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
Sarah, thanks for mentioning my blog posting and for providing the link. And congratulations to you and your colleagues for stopping to ask a few questions about how best to serve your audience. Yes, you can promote the Leeds brand by providing something "exclusive," but I agree with your assessment that you will be more effective and valued in the long run by providing alumni with something they can access more easily. Balancing exclusiveness against accessibility is an increasingly common issue in our profession, and we should serve the alums' needs first - even at a small and temporary cost to our brand. We'll see the dividends in the long run when people realize they can activate their network and use it for their own good.
Thank you Andy! I look forward to seeing the response and the feedback we get from our alumni in regards to this shift towards using LinkedIn rather than our alumni networking site to post jobs. I appreciate your comments!