10 Ways Universities are Using Social Media to Engage Alumni

How to Engage Alumni Using Social Media
Alumni Development Board, Crummer Graduate School of Business

Universities across the country are beginning to use social media tools to engage alumni and build a net-
work of graduates with a shared affinity for the institution. Of course, helping former students stay con-
nected is just one reason universities are turning to social media; fundraising is another, and there are many
more.

In an alumni communication study, college & graduate school alumni were asked how they preferred to
be communicated with. 83% of alumni responded that they would prefer to be contacted about general
alumni matters via interactive methods such as email, social networks, and alumni web sites & blogs. Below
is a detailed look at how higher education is harnessing the power of social media to engage alumni.

I. Helping Alumni Find Jobs
Though a lot of schools offer their own database of jobs online, many universities are finding LinkedIn to be
an effective tool to provide alumni with career resources. And in fact, using LinkedIn means the process is
often very hands-off for the schools. In many cases universities create the group and allow the networking
magic to take place, with alumni sharing job opportunities by posting information to the group and creat-
ing subgroups that are focused to specific career or regional alumni chapters.

Keidra Chaney, an emerging media specialist at DePaul University (@depaulalumni), said LinkedIn is by far
the school’s biggest success with 5,500 members currently in their alumni network on the site, and about
100 new members joining weekly. Chaney said the community has active job postings for alumni on the
hunt for work, and that most jobs are posted by other alumni. The most recent issue of the school’s alumni
magazine actually focused on how alumni are using social media.

Example 1.1 DePaul University Alumni Association LinkedIn Group

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Michigan State University uses both LinkedIn (LinkedIn) and Twitter to share job leads with alumni, said Dave
Isbell, alumni career services coordinator at the school. Isbell said recruiters often contact him with quick
advice or job information that he shares with his followers. The school’s Career Resources Network also uses
YouTube (YouTube) to give students and recently graduated alumni advice on their job search. Schools like
Emory University (@EmoryAlumni), meanwhile, host what they call a “Coach Chat,” where alumni can
phone in and share ideas, tools and career resources. Alumni can also e-mail in questions and those that
miss out on a chat can download it as a podcast.

II. Collaboration and Connecting With Students

Universities are using social media to smooth the transition from being a student to becoming an alumni by
helping the two groups connect and collaborate with each other.

Stanford University law school created its own Facebook (Facebook)-like social network for alumni and stu-
dents that includes legal wikis that they can collaborate on for specific practices, said Lisa Farris, associate
director of web communications and identity at the Stanford law school. The wikis include overviews of dif-
ferent practices, key skill sets and more information that students and alums can share together. Though
there is a lot of alumni-to-alumni conversation that takes place on the network, the collaboration between
students and alumni is key in positioning the students for their
careers, Farris said.

M.I.T. (@MIT_alumni) has had similar results with its LinkedIn
alumni group, which it allows students to join before they
graduate so that they can network with alumni, said Chris-
tine Tempesta, director of strategic initiatives at M.I.T.

Caltech (@caltechalumni) offers its students similar access
to its LinkedIn group. Andrew Shaindlin, who is executive
director at the Caltech Alumni Association and also writes
a blog on trends in alumni relations, said allowing students
and alumni to connect blurs the transition from student to
alumni, which makes the transition more fluid.

Furthermore, using social media tools to engage students
can create a lasting relationship between student and
school into their alumni years, said Dave Baker, web com-
munications director at Oregon State University (@pow-
eredbyorange), which built an entire site that is intercon-
nected with social media called “Powered By Orange.”

Example 2.1 Using Google Maps to Track Alumni
III.Fundraising: From E-mails to Tweets

Though most universities are using social media to connect alumni, getting a tweet from your alma mater’s
alumni association asking for a gift to the school may not be far off.

“It’s a hot topic right now,” said Shaindlin. “If we are using social media to get our messages out, we have
to figure out how to incorporate a need for fundraising and support and build that into the stream of infor-
mation.” Instead of sending out generic mass e-mails, the challenge is moving to personal, one-to-one
forms of communication to make it more effective. Shaindlin thinks that social media can achieve that, but
alumni who are the recipients of the message have to be ready to accept it through such a new medium.


Some schools are experimenting in this area. Brown University used a Facebook Page to engage its alumni
as part of its annual fund drive. The school posted to the wall of the Page encouraging alumni to make a
gift to the Brown Annual Fund, announcing dollar-for-dollar matches and the end results of the drive.

Example 3.1 Brown University Alumni Association Facebook Page

Emory University started the Blue Pig campaign to encourage its undergraduate students to give to the
school by using a Facebook profile, a Twitter account (@thebluepig) and other media. The hope is that
when the students graduate, the practice of giving back to the school will continue, said Cassie Young,
program coordinator for alumni programs. The campaign seems to have been very successful too, resulting
in a 157% growth in number of gifts from undergrads, according to Michael Stoner, who owns the mStoner
communications firm, which specializes in web development for higher education institutions.

Stoner said the campaign is a good example of how to integrate various technologies and demonstrates
the increasing importance of social media in fundraising. Stoner also noted, however, that there is not
much focused work among universities using social media to fundraise. “A lot of people [are] saying this
could be big for us, but not knowing how to take advantage of it,” he said.

Some universities are still taking steps toward integrating social media into their fundraising practices. Col-
gate University (@colgatealumni) in New York, for example, integrated Facebook Connect into its donation
process, allowing donors to post that they made a gift to the school in their Facebook status. Because of
the virality of Facebook and the visibility of status updates, the idea is that friends of the donor, who may be
alumni of the school as well, would see news of the donation in their news feed and be encouraged or re-
minded to donate as well, explains Charlie Melichar, vice president for public relations and communica-
tions at the school.


Example 3.2 Colgate University Alumni Events Link-Up to Facebook

IV.Training Alumni To Use Social Media

Of course, for many alumni social media is still brand new. To help its alumni learn how to use social media
tools, MSU’s Alumni Career Services office gives tutorials and presentations about how to use social media
for a plethora of purposes. Isbell from MSU said the office has done some 25 presentations, engaging 25,000
people – usually piggybacking at events for alumni groups.

V.Providing Tools To Spread Information

The University of California at Irvine (@UCIFuture) was looking for a way to share information with its alumni
and at the same time give themselves more visibility. The result they came up with is a publically available
widget that pulls content from the school’s website and is part of a broader campaign to raise $1 billion.
Mark Aydelotte, assistant vice chancellor of marketing, said there have been more than 1,000 installs of the
widget since March, and that it gives the school much more exposure by spreading to other places on the
web.

Aydelotte said he has seen donors embed the widget to their sites and Facebook profiles because it fea-
tures a story about their large donation to the school.

VI. Alumni-Generated Content
Another way schools are engaging alumni is by allowing them to produce their own content, which in-
cludes things like the wikis at Stanford and photo sharing with the alumni network at other schools.

The University of Texas at Austin built its own photo sharing site that allows alumni to share photos of them-
selves showing the school’s well-known “hook ‘em, horns” hand gesture, along with a brief bio.

“It’s sort of a Flickr for alumni, but hosted on our website,” said Nyleva Corley, web and social media man-
ager at the school. The idea, she said, is to allow people to get reconnected to the school and their fellow
classmates by sharing where they are now and what they are doing.

Oregon State University uses Flickr (Flickr) and encourages alumni to post photos of a cutout of Benny, the
school’s mascot, taken in various locales. Colgate University uploads photos to its Flickr account and lets
people interact with them, including this set from an alumni reunion. Melichar from Colgate said the con-
tent is what is important, not the container. “If we post our photos to Flickr, they have their own social life,”
he said. “People can interact with them and one another.”


VII.Promoting Alumni Networks

Though a lot of the networks are viral and many universities do very little to promote their networks, some
do look at social media itself as a promotional tool. Some schools have multiple alumni groups on the same
social site because in addition to officially sanctioned channels, there are others that were started by
alumni themselves. So alumni associations try to promote their official network (Facebook page, Twitter ac-
count, LinkedIn group) as the central hub for alumni to connect.

Andrew Gossen, senior associate director for class affairs and social media at Princeton University’s Alumni
Association, said that if schools don’t take advantage and aren’t quick to provide tools for alums to con-
nect to one another, they will do it themselves. “And if that happens, we become irrelevant and the tools
replace a lot of the functions of our (alumni) offices,” Gossen said. There are about 45 alumni Princeton
groups on LinkedIn, according to Gossen, and the aim is going to be to consolidate them into one group,
working with those who started the others.

Most sites promote the social media groups on their alumni websites – because often that is the landing
point for many alumni. M.I.T. and other schools have experimented with using targeted Facebook ads to try
to attract alumni to their social networks. Christina Tempesta, director of strategic initiatives, said the ex-
periment wasn’t too successful – at least not in the amount of click-throughs the ads got.

Example 7.1 University of Texas @ Austin Custom Photo Sharing Site

VIII.Mobile Reunions

As a way to save on printing costs and be environmentally friendly, Princeton University built a mobile web-
site for its alumni reunion in late May to supplement the printed program. At the height of the reunion, the
school had about 21,000 people on campus, said Gossen, who works with the school’s alumni association.
The mobile site included the same information offered in the printed version and in many cases the mobile
application was much more usable, Gossen said.


For example, instead of just having the shuttle schedule times printed out, the mobile application allowed
users to type in their destination and get much more specific information about which shuttle to take and
when and where it was arriving. The goal is to continue to expand the mobile app and eventually replace
the printed program, which is about 52 pages in length. The application got 1,000 unique visits and 1,600
total visits.

IX.Connecting The Dots: Google Maps

Class reunions are all about reconnecting to old
classmates and the school. To achieve that goal,
Nazareth College created a website for its 2009 re-
union that used some neat social media tools. The
college sent “Golden Flyer” mascots to alumni who
were in the reunion class and encouraged them to
forward the birds to other alumni attending the reun-
ion. Alumni who received a flyer could check it in on
a Google (Google) map on the website. They could
also take a photo of it and post it onto the Google
map and track which alumni had the bird and look
at the locations of where it had traveled.

Oregon State University uses Google Maps (Google
Maps) on its Powered By Orange site, as well. The site
includes a map at the center of the page and lets Example 10.1 Nazareth University 2009 Reunion Social Site
alums post their current location and career along
with their graduation year and degree. Baker from OSU
said that the site hasn’t been promoted and isn’t set for its official launch until the end of September and
already has been getting good traffic. The map already has a good number of orange dots on it.

Conclusion

In the past, the only way that alumni could access their network was to play by whatever rules the college/
university made up to use its system. Now, the power is shifting to online communities, where people can
become involved with other alumni, without any involvement from the parent institution. It’s a powerful
paradigm shift, and alumni relations professionals need to be prepared for it to happen—and probably
sooner rather than later.

Thank you for taking the time to review this document, and please do not hesitate to contact us if you
have any questions. We look forward to working hearing from you!


10 Ways Universities are Using Social Media to Engage Alumni

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