Leeds 2.0

Browsing Google Reader at the blogs that I follow, I noticed a new post from Andy Shaindlin's Alumni Futures blog titled: 2010 Alumni Relations Issues for the Year Ahead.  As alumni relations is what I do here for the Leeds School of Business, I figured it would be beneficial to see what Mr. Shaindlin had to say. His main points asked how alumni relations professionals can continue to be relevant and useful and meaningful to our alumni in the face of changing times and advanced technology. With the proliferation of social media and peoples' ability to organize into groups through online tools - do they still need and want us to do that for them? With the extensive reach of Google, Facebook and the white pages online, do alumni still need our help finding and connecting with other alumni?

Andy suggests the answers are yes, and I tend to agree. In this day and age, our alumni EXPECT that we have a presence in these new online spaces and they WANT to be a part of the School's official fan page, group, etc. on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.

And we are happy to have them.

But this major shift in how we communicate with our alumni was not obvious or immediate. Many universities and schools had and still have online communities exclusively for their alumni (including CU's Forever Buffs Network and Leeds' LeedsLink). However, as the space of social media has developed, we've come to learn that exclusivity is not always where it's at. For instance, we have been posting job openings to LeedsLink thinking our alumni would find this as an exclusive benefit and visit the site in order to see what jobs were listed. However, my director and I met yesterday with our Career Connections staff to discuss using LinkedIn instead of LeedsLink to post jobs. The group consensus was to find alumni where they already are and to make our LinkedIn group more relevant and dynamic by giving people what they want - opportunities for jobs. Instead of assuming alumni would want to take the extra step to look for jobs on LeedLink, we recognize that we should provide value to them in the space that they already inhabit, LinkedIn.

As this is a brand new change to how we operate, we don't yet know how it'll go, however, I'm optimistic that it will be well received. Exclusivity is sacrificed as alumni could easily forward and share the job posting with whomever they please in their various networks, however, that is the way the world works these days and who are we, alumni relations staff, to stop them!

For a complete list of how you can connect to the Leeds School using social media, including Linkedin, please visit: www.leeds.colorado.edu/socialnetworking

 

I am absolutely thrilled to announce that the Leeds School is a sponsor of Ignite Boulder 8 (#Igneight Boulder, if you will) on February 10 at the Boulder Theater. You can learn more by visiting the web site for Ignite Boulder. If you haven't been, you may be asking "What the heck is Ignite Boulder?"

I love this question.

Why? I get excited. Words fail me. I blather on like a kid hyped up on candy and the promise of a new puppy. It's one of those experiences people annoy you with by saying "You *just* have to be there to know what it's like." Ignite Boulder describes itself as "a night of presentations with a twist." More on that here. If you ask me, it's a twist like a rollercoaster of ROTFLMAOs brought to you by pithy presenters armed with a microphone, an unrelenting Power Point slideshow, and hopefully enough brass to deliver cheeky yet educational information on topics that makes you go "huh!" to the usually sold-out, 750-seat auditorium. Past topics included "Food Porn: Behind the Lens" by photographer Jen Yu, "How to Jump Off a Cliff" by climber Steph Davis and "Reward and Risk" by extreme adventure videographer Michael Brown. You can catch all the past presentations here. I also love that Ignite Boulder relies solely on word of mouth and social media avenues to sell out the Boulder Theater, in addition to pre- and post- events. Impressive, no? 

The Leeds School wanted to get involved this time around because it seemed like we already were well-represented at past Ignite Boulder events: One of our faculty, Pete McGraw, presented on the tongue-in-cheek topic  "From Wrong to Funny," (research on humor) and we saw in the seats a few familiar faces of faculty, staff, alumni (past presenter and predictor of the pow Joel Gratz, for example) and students hobnobbing with the best and brightest minds of Boulder.  

I've only attended two Ignite Boulder events so far (they occur every two months) and despite being a rather behind-the-scenes kind of gal, I always leave Ignite Boulder dreaming about possible topics that lil' ole me could present because I do indeed catch the spark that is Ignite Boulder. I feel like the crowd wants you to succeed, or least they support you as you flounder gloriously in your speech or the timing of unforgiving slides. I have a theory that presenting at Ignite Boulder is kind of like karaoke: you just gotta find your song/topic and then rock the hell out of it. Which we plan to do as a sponsor of what is becoming a must-attend event in the Boulder community. Got a great idea of how we can do that? Let us know! And stay tuned for more about our sponsorship of #Igneight Boulder ...  

...... in the meantime, buy your tickets here (only $10, yo) and vote for the presenters you'd like to see here.   

Our graphic designer Kristen Weber (who is amazing by the way), just dropped by today to drop off the cutest EOY gift for the office. That got me reflecting on all of the many people and businesses who have positively and generously helped our office and the Leeds School itself over the last year.

Certainly Kristin through her company SugarDesign (@Sugardesigninc on Twitter) has helped shape the look an feel of most all of the Leeds School's publications over the last several years. So, Kudos Kristin. I'd like to give a shout out to many of the others as well so here they are in no particular order:

• Kathryn Marshall, Mitchell Ashley, Elaine Schoch and Patrick Ward at (104West.com) for their assistance in helping us craft a Socal Media strategy as well as helping educate our faculty and staff about SM.
• Amber Hickory, MBA '05 and Pete Burridge and all of the folks at Greenhouse Partners for their expertise, creativity and surely patience in working on new branding and messaging for the school.
• Michael Warden, Associate Vice Chancellor at CU-Boulder for providing cover through this branding process.
• Patrick Walker at Goodbye Blue Monday for his excellent service with all of our special promotions over the year.
• The amazing Carol Ross who helped on two fronts with our alumni and current students through the Naturally Networking teleseminars and the our team through her coaching work a Carol Ross and Associates.
• Marley Hodgson, MBA '03 and founder of Mad Greens that catered our recent Tweetup.
• Gary Bennett at D & K Printing and Kim Warner of CU Communications for guiding our efforts and press checks with our biannual 36+ pager 4 color Portfolio magazine.
• Jeremy Tyson at NSO Press who also does amazing print work on many of our other publications.
• Leeds Alums Nora and Patrick and crew at Front Range Catering for their professionalism and flexibilty when our Homecoming event for 300+ suddenly had to move inside when we were visited by the proverbial 6-8 inches of "clear to partly cloudy" snow.
• Brady Foster and crew at Hip Gifts for saving our alumni awards and thus the alumni awards ceremony from less the perfect recognition items.
• Award-winning photogs Glenn Asakawa and Casey Cass and Andi Farber and Patrick from our photo department.
• Our media liasons, Bronson Hilliard, Greg Swenson, Peter Caughey and Malinda Miller-Huey.    
• Mark Detterick and Bryn Samuelson, our erstwhile budget people (some say bean counters, but these folks are non-trad accountants---hey, they love The Office).
• Christy Orris and Visda Carson for hanging in there with us as we crunched out a strategic plan.
• Finally, the Leeds Alumni Relations and Communications team, Dean Pajevic, Sarah Martens, Melanie Sidwell, and current and former students Tyler McAnelly, Molly Rettig and Gabrielle Makray who manage to get an incredible amount done and done well in '09.

Of course the problem with a list is that I might leave someone out here who really deserves our thanks. If I have done that, I am sorry. Again, my/our most sincere thanks to these folks for all of their support. Also, thanks to the many alumni, donors, friends, business people and businesses who have suppored the school in so many ways this past year. Have a great 2010 everyone!   

 

Last night I attended the Leeds School's December Recognition Ceremony in the beautiful Macky Auditorium on CU-Boulder's campus. I always find myself enjoying graduation ceremonies more than I expect to. Even though I'm not graduating, it's still a great feeling to be in a room filled with optimistic young adults, and overly-proud parents (a few with airhorns - seriously), and to hear inspirational speeches from those who taught these individuals, and others that have been successful in their lives. It's the ultimate 'feel-good' event.

However, as an alumni relations and communications staff member, I can't help but hope that these graduates' whole experience at Leeds was a 'feel-good' event. It's the students that loved their time at Leeds that will be more likely to keep in touch after graduation and let us know that they moved out-of-state or switched jobs. It's the students that participated in clubs and received scholarships that will care about the student experience of future Leeds students. And it's the individuals that got to know their professors or received assistance from our undergraduate advising or career offices that are most likely to come back and speak in classrooms or help future Leeds graduates find jobs.

There are some in the audience last night that may never return to campus nor be heard from again. However, on the other end of the spectrum are those that will remember Leeds and the education and the experience they had here. We'll see them in the future celebrating Homecoming, reviewing undergraduate resumes, serving as mentors and making donations to the school.

And of course there is everybody in between. 

The good news is, nowadays, with social media and instantaneous communication, we have a much better opportunity to stay in touch with the "everybody in between". And perhaps, just maybe, more of these in-betweens will appreciate the continued Leeds connection and find themselves being active and engaged alumni afterall. Well, that is our hope - and our job!

Like most of you, we track our social media, website, email, and PR metrics. And like many of you, all metrics are going up in terms of new users, unique users, robust views, etc. Our YouTube channel has been a standout in the last six months as we've seen a monthly doubling of viewers. It won't be that way forever, but it is great to see so much interest!

But a lot of people stop with the numbers. For example, we all see Twitter-ers with 10, 20, 50,000 thousand followers. That's great. But how many are really engaging their followers? Creating the level of connection with them that will turn them from a number on a website into an active participant in their story? I'd bet not too many. A lot of followers are just taking a quick look at their offerings, like scanning a menu, but not sitting down for the meal.

That's where we will continue to differentiate ourselves. We've got "more eyeballs" now, more menu viewing, but we want our constituents to sit down at the table with us and join us in a meal. And that meal is all the ways students, alumni, businesses, and our friends can engage with the school. For example, people engage by:

• Posting photos on our Facebook page.
• Updating their contact info on LeedsLink.com, our alumni networking site.
• Retweeting useful information on Twitter.
• Sending us their success stories via Class Notes.
• Attending events like Homecoming, or Networking Naturally, or alumni events in Denver, Chicago, San Francisco, or New York.
• Attending financial knowledge events like the Business Economic Outlook Forum, insight into the upcoming year of the Colorado economy.
• Sharing their knowledge via the Executive Insights events.
• Mentoring our students.
• Hiring our students.
• Growing their skills through our Executive Education classes.
• Giving via scholarships and other methods to help our students succeed.
• And more. Lots more.
  

This list is ordered a bit from easiest to more challenging, but like a menu, we offer everything from appetizers to four course meals. It's our job in communicators to make sure that we help all our wonderful constituents sit down at the table and enjoy all Leeds has to offer.

Contact us to learn more! 

While we have been using video here at the school for years, only recently did we purchase an inexpensive Flip camera. For those of you not familiar with the Flip, it is a small, tiny, hand-held, fully HD-quality video camera. There is no real zoom and really only one button: On and off. But the ability to grab HD-quality video anytime and anywhere is pretty incredible, and very useful.

For example, our Director takes her Flip with her to alumni events for impromptu interviews. These are short clips with our alumni sharing a story about their time at the school, or their excitement at being at the event. Not only do we get fun, engaging quotes from real people, but our alumni are excited to see us using the newest technology. They ask about the camera, try it out, and love that they will shortly be online, viewable by other alums.

In addition to the Flip, we set up traditional video interviews with faculty and researchers here at the school. These are pre-planned and organized recordings and are the more structured way to create video. This process is another great tool for us because these clips tell a deeper and more involved story. They share a different kind of knowledge and offer another kind of engagement. 

But with the Flip we can grab video on the fly, as we think of it. Suddenly you are on video safari, everyday, 24/7. The chase is on, and the challenge is: Can you capture it? Are you willing to accept on-the-fly editorializing? Reality TV? Sometimes it's great and sometimes not, but with a little editing, these live action snippets give a very real and immediate face our alumni outreach and larger goal of sharing the great stories of the Leeds school.

So the Leeds Communications team has done a pretty good job of educating and engaging our internal faculty and staff about Social Media and its possible relevance to their personal and professional lives. At least I think we have.We still get puzzled looks and raised eyebrows from some of our constituencies who don't see the ROI. But then many of them are not "in the trenches" as those of us trying to build communications, media and PR strategies in a rapidly changing communications landscape with, in our case, very limited resources.

Interestingly, the more we pursue a SM strategy, the more feedback and connections we are getting from others who are active in SM or just interested our efforts. It's been great too! One of my campus communications colleagues shared a blog post of another higher ed professional who is leveraging these new tools to benefit her faculty. Rather than relying on the traditional mainstream media model of pitching faculty stars for possible coverage, she is using SM to do it herself. It was gratifying to see her rational as we are pursuing similar strategies for our faculty and programs as well. To pave the way, we held several SM presentations including "What is SM?" "SM Basics" and "Social Media and Pedagogy" ( I had to throw the "pedagogy" word in--it's big in academia) Actually, we didn't host that one, a school colleague did, but it was definitely in conjunction with our efforts. We've gotten positive feedback and folks seem grateful to have a better understanding of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. And just in recent months we have been getting great response to our online efforts in these areas. Not bad for "free"?

We decided to hold two more contests via social media last month. The prize was two pairs of tickets to the homecoming game Oct. 31, CU-Mizzou. Who doesn't like free stuff? Having used Facebook in September to give away free tickets to the Rocky Mountain Showdown, our first forray into social media giveaways, we wanted to use both Twitter and Facebook this time.  

We brainstormed some ideas and we decided:

- Twitter: Ask people to tweet why they should win with the hashtag #LeedsCU. A winner would be chosen at random at the deadline. The more creative the reason, the better but really this time winning was purely left to chance. And who can argue with that?

- Facebook: This was more difficult this time to decide. We had a variety of ideas(best Halloween costume, best kid photo- since our homecoming event was family friendly this year, Best kid Halloween photo), but I kind of now wonder if our first experience with a Facebook contest left us a little wary to try something with a similar structure. In the end we opted to steal, er I mean be INSPIRED by a contest I saw my alma mater doing for its Facebook page. (I know I know, don't even ask me who I am rooting for on Nov. 27)

The Twitter contest was a huge hit, in my opinion. I posted it both on the school Twitter account and my personal account. It was retweeted on both sides. A total of eight people participated. Their reasons were great. I made sure to acknowledge when someone used the hashtag and gave their reason why they should win. I also used each tweet as a opportunity to explain the contest: the prize, the deadline, the hashtag, how the winner would be randomly chosen. I announced the randomly chosen winner on Twitter and arranged for his tickets pick-up via Twitter, told the other seven they won a free Tweet Me! Poke Me! Leeds shirt just for playing (free stuff for you! free advertising of our social media spots for us! win-win!) and got their mailing addresses via direct messages (DMs) on Twitter.  

The Facebook contest, though, struggled. One person entered at the very last minute. Looking back now, I think perhaps the task required more time than we allowed (a week, including a weekend), and we also didn't provide pumpkin carving designs like my alma mater. Also we had an early critic of the prize noting on our Facebook Page that free tickets to see a lackluster football team might not garner much contest competition. However, Buff pride runs deep, as the Twitter contest proved. I think this taught us that the prize of any contest needs to be worth the effort of participating. If the Buffs were a hot ticket item this year, then I would guess we would have had more Buff-o-lanterns. But a creative tweet about Buff prize was just the right amount of effort put forth, at least for eight CU fans, for a chance to win. Hey man, free = free.  

p.s. Here are the Twitter replies to "Why Should You Win Free tix to See CU-Mizzou on Oct. 31?" I loved how this contest engaged our Twitter followers!

@mandymarks #LeedsCU I deserve to win because I rep the #cubuffs in San Fran and I am flying back to support my team

@CJ_Powell I deserve to win because I never win anything. Come on, #LeedsCU, help a Buff Alum out!!! #LeedsCU

@aviraj I should go cos I wanna see+hear 53,749 screaming Buffs. PLUS I've never been to a football game. Ever. Mercy tix? #LeedsCU

And our winner, who tweeted twice! (FYI only one tweet per person was submitted into the drawing)..... @BupsJones And...we have not seen the Buffs win, in person, in over 5 years (6 different games). #LeedsCU AND Tweet No.2: I should win because I am flying in from Chicago with my best friend, a fellow Leeds '02 Alum, for his birthday! #LeedsCU

@hydrogenated #leedsCU I should get tix because I have H1N1 today and I'm going to miss all sorts of fun stuff this weekend.

@laurenkl Once from Missouri, my allegiance is now to the Buffs, would love to see the showdown! #LeedsCU

@LeslieNorgren Winning tickets for the CU-Mizzou game would awesome! I should win because I bleed black & gold. #LeedsCU

@RyanonBoulder #LeedsCU- I should win the tickets because it would be a chance for my 6 mo old son to see his dad's favorite team for 1st time - Go Buffs!! 

 

Homecoming is one of the most cherished and well-attended university traditions at college campuses across the country. This year our Homecoming celebration was scheduled for Saturday, October 31 on a big beautiful quad just west of our building. The tent was to be set up on Wednesday, October 28 for some other school events that week with Homecoming being the grand finale before the football game on Saturday.

Well, the Colorado weather gods had another thing planned altogether. On the Wednesday the tent was to go up it snowed, oh I don't know, over 18 inches! What!?! See photo proof below. It was so bad that they closed the campus and sent us home at 2:00 p.m.

We returned to work Thursday (though it was still actively snowing) to be informed by CU's groundskeeper that due to the snow on the ground and the inherent wetness should it miraculously melt in the next 36 hours, all Homecoming events scheduled for grassy areas on campus would be cancelled.

That would include our event. Ugh. Though many other campus entities had no choice but to cancel their events completely, we are blessed with a beautiful new building that has the perfect space for large receptions and gatherings. After confirming the availability and feasibility with our building manager - we were good to go.

Homecoming shall go on - but we've got to let people know about it!  As many other outdoor CU Homecoming activities had been cancelled, we had to spread the word that 1. Our event was still taking place and 2. That we had moved indoors. And here's how we did it:

1. We updated the home page of the Leeds School of Business website
2. We updated the Homecoming page on the Leeds School website
3. We sent one email to our e-newsletter distribution list and asked for help spreading the  word (it's worthy to note that we usually only send one email a month but that we made a special exception in this situation)
4. We used our Facebook fan page to post status messages about the change for multiple days leading up to the event
5. We used our Twitter account to announce the change and asked people to retweet for multiple days leading up to the event
6. We emailed our internal faculty and staff and asked them to share the news with their friends and colleagues that normally attend the event

Yay for technology! The event was a true success. We probably didn't have the sheer numbers we would have had being outdoors on a beautiful game day, however, we had 200-250 people come out to enjoy the food and activities (face painting!) before the football game.  Photos and video from the event can be seen here!

The team was chatting about the fact that Leeds, founded in 1906, is one of the oldest business schools in the country. That's over 100 years old, which in this digital age might as well be a million. I'm sure back then the only tweets heard were birds up in the trees, and poking your neighbor, unlike today's activity on Facebook, might get you a swift kick in the shin. But "back then" people still communicated, and while slower and more localized, it had many of the same functions/purposes as our technology today. I can imagine that:

• They made announcements at large public meetings or on street corners (like blogging and twitter in that you send it out to whomever to read/hear, and other people "re-tweeted" in the same way)
• They had conversations one on one (email)
• They stood on the street with sandwich board signs around their necks (blast email)
• And, they always looked for new ways to do all these things which leads us to today and all the things we do.

My point? With all the wonderful innovation, the twittery, bloggery, shiny technology, don't lose sight of the basic human and institutional needs: Tell compelling stories, engage your constituents and make them nod in agreement, comment on a blog post, write an email, or call the school to get more involved.

What do you think, was communication really so different today than it was 100 years ago?