Intermedia

Godin nails it on engagement and giving

Seth Godin just made a great post about his thoughts on modern philanthropy that I just had to include here as it's relevant to this blog's most recent thread on engagement. He makes great points about the declining role of direct marketing and the proper place of the Internet (beyond transactional) which you can go to the post to read. One section in particular, though, blends so nicely with the current conversation that I wanted to post it here:

"The big win is in turning donors into patrons and activists and participants. The biggest donors are the ones who not only give, but do the work. The ones who make the soup or feed the hungry or hang the art. My mom was a volunteer for years at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, and there's no doubt at all that we gave more money to the museum than we would have if they'd sent us a flyer once a month."

This all goes to the point that people tend to invest in the things that they help build. The first link in the chain is engagement. That means real engagement -- not just a handshake. He makes the good point that you have to let people get their hands dirty in the work, trusting that you'll end up in a better place than you began even if it means letting go a little. It's the whole we are better than me thing, right?

Measuring alumni engagement

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how best to measure alumni engagement, which I've found to be trickier than it might seem. Coming from a media relations background, though, makes one used to the concept of measuring the immeasurable.

I used to think of alumni engagement as a straight line, from disengaged to engaged -- pretty simple. Too simple. There are all kinds of engagement -- some visit regularly, some volunteer, some give financially, others glow with pride and spread the word, as it were. Each of these, and many others that I didn't list, are important elements of engagement and impossible to stick at the endpoint of a single straight line. For that reason, I'm not starting to think of engagement as an inverted pyramid (again with the media relations, I know).

The bottom point is disengagement. The top line represents the many points of measurement of engagement that are specific to an institution. Here's an example:

Once categories are established based on institutional priorities, you could then map individuals or groups based on their participation, drawing lines from disengaged to fully engaged in each area. Are certain class years or eras highly engaged at reunion but not giving financially? Are certain groups of graduates giving generously but not engaging with campus life? This diagram, I think, could help us get to some answers.

The next logical question, then, is what to do with it. That's the fun part. Talk with people. The pyramid and any other measurement is a good way to mine data, but the only real way to get to good answers and potential solutions is through conversation. See if you can draw some dotted lines between trends based on what you're hearing. Show folks what you've found and see if they can help you figure it out.

I'm going to keep thinking about the pyramid and other models for measuring engagement, as I'm fully aware that there is no silver bullet. I'd love to hear what you're up to.

Update: Jan. 2
Well, it's a new year and I already have a lot more to say about this particular post and topic. Most of my new observations and thoughts come as a result of a great exchange I've had with Andy Shaindlin of Alumni Futures. I'll paraphrase our back and forth here:

Why can't you do this with a regular graph?
Good point. This comes from how I was thinking that the relationships grow -- which is outward. I think there is a zero point for engagedness -- the point at which people just don't care, or think about you, at all. From there, they can get more engaged along a specific line (say, they start volunteering for admission), but it's important that you have the ability to separate that single element of engagement out from the others (say, reunion attendance or annual giving). Again, each institution has to decide what is the most important part of engagement.

Still not convinced it needs to be a pyramid (actually, Andy points out it's a triangle).
Well, I also like the triangle because you can define how broad of a band at the top you want each element to have AND you can rank the elements of engagement, left to right. So, ideally, you're moving people to that upper right point of engagement. "What?" Okay, that was a little much for one thought. Lemme 'splain.

In reality, though, it should be a radar chart -- the "zero" point in the middle and progress toward each point going out from there. When you have enough data, you should (remember this is all hypothetical) be able to generate some examples of what types of charts do and don't produce results for particular people or groups. This allows you to do some basic modeling of your programs AND see what is worth pulling back on and what is worth investing in more significantly.

Navigation, emotion and giraffes

Web content guru Gerry McGovern is one of my favorite bloggers -- mostly because some of his posts at Giraffe Forum give me a nervous twitch. Don't get me wrong, I read McGovern pretty closely, but every once in a while he strikes a nerve.

In a recent post in which he argues that every website is NOT different, he writes, "Please don’t think about your website from the point of view of emotional branding. Don’t fall into the trap of designing for exceptions." He concludes with, "There are now solid rules for managing websites. The first one is: Design for what is common, not for what is exceptional."

In many ways, I agree, but I don't think it's that black and white. I think you need to focus on what's common and anticipate the exceptional. I think Jeff Bezos was the first to talk about accelerated serendipity as a design model on the web. Think about how Amazon is built. You go there knowing that you want McGovern's book Killer Web Content but learn about Avinash Kaushik's book on web analytics, Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, and Jakob Nielsen's book on eye tracking. Not a bad set of books that you might not have known that you should read and only found because they anticipated.

I think this extends to interactive content as well. In the university context, there are certainly times when prospective students are on a navigation mission. They want to know the majors, location, price, financial aid, weather, etc. and that's it. So, here McGovern's principles are dead on. But, we also know that they use the web heavily to get a sense of place. They want to see photos, videos, read some short stories, etc. Good .edu web design, in my opinion, allows for both. The site is quickly and easily navigated but also has plenty of opportunities to highlight the "experience."

This is where the accelerated serendipity happens. A student might be looking to see if there is a film studies program -- but once they're on the page, it's a missed opportunity not to show some student-produced films or stories about film on campus that they didn't necessarily know they'd find. This allows them to connect with the people -- the faculty, the current students, and others on campus -- who they will study with once they enroll. Here's where I really depart with McGovern's argument. A college website isn't strictly transactional -- the emotional draw is just as important as access to key content, but perhaps not at the same time in the college search process.

Measurement: Tracking the life of content

What good is a measurement tool that doesn't track the success of content at the article/content level? Probably not much. Think about it, how many times have you navigated to a website and then just sat there and stared at it? Right. Never. Because you're not there just to look at the pretty website, you're there to get a piece of information, to make a transaction, or to be entertained. Those are the things that have to be tracked.

Just looking at hits on the sitewide scale makes no sense -- it's too big a pot of stew to understand. The content, though, tells you a lot more about what they want, need, and are interested in -- and you can do it over time because content never dies (or at least it shouldn't), while the container (design) changes pretty rapidly.

The trick is getting this done. Google Analytics appears to be emerging as a tool of choice for many in higher ed. Makes sense -- it's free, it's easy to understand, and it works. Pretty much a winning combination every time. Some of the off-the-shelf tools are expensive, ridiculously hard to understand, and often bog down systems because of their massive log file demands. [Buzz] Not a good combination.

The problem with Analytics is that it tracks at the page level, not necessarily at the article/content level, which is pretty limiting. The bigger tools do handle such tracking, but refer to the whole expensive (which makes them not an option for many shops), hard to understand (which makes them not an option for shops without a programmer or stats guru), and big log file (which makes them not an option for shops without adequate/dedicated IT support) issue.

So what's a pro to do? This is actually another one of those volley posts, because I don't have an answer. Seriously, what are you doing?

Viral, awareness and alignment

Two days ago, I had no idea what (or where) William Woods University was. Today I know that it's a liberal arts institution in Fulton, Missouri. I also know that they have a marginally unhealthy obsession with ducks. Why do I know this? Because I stumbled upon their microsite GotDuck.com.

The site is creative, funny, and worth visiting more than once. It's also informative -- cast as a campus map with helpful "tour" tips that help visitors get to know the place. It's viral done right... I think.

Aside from the fact that I now know that WWU is a liberal arts u. in Mizzou, the site gave me some general "brand" impressions about the place. This is where I often have trouble with viral campaigns. It's great to get eyeballs -- and I think this one will -- but the experience has to be more than just plan cool, it has to be aligned with the institution's identity. So, if WWU is a place that pushes the borders, is bold and supportive of students' creative AND edgy ideas, has a great sense of humor, etc. than this site is spot on. Check out the site and you'll know what I mean. Ir those things aren't part of their core identity though, it misses the mark and the online and on-campus experiences won't be aligned. Not a good thing.

Their institutional site is pretty straightforward and doesn't reflect the edginess of the microsite. That's fine, but it does make me wonder a bit about alignment between the Ducks site and the institutional mojo.

All in all, I think they've done something bold and fun here and a bit outside the normal "safe" box for higher ed. Go ducks.

Integrating "big social" into an alumni site

This is a quick follow up post...

A while back, in a post about alumni and social networking, there was some discussion on this blog about iModules plans to pull Facebook into its alumni application. A post from a few weeks ago on the iModules blog (good for them for blogging, by the way), there was a post called "The Facebook Challenge," in which blogging VP Mike McCamon discusses their intended approach to integration with social networking sites such as Facebook. He writes,

"later this year we plan to make it easier for our users to include their Facebook badge inside their profile page of our community software.  We also plan in that same timeframe to integrate 'views' into many other social networking sites like flickr, YouTube and others.  The idea is to offer a variety of simple ways for our communities to link to content in those social networks without risking data integrity in our clients' systems."

So, that question is answered. It will be interesting to see how it works. Sounds like they're not going so far as to fully integrate any social apps into their product, but they will provide links. I wonder if it works on the flipside -- will they create Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and other apps that allow alumni to post from their social accounts into their alumni accounts? Could be useful.

The speed of information

I've been thinking a lot about various media and how the speed of new media is forcing good conversations about what is appropriate in print and on the web, based on currency. It's gotten to the point that "breaking news" and "newspaper" are a laughable pair.

Shel Israel's Global Neighbourhoods is a great blog and a recent post of his adds "visionary" and "book" to the oil and water list. All the buzz about Twitter and the California wildfires has actually added the web to the list of media that are slower than the speed of information.

It seems that there has to be a stratification of the kinds of information -- e.g. crisis-related, breaking news, infotainment, current issues, perspective pieces, roundtables, etc. -- that aligns with various media -- e.g. instant (IM/SMS), blogs, RSS, websites, newspapers, magazines, etc. From there, you can slot in pieces of information -- or pieces of pieces of information.

I would say that it's also important to keep in mind the people who need to receive the messages and how they use new media, but I'm not as adamant about that today as I was in an earlier post, where I mentioned that it's important to keep in mind that adoption rates for many new media tools are still low, particularly in some older demographics (and by "older" I mean beyond their early 20s). I kind of take that back though. Information -- particularly in times of crisis -- isn't compartmentalized, it's viral. If I see that there is a fire on my street and IM my neighbor, she isn't going to take in the information and then go about her business. She'll use really old media -- the phone, her mouth -- to tell others and the information spreads from there.

It's all about looking at the whole picture.

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.