Alumni

About 2 months ago, I was interviewed for a CASE Currents’ article about digital magazines for alums.

The article written by Douglas Vaira, Living a Digital Age, has been published in the March issue (but is only accessible to CASE members), so I thought some of you might be interested in my answers to Vaira’s questions.

As far as digital magazines, where does the future lie?

I think we’re going to see more integration between print and digital publications. Given the shrinking budgets reported by many higher ed institutions, print magazines are going to take a hit in circulation, size, etc. When it was asked to find ways to save money to face a state funding cut in 2007, the University of Florida decided to take a hard look at its publication budget. At that time, I was asked to conduct a comprehensive audit and provide recommendations. Using this study as a starting point, UF has since been able to save more than 1 million in printing, postage and related costs.

However, I don’t think digital magazines should/will replace their print counterparts or even just mirror them. There is an opportunity to provide an even better experience to readers in a more cost-efficient way by making both media work together. Until digital paper becomes a fact of life – which will happen sooner than we think, it makes sense to keep printing magazines for alums, but maybe not as we’ve been doing it for the past 15 or 20 years. I think we really need to start designing magazines using an integrated approach with print and digital sections, with monthly/quaterly more in-depth features and daily/weekly electronic updates, with great copy and beautiful photo spreads and shorter text augmented by videos or slideshows.

What are some of the advantages of going digital?

There are several advantages of going digital. With digital magazines, institutions can skip altogether the costly and time-consuming printing process (as well as the increasing postage costs). It becomes possible to cover events in a timelier manner. Space isn’t limited by a set number of pages anymore. You can also provide a more comprehensive experience to readers including text, images (lots of images), video or audio interviews but also welcome/nurture instant feedback. Digital magazines especially in the form of Websites can become 2-way communication channels. Another advantage of digital magazines is the fact that you can get a very good idea of what your readers are actually viewing/reading. With the technologies available on the Web, it’s easy to find out where readers are clicking, how long they spend on a page, and the type of topics they are interested in by just checking analytics reports. Readers can also access very easily archives.

What are some of the issues or challenges you’ve seen with the format?

However, there are also some disadvantages with digital magazines. With so much information – and so many distractions – available on the Web, there’s a bigger chance to miss the reader. Even if you publish the best digital magazine in the world, you’ll still need to attract – and retain – readers. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to digital magazines or websites. It’s true that people can find you on the Internet easily by using a search engine, but you got to give them a compelling reason to search in the first place. That’s why these digital magazines require to be promoted on other channels: emails, postcards or other mailings. When an alum gets a print magazine in the mail, s/he won’t probably throw it right away into the recycling bin even if s/he doesn’t have time at that specific moment. A digital version might not be that lucky.

What are some best-practice ideas you might be willing to offer?

The recommendation I would make is to try to come up with an integrated approach using print and (a real – i.e. web-based) digital versions altogether, build both version as distinctive but complementary parts of a same magazine. Ithaca College has done something very interesting with a magazine targeted to prospective students, FUSE, that includes a print version and a digital version built using their web content management system. The digital version is updated more often, but the print version has definitely its place. The readers — the famous digital natives — have expressed a strong interest in the print version, proving that this isn’t the dead medium we thought it was.

It’s also important to offer possibilities for readers to subscribe to updates on their terms via email, RSS or even by pushing updates on Facebook and other social media tools (Twitter comes to mind). If you can keep printing your magazine, ask readers if they would prefer to receive it in their inbox instead. Some might find it more practical and more environment-friendly. Don’t launch a digital magazine without incorporating from the beginning some ways to measure traffic, reader behaviors, etc. If you have to go paperless (from print to digital only) for budget reasons, tell your readers in the print magazines and offer them the opportunity to be notified by email about new issues.

If you’re planning to go digital or paperless with your magazines, you should consider attending “Stop the Presses,” a 3-webinar series presented by editors who took this path. You can get more info about it at www.higheredexperts.com/stopthepresses

Isn’t this headline quite a teaser?

I stand by it though as this is also a good way to look at the Edu Blogger Scholarship Contest.

As I’ve explained on this blog a few weeks ago, I’m managing this contest targeted to edu bloggers. It’s open to the “usual suspects” of the higher ed blogosphere (you know who you are – and if you aren’t registered yet, hope you’ll do it before the deadline next Tuesday), but also to any of the bloggers writing for your institution.

The only 3 requirements to enter this contest are 1) to write a post about online education or education online, 2) to include the contest badge in the entry and 3) to fill out the form available on the contest page.

While the contest is sponsored by Online College, a website about online education, these posts written for the contest don’t even have to be in favor of online education – and can also help promote what’s going on at YOUR institution.

• If your student bloggers think that studying on campus is the only way to get an education, they can discuss their opinion in their contest post.
• If some of your faculty bloggers teach online classes at your institution and want to write about their experience in a post, they can enter the contest.
• If some of your staff members passionate about academic technology want to blog about the future of education in this online world, they can submit an entry for the contest as well.

What I’m trying to say is that there is plenty that can be written about education online or online education, and I’m sure the folks blogging for your institution would love to get an opportunity to win one of the 3 scholarships.

Think it’s not even worth trying because of the numbers of A-list bloggers already entered in the contest?
Even if I find it hard to understand, as of this writing, we only have a dozen entries – which means that with 3 prizes to win, any interested edu blogger has a very high probability (we’re not even talking about chances) to grab at least $500.

I know most edu bloggers don’t do it for the money (hey, if we were we would be blogging about something else), but I would really love to see a bit more entries for this contest, you know, just to keep things interesting for the jury.

So, go read the rules on the Edu Blogger Scholarship Contest page. Share this post with your bloggers or go write your own entry if you’re a blogger.

The deadline is next Tuesday – March 17.

Andy Shaindlin and Elizabeth Allen from Alumni Futures has just published a very interesting white paper: Activating Alumni Networks with Twitter.

This free 36-page PDF file includes a good primer about Twitter (aimed at the non-user), an overview about different uses, some recommendations as well as the results of a recent online survey conducted from January 6 to January 13, 2009 with 330 folks working in higher education.

I read Andy’s white paper this morning and so should you (download a copy and share it with your alum association).

Here’s an excerpt of what the practical-tip addict I am found the most interesting in this research paper, i.e the 8-step plan to get your alum association on Twitter:

• Create Twitter accounts in the name of your school and alumni association even if you do not intend to use Twitter for institutional purposes. This will prevent unauthorized or unexpected use (“squatting”) of the names by opportunistic students, alumni, marketers, or others.
• Describe Twitter on your web site and direct alumni to your association profile and other school-related users.
• Consider establishing a professionally oriented use of a personal Twitter account, as an additional channel
  for connecting with constituents with whom you have established an institutional relationship. An alumni
  director might tweet individually and follow his alumni board members.

• Schedule institutional tweets for the weekday, when most users are watching the Twitter stream, and pay attention to time zones. Overnight and weekend tweets will be long gone from the public timeline when alumni log on in the morning.
• Establish a user-populated directory of alumni Twitter usernames.
• Profile publicly how alumni are connecting with each other – not just with the institution – by using Twitter.
• Tell alumni to seek out other alumni among the institution’s or the association’s followers on Twitter.
• Add alumni Twitter usernames to alumni records in the secure online directory and even in the development
  database, and encourage alumni to update their own records with this information.

What did I find interesting in the survey results?

• 36% of respondents are currently using Twitter; a comparable number (37%) know what Twitter is, but have not used it.
• Of those currently using Twitter, 44% are Twittering both for their school and themselves (Karine’s note: this result might be a bit skewed as Twitter users might be more inclined to do a survey about Twitter usage)
• 85% of institutional users are sending out event updates and invites; news of updated web content is broadcast by 59% of institutions, and news of students, faculty and alumni accounts for some tweets from half the respondents.
• Half the institutions using Twitter had fewer than 25 followers. Another 17% had between 25 and 50. 19% boasted more than 100 followers.

After blogs yesterday, today is the turn of email.

This week, I guess I’m on a mission to rescue you from the sirens of the lost technologies casting the premature death of very good marketing/communication channels with great proven return on investment.

So, let me put it this way right from the get-go: email isn’t dead.

Email marketing is still very relevant in higher education especially in these difficult economic times where ROI is going to become even more important.

At one condition though, you got to do it right.

Both speakers from the upcoming Email Marketing 360 webinar series, Karlyn Morissette (Dartmouth) and Carmella Manges (St Edward’s University) have been very successful with their respective email marketing strategies and agreed to share their expertise and experience with you just after Thanksgiving on December 2nd and 3rd.

Interested? Intrigued?
Keep reading the description of this 2-webinar series below.

Already sold on the idea?
Register by November 19 at www.higheredexperts.com/emailmarketing360.
At only $240, the total cost per connection for both webinars (you can stuff a room with people from all your offices on campus) is quite budget-friendly.

“Email Marketing 360″ is a 2-webinar series that will show you that email is far from dead – even for communications targeted to younger audiences – when done right. You will learn why and how to set up an email marketing strategy for your office, department or institution. You will also find out how to make sure you measure the ROI of your campaigns.

December 2, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: December 9, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Marketing to Inboxes: 5-Step Plan to Effective Email Campaigns
Karlyn Morissette, Web Producer at Dartmouth, will guide you on the road to successful email marketing campaigns. She will explain why and how email can help you get your message across, recruit more students or generate more gifts by following her 5-step plan.

December 3, 2008 1PM-2PM ET – Rain date: December 10, 2008 1PM-2PM ET
Analyze this! How to inform your email marketing strategy with the right analytics
Carmella Manges, Director of E-Marketing at St. Edward’s University, will explain how the right approach with analytics can help you show the ROI of your campaigns and fine tune your email marketing strategy. She will share best practices and lessons learned in implementing a complete email analytics program for her institution.

For registration and information, just go to www.higheredexperts.com/emailmarketing360.

Since we had to postpone to January 13-15, 2009 the series initially scheduled this week, Social Networks MBA, you can still get a $25 Amazon certificate if you register for both series. More details about this offer can be found on this previous post. I’ve already issued a few gift certificates for registered folks.

Got questions? Email karine@collegewebeditor.com

My fifth UB column for 2008 is now available in the October issue as well as online: “It’s The Community, Stupid! A seven-step plan to raise and nurture any community online.”

This column is the written version of the closing keynote I gave at eduWeb last July, a live presentation that also included videos from 3 community managers working in higher ed institutions.

If you’re interested in more tips and tricks to manage your online communities and social networks, you should also consider attending “Social Networks MBA: How to Develop and Nurture a Thriving Community,” a 3-webinar series scheduled on November 11, 12 and 13, 2008 January 13, 14 & 15, 2009 (the series has been postponed).

For more information and to register by November 3rd December 19, 2008, just visit www.higheredexperts.com/socialnetworksmba.

By the way, if you are a University Business reader who has just discovered collegewebeditor.com, welcome! Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog via RSS or email.

Here’s the second edition of this series “Catch up-Date with Karine” aiming at fighting the information overload. Please let me know if you find it useful by leaving a comment or sending an email at karine@collegewebeditor.com.

Get in the mind of US high school students with “The 2008-2009 State Of Our Nation’s Youth,” a survey report published by Horatio Alger Association in August 2008 (via mStoner blog)

Here are a couple of interesting points I found in the 8-page report summary (PDF) and the full 80-page report (PDF)

• Today’s teenagers spend an average of 11.6 hours a week using the Internet more time than they spend watching television (9.8 hours per week), talking on a cell phone (12.9 hours per week), and doing homework (8.9 hours per week).
• Time spent on the Internet per week for
  homework: 4.5 hr
  browsing social networking websites: 6.2 hr
  entertainment: 7.1 hr.
• 70% of today’s high school students plan to attend a four year college or university sometime after completing high school, 10% a two-year college, 7% a community college, and 6% a vocational or technical school

Looking to reconnect with long-lost alumni? Follow UNT example with its “Six Degrees of UNT” campaign (via UB Buzz)

In the Six Degrees of UNT program, the university will contact constituents via e-mail invitation, and ask them to forward the invitation to former UNT classmates, faculty, staff and supporters. Subsequent e-mails ask each invitee to provide current contact information.

Successful execution means UNT will have more reliable and efficient means to contact the more than 190,000 people in its contributor relations database. This, in turn, can save the university time and money, from returned, undeliverable print mail and dead-end e-mail addresses.

The program will be executed over six weeks beginning Thursday, Sept. 4.

I’ll try to find out how this program worked out in October – will keep you updated.

Trying to prove to decision makers that social networking is a real trend? Look closely at the report about social networking published last week by Synovate (via eMarketer newsletter)

• While 58% of the 13,000 people aged 18-65 from 17 countries don’t know what social networking is, 70% of surveyed Americans do.
• While only 26% across the markets surveyed are members of social networking sites, the proportion reaches 44% in Canada and 40% in the US (not the majority, true, but the under 18 aren’t counted here)

Looking for a private Twitter clone for your team? Check out Edmodo
Created for teachers and students, Edmodo is a free private microblogging platform you can use to send notes, links, files, alerts, and events to each other. You can create private groups for you and your colleagues to collaborate.

Unless you were really sleeping under a rock last week, you know that Google launched its own Internet browser, Chrome, but do you know that Dimitri Glazkov (ex-CTO at Estrada who presented at several of higher ed conferences and even guest blogged for this blog) has joined the Chrome team at Google?
Well, you know it, now.
Congratulations to my favorite Russian!

Chances are you’ve already read this article published today in the New York Times: College Alumni Magazines Struggle to Compete With Facebook.

The article written by Cate Doty doesn’t provide any breaking news as higher ed blogger D.W. noted in her post published earlier today: News of the Obvious: Younger Alumni Turn to Facebook Versus Class Notes.

But, the piece is definitely an interesting overview worth sharing with your VP or president – especially if you want to build your case to add a digital interactive version for your print magazine (and, if you plan to do so, you might want to check out the upcoming 3-webinar series I designed for Higher Ed Experts and scheduled on June 24, 25 and 26, 2008, “Stop the Presses: How and Why to go Digital with your Magazine or Newsletter.”

Here’s an excerpt of this NYT article I found interesting – although the author might have gone a bit overboard at the end:

The advent of social networking on the Internet has created a quandary for these magazines, which want to maintain a conversation with alumni but have been slow to embrace the Web. Most schools have set up password-protected sites where graduates can change their contact information, drop a class note or donate money.

But younger alumni, accustomed to second-by-second updates from friends and classmates, are exchanging information in real time on Facebook and MySpace. Why wait for your alma mater to churn out a quarterly journal when you can Twitter all day?

I’m not sure young alums (or students) are the big twitterers we would all like them to be, but they are definitely used to getting more timely updates than any print publications will ever offer them.

That’s why more and more institutions are currently rethinking the way they communicate with alums and other institutional younger audiences.

My upcoming UB column to be published in the June issue of University Business (not yet available online – hey, it’s just June 2nd ;-) is dealing with this issue with a focus on magazines gone digital and going paperless.

But, what do YOU think? Is there a future for print magazines in higher ed?

This has been a busy week in the social networking website world. Last Monday, a few days before the launch of the new Facebook features, Yahoo! launched a new social networking website targeted to college students and alums: Kickstart.

Scott Gatz, Senior Director of Yahoo’s Advanced Products, manages the Kickstart’s team. Despite a busy week, Scott has taken the time to answer a few questions about this new website just for you (read the end of the interview for more information about the $25,000).

1) Your team has just launched Kickstart, a new social networking website for college students and alums. What makes Kickstart different from (better than?) Facebook, Linkedin or MySpace?

Kickstart is a professional network with a purpose: to build a community of college students, recent grads, professionals and alumni where people connect and discover the right internships, jobs, career advice and mentorship. We started by doing a lot of research with college students and found that while they are very networked on sites like Facebook, those networks are mostly of friends and primarily about fun. Kickstart offers a place to have a professional profile, so they don’t have to worry about potential employers poking around their private profile. On the other hand, services like LinkedIn are good for people with an existing professional network. Kickstart is designed to help students and recent grads, who do not have an established professional network, discover the latent connections or “weak-ties” they already have but may not be aware of with professionals, managers and companies – these weak ties extend beyond simply being alumni from the same school and could include having been in the same fraternities/sororities, from the same home-town, etc.

2) Higher ed institutions have started to use the main social networking websites as communication channels with their students and alums. Will Kickstart offer any special opportunities to universities/colleges or alum associations?

We’re still early in the development of Kickstart and we expect to add a number of features. Each company, school and association has a page on Kickstart for all of its members. You could imagine that these pages will be terrific places for message boards, bulletins, events and other ways to connect people. For now, we’re listening to people’s feedback on the site, and we’d love to hear from you about which features you think should be first.

3) Do you have any plans to offer an API so higher ed web developers can create their own applications on the top of Kickstart?

The web is moving towards openness in everything, and it is pretty common these days for Yahoo services to have open APIs (see the Yahoo! Developer Network). With Kickstart, we are very focused on creating a community where alums and students can connect and the features we will do first are driven by that. In time, I do expect we’ll offer more and more ways for higher education to participate. I recommend that people sign up on the site and connect with others to see what the potential is and then drop us feedback so we know where to focus.

Last point: we want to encourage alumni to sign up for the site in advance of students. To “kickstart” that effort, we’re offering $25,000 to the school with the most alumni signed up by 12/31/07. I’d suggest that people take a minute to pass this onto former students and alums to take advantage.

Mark Heiman from Carleton College presented a session titled “Social Networking Software: Meeting the Expectations of the MySpace Generation.” The presentation was covered by one of this year’s guest blogger. This is Martine Lafleur’s second post.

Mark Heiman’s presentation kept me on my toes with great graphics, just the right touch of cynicism and good storytelling (not just slide reading).

Here is the story:

After hearing from their Alumni service the dreaded words: “we are meeting with vendors” to add interaction capabilities to the web site, the web team at Carleton College pleaded to have time to evaluate the project before anything was signed. And, they succeeded.

First question that came up: why not just use Facebook? Recent Alumni are on Facebook.

Two major reasons:

1) Being part of the ecology/sharing capacity of the Internet was the project’s goal. Facebook does not share with outside sites…

2) By talking to their alumni, they discovered they already had a strong community since the alumni loved the conversations they were having on the College’s forums but needed more interaction.

Carleton College already had a strong community but they needed to create more interaction.

One of the vendor selection criteria they had on their list was that the tool should do external content integration. All the products seen so far did not allow a seamless integration of, let’s say, an alum’s posts from his or her blog hosted on WordPress.

Then they found ELGG! An open source social platform, “a system that firmly places individuals at the center of their activities.” ELGG words not mine) they selected even though the product is not at a 1.0 status and the community is still scarce.

From what was shown at the conference, the tool seems really interesting and fits perfectly their philosophical approach: being part of the ecology/sharing capacity of the Internet.

I’ve already posted a couple of times about “Social Networking Websites Week – All You Ever Wanted to Know about MySpace, Facebook and Co,” a 5-webinar series scheduled on October 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (with the 50% discount for HEE members, the total price for the webinars is just $250 – more information is available at www.higheredexperts.com/socialnetworking) that I designed for Higher Ed Experts, so this is just a quick reminder of the registration deadline.

Registration will close this Monday.

If you plan to attend, you can register online.

Don’t forget to join Higher Ed Experts first at www.higheredexperts.com/register if you’re not a member yet – membership is free and open to people working in universities and colleges).

Here’s a list of the institutions that have already confirmed their registration for this series:

• Upper Canada College
• Hudson Valley Community College
• University of Technology, Sydney
• Northampton Community College
• Rochester Institute of Technology
• UC Davis
• Duke University
• Clemson University
• University of Colorado at Boulder
• Cedar Crest College
• Caltech Alumni Association
• UMass Lowell
• Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
• Middlebury College
• Northwest College
• University of Nebraska at Kearney
• University of Illinois at Springfield

Once again, this list includes returning “customers,” i.e. institutions that enrolled in previous live or on-demand webinar series.