, as well as technology vendors knee-deep in product development, are utilizing today's online tools.

Big Contenders

Facebook and MySpace, as well as other online networking communities such as LinkedIn, are the 800-pound gorillas in alumni relations offices these days. How to handle them--some people see them as competition, others as complementary sources of information--is a question still being answered.

"What we're seeing now as part of Web 2.0 is alumni out there creating their own communities," says Waugh. "Those things are really out of the control of the alumni relations group, and there's some fear and uncertainty about how to deal with them."

For Convio and its client schools, Facebook, MySpace, Classmates.com, and other sites are being treated as sources of opportunity, not obstacles. "Schools have to embrace those communities wherever they exist," notes Waugh. "How can we tap into the independent communities that are out there and get them to support us?"

Convio, for one, is working to introduce tools that will make it easier for schools to connect with social networking sites. Options under consideration include:

* Giving institutions the ability to post banner ads on social networking sites.

* Establishing relationships so that institutions can gather alumni data from networking sites.

* Exploring sponsorship possibilities.

These types of strategies can help college and university leaders acknowledge and take advantage of popular online tools, as opposed to ignoring them out of fear or close-mindedness. If alumni want networking sites to be a part of their lives, why shouldn't alumni offices help make that happen?

Linking with LinkedIn

One institution, the California Institute of Technology, is taking a particularly aggressive approach to online networking as a benefit for alumni. The Caltech Alumni Association works directly with the business networking site LinkedIn to boost connections and build awareness.

Andrew Shaindlin, executive director of the alumni association, thought to formalize a relationship between Caltech and LinkedIn, which has more than 7.5 million users, after seeing how much he used and trusted LinkedIn himself. Facebook and MySpace appeal to young alumni who have gone through college with e-mail, Instant Messenger, and social networking sites, but LinkedIn focuses more on professional networking (and therefore appeals to a broader audience, agewise).

Shaindlin says he launched the Caltech Alumni group in LinkedIn for two reasons. "We didn't want someone who was not officially a representative of the institution to create an alumni group that, even with good intentions, we might be responsible for," he says. "So in a way it was kind of preemptive to make sure that we had first dibs on the Caltech Alumni Association group within LinkedIn."

"But more than that," he adds, "I thought it was a good direction to move in anyway. The indicators that we saw were the growth of online networking in general, and the relevance of online business networking in particular, to our goals for the alumni organization."