Intermedia

Alumni, fundraising and web 2.0

We spend an awful lot of time in higher ed talking about all the ways in which new media, social media, web 2.0, whatever you want to call it, is being used by incoming students and current students. What about alumni, though?

I've posted a bit on social networking trends, which fascinates me and certainly has a lot to do with how alumni engage with each other and with those at a college or university. After playing with Twitter a bit (enough there for a post of its own some time soon), I started to wonder how microblogging tools and other social media might impact the practice of fundraising. So, I Googled it. A great post by Beth Kanter came up on Read/WriteWeb. It was called "Non-Profits & Web 2.0: Notes From The Real World."

Read it for yourself, but she's pushing the borders in terms of how to use the web both to supplement existing fundraising efforts and to launch whole new ones. She's using Twitter, ChipIn, Charity Badges, and video blogging, to name a few tools. Aside from the fact that I like the way she's using these tools to push important initiatives, I think she has the right perspective on it.

In my opinion, it's important to think of social media in terms of how it can amplify existing efforts and really enhance engagement. It won't work for everyone, but it could work really well for the right people. Remember that usage rates are generally still pretty low and even those platforms that have achieved saturation (e.g. Facebook with the college set), are still at ground-zero with some demographic groups (I know, I know... they're growing every day).

To quote the concluding section of Kanter's post:

Web 2.0 and social media tools offer many possibilities for non-profits to raise awareness of their work, connect with potential (younger) donors, raise money, find volunteers, and other tangible benefits. There are challenges to adoption, but as a staff member from a Cambodian NGO said to me: "We just have to be creative." It's a matter of low risk experimentation and personal learning in order to reap powerful benefits.

Social media and play on the web

In preparation for a meeting this week, I did some research on the top sites for teens and what I found was surprising -- though it shouldn't have been. The most popular sites are the social networks and sites that provide add-ons to social networking pages. The MTVs and TeenPeoples -- sites that offer flashy content and place to play -- are off the charts. So what does this mean for sites that are working so hard to be sticky (bump to Tim O'Keeffe of Colgate and the Content Matters blog) without going social?

What will it take for people, not just teens, to stay on a site that isn't social in nature? Games like Honda's new "Crave Reader" (It knew I wanted a cucumber... amazing) at least give the perception of interactivity and are flat out cool.

I guess that the question here is how social media is impacting the ways in which people "play" on the web. Has the bar simply been raised so that play has to be more interactive, or has it changed fundamentally to the point that it has to have a social element and be more purposeful? Are social networking sites as landing pages reducing the already shrinking appetite for surfing?

Perhaps the answers to these questions vary depend on the site and the target group for whom it is built. It's going to be an important issue to tackle, though, in the redesign and re-concepting of websites moving forward. A lot of resources go into flashy, fun apps, but social networking is a force we just can't ignore as we pursue the elusive goal of stickiness.

Score one for print

The rush to get web 2.0-ified has led to some unnecessary bashing of print as a powerful medium and probably some efforts to end costly print programs in favor of "free" (shudder) web ones. A great post on the Ragan blog points to a new study by Poynter on the power of print vs. online that is worth a read.

Essentially, the Poynter researchers looked at online learning vs. print learning to determine which holds the upper hand. Turns out that print gets the edge in terms of learning, recall, image presentation, and call to action.

So, should we all ditch our web programs in favor of print? No. What I like about this is that it is part of a clearly articulated case for what print does well. We hear so much about what the web is great at and why print is for "old people." It's not that simple. Each medium does certain things very well.

The web is fast, interactive, and malleable. Print, not so much. But take what the Poynter folks say about print and mash it up with what we know about the web, and you start to have a dynamic, multi-media (not multimedia) program that is compelling, informative, and engaging.

So, score one for print.

Facebook and college search

It's not exactly breaking news that the college search process has gone digital. The growth of "ghost" or "phantom" (unnecessarily spooky names, but appropriate given the Halloween season) applications -- those from students who have never asked for information on a school before applying -- is booming and will continue to do so as better info. is available via the web and they continue to get bombarded with printed material.

So, it makes sense that Facebook, which is so hooked into the college environment would feature some great apps that can both enhance the search process and even make it fun. There are a bunch of apps out there, from College ToolKit and SkoolPool (primarily Canadian institutions) to the countless others being developed. Each has different features -- share your list of colleges with friends, compare offerings, take quizzes to "earn degrees," etc -- that are a blend of informative and fun. The apps themselves aren't really the point though. These tools and the many others like them aren't the future of college search, they're the now.

Social media has changed how students gather information on institutions, and they're doing it in ways that go beyond (and around) marketing plans. They want information straight from the source. They want to know what the experience is like. They want to know who else is looking at college, why, and what other schools they're thinking about. The challenge to colleges is how best to supplement what's out there and how to engage students in ways that are desirable to them. The answers are different for each college, but we all need to be asking when print is appropriate; how video can be used; whether and how to jump into online conversations without crashing the party; and, I think this is the most important one,  how to help prospective students build community around your college on their own terms.

It's about helping them facilitate those important relationships rather than trying to force them or just tell them that it's possible.

Building the case for social media

I'm at the PRSA International conference and my one big takeaway is that social media is on everyone's mind. Surprise! Pretty much every session, even if it isn't focused on social media, has at least has an element of it in the presentations or the Q&A. This is great news as it shows that PR folks, regardless of industry, are interested in the impact of social media. The big question is how they're thinking about doing social media.

Phil Gomes from Edelman's me2revolution and the SNCR talked about PR and social media, and made the great point that its important to get into the conversation -- to engage through social media -- now and start building networks. To wait until there is a crisis or a need to build excitement around a program or product is just too late. People will smell the sale/spin and tune you out. Not good.

The idea is to participate in the conversations now and add value where you can. This can be through participating in existing blogs or starting new ones. It can be by generating new videos and commenting on existing ones. The bottom line is that it has to be conversational and natural. Think of it in terms of a conversation at a cocktail party. Who wants to talk with the person who elbows into the conversation and only talks about himself? Who wants to hang out with the person who constantly corrects what you're saying but never bothers to actually listen and enrich the conversation? Pretty much no one.

To really integrate social media into what we do, we have to live it. One guy I was talking with hit the nail on the head. He said, "Web 2.0 is a set of tools. Social media is a philosophy." Beautiful. Social media isn't a program you can implement, it's a way of communicating.

Blogging on the go

I've been intrigued with some folks, bloggers and otherwise, have been doing with Twitter to give updates on what they're up to or what they're thinking. I was tempted to move to this kind of platform as I am frequently struck by BBS -- Bad Blogger Syndrome. This is the guilt that strikes bloggers who just don't feel like they post frequently enough (assuming that anyone actually cares what they're posting). The problem with Twitter for my purposes is that I think of this blog as a whiteboard -- a place to develop ideas and "talk them out" in hopes that some good comments will come in and help me shape some new thinking. If I blurt out every thought via Twitter, I think I lose some of that laboratory feel.

This is why I'm experimenting with Imified, an IM-to-blog service that allows me to type my entry in via IM and post directly to the blog. This is my first shot at it, so I hope it works well. If it does, I can see more frequent posting and, hopefully, more opportunities for conversation. Stay tuned.