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Evolving technologies keep alumni communicators on a reactive whirl. A new idea to test, a new format to try — all with the purpose of keeping the alumni information “churn” going. But what’s the communications strategy that will both create value for alumni and yield ROI for the institution’s overall goals for increased support of various forms? Alumni as a whole and in discreet groups are powerful networks that can be harnessed for many purposes. They want to be engaged with each other and the institution, but often alumni are not asked nor given the tools to harness their support in targeted ways. Good models for the potential of alumni networks can be found in the Obama presidential campaign and the Tea Party movement, which have applied a strategic direction, smart use of technology and an array of communications tools to advance their objectives.

In our experience, alumni communications offices miss the big picture because they are typically understaffed, underfunded and stretched thin with tactical responsibilities for promoting events and pushing out information. Often they are middle managers who have the will but neither the budgets, the time or the strategic experience to offer the 35,000-foot view. 

However, just as strategic development communications became more central to fundraising campaigns a decade ago, alumni communicators are rising to senior positions as part of advancement leadership teams in forward-looking institutions today. This takes both vision and investment from senior leadership.

In our recent alumni association strategic planning project with The Napa Group, we defined alumni communications best practices and provided a roadmap for strategic investment. We’ll talk about this at the CASE Summit for Advancement Leaders on July 18 in New York City. Check out our presentation, Reenvisioning Alumni Associations for the 21st Century.

One popular assumption that needs to be challenged early is that the rise of social media makes effective communication “free” of cost. While new technologies have provided more online options and relieved print budgets, it’s people who are going to get the job done. And their time isn’t free. In fact, they are busier than ever because they have more tools at their disposal and are expected to use them all appropriately — sending emails to chapters, updating websites, managing social media, creating print materials and advancing institutional goals.

These top trends in ”best practice” alumni communications provide the foundation for the “case for support” for enhanced investment:

• Strategic planning: Alumni associations recognize that they must prove their relevance in the face of all other groups competing for their constituents. The savvy associations are reshaping themselves to deliver market-focused programs through strategic planning.  Increasingly associations, like UCLA Alumni, are rebranding themselves as the lifelong link between alumni and the university, shifting perceptions that position the association as a major contributor to the institution’s overall success.  
• Market research: Alumni associations have used various forms of market research to (a) identify their key value to their alumni and (b) reinforce that value consistently throughout all forms of communications – including print, online, social media, personal visits and events.                               
• Website portal: As lifetime links between alumni and the university, associations are converting their websites to information services to inform and engage alumni in the university’s life, not just the association’s. Coordinated with institutional websites, alumni websites connect alumni to the university’s story while fostering relationships among alumni.                                       
• Strategic communications: Alumni communications professionals are rising to strategic leadership in overall advancement operations, just like their development communications colleagues began to do a decade ago. They are advising their institutional colleagues and coordinating efforts to reach and engage alumni in targeted ways.                                 
• Communications leadership: Such higher-level leadership roles also require that alumni communicators measure the effectiveness of traditional and emerging communications, including the realignment of print, electronic, online and social media for strategic outcomes.                              
• Social media networks: The rapid rise of new technologies, such as social media and mobile communications, are powering alumni networks. Alumni communicators must understand how to apply these tools as part of the overall marketing mix.

A communications audit is an excellent first step to launch this strategic approach because it delivers unvarnished facts, needs and opportunities from staff and alumni audiences – and creates a roadmap for the future.

What are the key elements of your alumni communications “case for support?”

It’s time to end recession thinking with the official close of winter — and spring forward with marketing for the economic recovery. Several of my nonprofit, small business and independent consultant clients have spent the last weeks of winter taking the 3 critical steps to rebound their activity in activity in 2010:

• Focus
• Focus
• Focus

Communications activities suffered badly in the recession, although communicating value was never more important. Yet stretched budgets, reduced revenues and decreased fundraising income often left little choice. Survival thinking took a toll on creativity and caused everyone to think small, reminding me of the “lizard brain” paralysis described in Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin.

Last year found many small organizations getting stuck in the churn. Getting unstuck can take two paths, both driven by “focus.” One is to understand your value proposition and do it better than your peers and competitors. The other is to carefully differentiate between a brand problem and a business problem. Once that’s resolved, reviewing and perhaps repositioning your marketing is the logical next step.

The latest research confirms that customers are tired of hearing about the recession, paving the way for tapping into consumer optimism. Stepping back to take a good look about how you are positioning your business is a timely exercise that can put you on the leading edge as the recovery heats up. It’s the core of a communications audit.

Is your message buried in your materials? Have you truly leveraged your business concept in your marketing? Are you trying to pursue too many audiences and none of them with full attention? Have you listened to your customers recently, and what are they saying? Do the people in your organization have the tools to be your messengers and ambassadors, whether it’s you, your small staff, your volunteers?

I’ve developed this “Spring Forward Bootcamp” as a cost-effective half-day program to refocus and rebound marketing communications for community nonprofits, small businesses and independent consultants to refresh your marketing with impact and momentum. We’ll roll up our sleeves together to (1) clarify and target communications goals, (2) review and assess messages, materials and systems and (3) focus your story and map out strategies into a communications action plan for 2010.

What I know today about marketing I learned in the first half of my career in journalism. The basics are the same – who? what? when? where? how? — and, most importantly, why? With these fundamentals, you can truly focus your marketing outreach:

• Who are you?
• What value can you provide me?
• When, where and how do you make it happen?
• Why should I do business with you? Why should I donate to your cause?

I’ve been applying this thinking to my own “spring forward” value proposition – helping you map out the framework to strengthen your story, develop the strategy and implement your communications roadmap to take advantage of the rebound in 2010.

What steps would you add to this “rebound your marketing” plans?

Consultants and entrepreneurs are typically thought leaders, but may not realize or appreciate it, so they miss personal marketing opportunities. That’s often true of marketing consultants, who excel at marketing their clients but not themselves. And it’s even worse for many women consultants, according to Kate Purmal, a consultant in the San Francisco Bay Area, told the Women in Consulting North Bay/Marin group. “You know your material, you deliver it, it all seems painfully obvious, but you feel you don’t have that much to contribute.”

Purmal, who has her own firm — Kate Purmal Consulting – works with start-ups, emerging ventures and small businesses to launch and implement strategic initiatives and coaches clients on thought leadership and sales skills.

The term “thought leader” was coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor in chief of Strategy and Business – one who is a “futurist” or is recognized among peers and mentors for innovative ideas and demonstrates the confidence to promote or share those ideas as actionable distilled insights.

Why position yourself as a thought leader? The advantages are clear, Purmal noted:

• Establish yourself as a credible source
• Showcase the breadth of your skills
• Deepen your role as a trusted advisor
• Create more exposure and generate more leads
• Build and elevate your brand
• Raise rates and increase revenue when you develop supporting collateral, such as a book

Thought leaders establish their positioning in various ways. Some thought leaders are trend-spotters (Faith Popcorn), others are provocateurs (Timothy Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek). Some have a unique voices while still others are curators of ideas and aggregators of thoughts, but applying them in fresh ways.

Working with clients to develop and promote their own thought leadership, I’ve found that it often takes a particular lens and outside perspectives to identify and put shape to what’s potentially “thought leadership.” That can apply to personal and small business marketing, as well. It’s smart to bounce your ideas off others and work carefully to refine a succinct message. But that shouldn’t mean paralysis-by-analysis either. Here are other ways Purmal advises to get started or continue the thought leadership journey:

• Don’t be afraid. Take a stand.
• Pick the most valuable thing you do and use that as your calling card, at least to get in the door.
• Craft a compelling and credible bio.
• Convert your area of expertise into a thought leadership platform that you can use in a variety of ways.
• Find the hook — and apply it in blogs, whitepapers, email newsletters, presentations and social media posts (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn).
• Believe in the value of improvisation, innovation and the “art of possibility.”

OUT with “Survival,” IN with “Growth” — these lead my What’s Hot/What’s Not marketing trends for 2010.

Feeling whiplashed by 2009, many of us have been talking about a sudden flurry of activity as 2010 opened. Pushing uphill with ferocity the first week of the new year, a university colleague mused, “I think we’re just doing more with less.” Had the economy suddenly improved by leaps because the year had turned? “Clearly there are signs that things are better,” a nonprofit recruiter noted as she posted a surge in new positions for several clients, ”and organizations have decided they can’t keep demanding too much of their existing staff if they want to move forward once again.”

Years ago I wrote regularly about “What’s Hot, What’s Not” trends in columns for Knight-Ridder Newspapers (which moved from the “Hot” to the “Not” column all too quickly as a newspaper chain that disappeared in recent years). So I’m reprising that Hot and Not snapshot with 5 top trends with broad implications for marketing communications for higher education, nonprofits, small businesses — and personal marketing — in 2010:

Hot: Growth/Not: Survival

Hot: Reinvention/Not: Relapse

Hot: Mobile/Not: Wired

Hot: Fresh content/ Not: Disregard for usability

Hot: Managing social media/Not: Letting social media manage you

What are your top picks for 2010?

These two wise approaches set a wise foundation for your rethinking  about a rebalanced 2010 — Zen and the Art of Twitter and Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious Marketing Trends.

Now’s a good time, too, to consider a brand update – without overinvesting in unnecessary change or cost during this still somewhat transitional time.

Entrepreneurs who have small businesses and start-ups as well as solopreneurs and independent consultants often have one bad habit in common — we try to do everything ourselves. Yet, as one of my new Virtual Assistants recently told me, we need to know when to get out of our own way and focus our energies on the activities that make money. In my case, that focus is university marketing and communications, alumni and development communications and nonprofit and small business marketing.

Where to concentrate among all the things that come up each day is not always a simple equation — each of us must assess the tasks for maintaining or ramping up productivity in our business. However, as independents or entrepreneurs, we most juggle many things, aren’t particularly good at delegating, have a tendency to micro-manage and are reluctant to pay for something we know we can do even if it distracts our attention from what really matters.

Yet what I’ve come to learn as I study where I’m spending my time is that using VAs frees up my time to invest in my own knowledge work – the communications strategies I develop and implement for my university, nonprofit and small business clients. In other words, it takes a village!

What is a Virtual Assistant anyway? Technically a VA is an independent entrepreneur providing administrative, creative and/or technical services, according to the International Virtual Assistants Association. “Utilizing advanced technological modes of communication and data delivery, a professional VA assists clients in his/her area of expertise from his/her own office on a contractual basis” is how the IVAA describes the role.

Some of the most popular categories of VAs are those skilled at organization and maintenance (a host of clerical duties), project/meeting/event coordination, customer service and relationship building and personal assistance.  Others may have very specific expertise, such as graphic design, online research, webinar oversight, newsletters and press releases, website updates, marketing and growth management activities and social media management.

In this economy, professionals whose businesses have tanked or who have lost their jobs are becoming VAs pay the bills, stay busy and market themselves for new and more sustainable work. They are also entrepreneurs who are augmenting their own small businesses, professionals desirous of only part-time work and others otherwise known as “freelancers” or “consultants.”

Daria Steigman, whose Independent Thinking blog I follow, recently wrote about VAs for the International Association of Business Communicators. I also consulted Katie Gutierrez, founder of Assistant Match, which specializes in small businesses that are experiencing rapid growth and workload bottlenecks. Assistant Match finds the VAs and prescreens them, that in itself a major time-saver.

Here are some tips for expanding your team with VAs:

• Start with your own self-assessment. What are the priorities for your time? What are the things you can do but could delegate? What are the time-eaters that aren’t making you money but are part of doing business?
• Try out one or more people. Your VA has to be a good match with your temperament, processes (such as meeting your deadlines) and bring enough value that she/he is invaluable to maintaining and/or growing your business. It may take a few tries to find the right relationships so be prepared for that.
• Set up a time-limited test assignment to analyze the VA’s work and your investment.
• Don’t try to force fit all your needs into one VA — hire two or more for specific tasks if that makes sense to your needs, the specialties required and your operating style.
• Create a budget for your VA support, understand the parameters clearly and reevaluate the arrangement monthly. VAs typically are paid hourly, and if they are managed by an agency, billing will likely occur in 15-minute increments. Administrative support tends to be less than specialized skills such as graphic design and social media management.
• Establish performance expectations at the outset, just as you would with any professional providing a business service.

And communicate often! Out of sight does not mean out of mind in the virtual office. Employee development expert Marla Rosner has some very wise recommendations about long-distance delegation. Managing a VA is no different from managing any other assistant and requires professional courtesy, input and support, collaboration and feedback.

With fewer distractions and more efficiency, using VAs allows you to right-size your business and refocus creativity and time on what you should be doing to be successful.

Social media evangelists mixed it up with novices and skeptics over Twitter, Facebook and other new tools for business and nonprofit marketing at Women in Consulting’s (WIC) program in San Francisco’s North Bay area last night. The digital divide remains fairly wide — the early-adopters have impressive success stories while the reluctant and unconverted are too overwhelmed by time, resources, technology and cute (“tweeting”) jargon to get in the game.

Certainly there is impressive new research to fortify the social media charge forward (see the roundup below). But the them-us undercurrent isn’t helpful. Where persuasive data and strategic handholding might ease the resistance of some CEOs, marketers and other business and nonprofit executives, they can’t be clubbed into acceptance. These issues crystallized this week with noted blogger Seth Godin’s provocative rant that while “the marketing world has changed completely,” nonprofits are “paralyzed in fear” of change and thus squandering huge opportunities. His comments caused quite a healthy stir.

All brouhaha aside, the evidence is inescapable – social media is no longer a fad, and, perhaps more essential, it is valuable and necessary for business. We have to consider the times that we are in:

• This year more than 4 out of 5 online Americans have been active in either creating, participating in or reading some form of social content at least once a month, Forrester Research reported at the end of August.
• In 2009, there will be 18 million US adults who access Twitter on any platform at least monthly, representing a 200% increase over 2008, eMarketer reported last week. Usage will reach 26 million US adults in 2010, a further 44.4% climb.
• More than 8 in 10 management, marketing and HR executives responding to the July 2009 survey by eMarketer cited relationship- and brand-building as benefits of social media. Execs also considered social media a good tool for recruitment (69%) and customer service (64%), and 46% thought it enhanced employee morale.
• And as an example locally in San Francisco, Facebook is driving 5000 people a month to the new California Academy of Sciences, driving participation from younger age groups and leading to people to buy tickets and become ”fans” in other ways, according to Sorel Husbands Denholtz, a social media strategist for the museum, a WIC presenter.

Social media has changed the business of PR and marketing, forcing countless communicators to jump on a fast-moving train without knowing where they are headed and lacking solid preparation for the unfamiliar new territory, customs and language. ”Marketers need to restrain their often-innate impulse to sell, and join the more conversational culture of the blogosphere,” writes John Patella in CW Bulletin of the International Association of Business Communicators. “PR folks need to learn a new set of tools, look beyond the comfort zone of conventional—and vanishing—media and sift for opportunities in an ever-changing news landscape.” In other words, the new paradigm requires creating buzz and awareness by engaging and building a community, and once trusted, reaping the rewards through sales or fundraising.

Having sat through numerous social media seminars and talked with many colleagues and clients, clearly the biggest hurdle for the plunge into social media is how to get started. Next is the equally significant challenge of implementation — investing the expertise, time and resources for success over time. Although many of the tools are free, easily accessible and scalable, let’s be honest — applying social media to organizational communications takes vision, people, time, common objectives and commitment. It’s not about sitting around and letting things “happen.”

The evangelists can advance their cause by offering more intuitive counsel and less hype to those genuinely seeking guidance and answers. The incessant patter of geekdom distractions is diluting their powerful message. [Are there 300 million people on Facebook? But there are only 133 million registered bloggers. Well, are we talking about populations the size of China, India and the U.S.? No, just Russia, really and more than two times the U.K.]

As in any marketing initiative, a thoughtful analytical process should occur at the outset to determine what behavior a company or nonprofit is trying to drive and to define the desired endpoints of social media initiatives. Then come careful scoping of multiple options, dedicated follow-through and ongoing execution. Let’s be further emphatic — social media to cultivate, grow and sell is not play, it’s a serious business of communications and relationship-building . And in this competitive environment, social media has advanced so far already that organizations must now turn to pros to make the most of the opportunities.

We also must yield to the wisdom and enthusiasm of the youthful prodigies, who are nipping at our heels, and rightfully so. As 16-yearold Internet entrepreneur Daniel Brusilovsky, Founder/CEO of Teens in Tech Networks, reminded our WIC audience rather bluntly, “It’s time to get connected. A new generation is coming in, and you guys have to let us take over.”

To my clients and colleagues, I say, alrighty then. The brave new world may feel real uncomfortable, but it’s definitely time to develop our social media IQs.

Social media and “killer content” held court today — once again — at Marketing Profs’ Digital Marketing Virtual Conference, the second one this year. Cruising through the sessions and booths at this information-loaded real-time experience is completely worth an all-day visit.

The statistics continue to accelerate — 60% of Americans use social media, according to Becky Carroll of the Petra Consulting Group and Michael Brito, social media strategist for Intel, in their presentation, “Building Customer Loyalty on the Social Web.” Of that 60%:

• 59% use it to interact with companies
• 93% believe that companies should have a social media presence
• 85% believe a company should interact with its audiences via social media

It’s remarkable how the social media buzz has changed from the “wow” factor to some serious long-term thinking. The experts have moved beyond their fascination with the cool tools and more thoughtfully into the durability of the social web for longer-term marketing strategies. In getting started, how’s a business to choose the best course of action? The marketing basics of relationship-building still count. ”Map out a strategy first, because the tools will change, and you want to be able to adapt to the next tool out there,” Carroll advised. “Believe it or not, Twitter won’t always be around.”

That’s really a solid point.  The Marketing Profs group certainly has its tactics well-mapped to an overall strategy: this virtual conference reportly has 12,000 registrations.

Another new study presented by Carroll and Brito correlates financial performance with ”deep brand engagement” among the Top Ten brands, such as Starbucks, Dell, Google, Yahoo and Intel. The take-aways here are that simply listening to customers without responding and taking action makes a business’ social media strategy not only ineffective but irrelevant. Social media marketing must create a real conversation, not just sell your brand. That means showcasing competitors’ good ideas, exchanging knowledge, being authentic and believable. Through that service comes credibility, and the most successful firms, small to large, have proven that credibility through social media leads customers to action — to buy.

‘Killer content” is a term that’s been refined, too. Think of it as engaging customers outside of particular transactions, noted presenter Kathy Warren, digital strategy-social media program manager for Hewlett Packard, and Kari Homan and Natanya Anderson of Powered, Inc., in another session. Killer content is something far different from messaging, demos and press releases.

Take HP’s online Learning Center, which they described as the “crown jewel” of the firm’s integrated marketing strategy. The interactive site drives brand loyalty and acquires new prospects through a learning environment rich in lifestyle content based on consumer needs and interests. The 115 content areas, tied to HP’s business objectives, are broken down into four categories: PC Security and Maintenance, Home Office, Digital Photography, and Microsoft Office and Adobe. Users create profiles and choose from a host of options — such as newsletters, customer insights and analytics, and social tools. Through this unbiased information, many customers eventually migrate to a purchase decision about an HP product, but that’s not the exclusive — or apparent — goal.

HP’s numbers tell the story of a successful Learning Center strategy:

• 22 million visits since 2004
• 1.3 million enrollments
• 92% would recommend the site to others
• 22% reported a purchase of an HP product
• 11% have stayed actively engaged since 2004

Among what the presenters called the “10 Commandments of Killer Content,” keep these priorities in mind:

• No infomercials — ever!
• Know and honor your audience and what they want to learn.
• Offer breadth and depth of content — keep it fresh and relevant but also some content that will have a long life.
• And here’s a really good one — listen to your customers and use that data to cut through organizational politics to make decisions about the content that will make them part of your community.

Blogging fatigue set in during the second half of the summer. There’s something ancient, seasonal and even spiritual about this contemporary phenomenon, which has been amplified this year by the recession. The sages of Chinese medicine identified late summer’s heat as a real drag on activity and dispositions. In the modern era, Europeans in droves vacate their homes and countries for somewhere else in August. Here at home, Congress acknowledges its lethargy, gives up and disappears for a few weeks, or tries to… 

But it’s difficult to be purely philosophical about such cycles in 2009 when the Internet seems to have become everyone’s professional and personal salvation — and there is today no escape from the online heat, whatever the season.

Experiencing blogging and social media angst, I turned to the masters of the craft for guidance and found it, happily rather quickly, from Beth Kanter, the high-octane blogger who always says something worth reading. Sure enough, in the dog days of August, she counseled about Information Overload Awareness Day. The bullet point that really hit home was the New York Times’ article, Blogging at a Snail’s Pace.

I’ve been doing quite a bit of research lately on changes in the workforce due to the recession — facts like these, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ report this week:

• 14.9 million people out of work in the U.S. since the recession began in December 2007 (and still growing)
• A tripling of temporary workers since 1990 — from 1 to 3 million — and a pattern expected to reach 12 million in the next decade

It’s not hard to do the math through simple observation. People have more time on their hands, and the Internet, as we all know, has given everyone a vehicle for business and personal marketing. Yet the statistics are even more startling, as listed in a few mind-blowing nuggets: there are more than 133 million indexed blogs in Technorati, and Twitter has grown 1000% in the past year. Want more data?

Which leads back to the question at hand: What’s your Internet voice? It’s an age-old marketing challenge, traditional, social, or otherwise — what do you have to say, what’s distinctive about it, and, what’s more, when, how and to what audiences are you going to say it?

So as we regroup for the post-recession and perhaps apply some useful marketing lessons from today’s online frenzy, let’s refocus on strategy.

Why are you online? Know your strategy so you can choose the best tactics from the abundance of Internet tools:

• To engage customers? Build a relationship by listening and acting.
• Be a thought leader? Have something to say that sets you apart.
• Express yourself? Enjoy and create. (I’ve had a travel blog, www.womantraveler.info, for years and post entries only when I’ve had a terrific trip, discovered a fabulous tip, or need to register an opinion that might be helpful to helping others “travel on their own terms.” Nonetheless, I have regular unsolicited followers of my current as well as archived articles.)
• Fill up time? Use the Internet to learn something new and inform yourself.
• See and be seen? Go work out at the health club (another scene that is busier than ever these days)…

I’ve used this pause from blogging to get my business ready for the post-recession. Stay tuned.

Search engine optimization for websites and blogs is more science and art — and more time-consuming than the experts make it sound. You have to be proactive about your web visibility in every way, not simply keywords and title tags in web and blog content.

Here are a couple of articles from Search Engine Watch experts that will help strengthen your SEO — submitting websites and blogs to “must-have” directories related to your business and optimizing your site content once they’ve landed on your pages.

And if you decide that hiring an SEO specialty firm is the best course of action, these pointers — including the reader comments at the end — are useful for guiding your “search.”

Daria Steigman’s “Independent Thinking” article about the “Small Business Edge” in this economy is well worth a read from the International Association of Business Communicators. Spelling out the advantages that solopreneuers and small businesses have in this economy, it’s a timely companion to our Center for Volunteer and Nonprofit Leadership brownbag discussion yesterday.