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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?

Two new studies provide new and compelling data about ongoing struggles to keep social media in the strategic marketing mix by nonprofits and corporate chief marketing officers. These reports confirm some trends I’ve observed recently with clients in university marketing communications and alumni relations offices – good ideas and technologies need appropriate staff and budgets to put them fully to work.

Coincidentally I also heard about social media fatigue from a couple of favorite bloggers. Here’s a quick summary of these recent cyber exchanges:

• A study by the public relations firm Weber Shandwick found that the vast majority of nonprofit organizations (88 percent) are experimenting with social media to engage key audiences, but a significant majority (79 percent) are uncertain of how to demonstrate social media’s value for their organizations. And, only half (51 percent) report active use of social media. In reporting on the study, the Association of Fundraising Professionals noted that  nonprofit executives are skeptical about social media’s ability to reach donors, media and policy makers.
• More than four out of five (84 percent) chief marketing officers (CMOs) allocate less than ten percent of their budgets to experimenting through social media and non-traditional communications channels, with more than half (55 percent) allocating just five percent or less, according to a study by The CMO Club and Hill & Knowlton, while the number of adult Internet users who have profiles on social networks quadrupled to 35 percent in 2008, from eight percent in 2005.

What I find most illuminating in the current conversations is the vital shift in focus to resources — people and budgets. It’s easy to get excited about new technologies and experiment at the front end, but the reality of sustainable implementation unfortunately seems to be more of a “Phase 2″ than a “Phase 1″ consideration. 

Of particular interest were these findings in the Weber Shandwick report: “With nearly 70 percent of nonprofit professionals projecting their 2010 communications budgets to remain the same or decrease compared to last year, finding the resources and expertise to implement social media strategies is a widely shared challenge. Fifty-two percent of organizations concede they do not have enough staff to manage their current social media outreach and almost two-thirds (64 percent) report that their organizations do not have social media policies and guidelines in place for employees and board members to engage appropriately online.”

University and nonprofit communications staff are smart, can-do professionals who often go the extra mile to meet expectations. Many of them have simply started creating social media communities through their websites as another service that adds to the many things on their plates. As these reports show, these staff and their bosses would be well-served to step back and assess their strategies for social media, its relevancy to the outcomes they seek and how they are going to provide the resources to keep the tweeting and friending going.

As universities and nonprofits look once again at tight budgets for the next fiscal year, here’s a plan of action for scaling social media practices in your marketing mix:

• Begin with assessing the needs. What are you trying to accomplish, and why?
• Determine the best tools for your organization, not other organizations.
• Decide what’s real: Who will do the work? Do they have the skills and the willingness? What will staff have to stop doing to tackle more active social media engagement? What will be lost if one communications tactic becomes a priority over the others?
• Cease looking at social media as activity that staff can do in their free time.
• Engage only in activities that can be done well.
• Put social media responsibilities and outcomes into annual workplans; integrate and measure their activity; resource them appropriately with people and budgets; reevaluate every 90 days.
• Consider phased implementation — start small, set expectations appropriately and ramp up as resources become available — or as the measurable results make a case for adding more social media support.
• Can volunteers be trained and used effectively to help advance social media activities?
• Equally importantly, assist communicators at all levels in learning how to manage up. Often their superiors don’t know the process or the best solutions and need wise counsel, even if it’s not what they want to hear about the latest trend.

And, if you’re still with me, here are some honest insights from bloggers Michael Stoner and Brad Ward about how they are scaling their own social media activity in the context of making smart business decisions.

By Just Pen, Creative Commons

Ever ask the question — what’s wrong with this picture? A communications audit is the way to find out. 

With endowments still struggling, alumni organizations striving to cultivate more effective engagement and sales revenues seeking an uptick, a communications audit will help you find out if your marketing messages and materials are truly reaching your customers and keeping them closer. What’s more, you can act on the answers immediately, recalibrating to enhance branding and relationship-building.

If exemplary marketing thinks like the customer, then audits let you know how your customers — internal and external — see you, in no uncertain terms. Are your messages and materials truly advancing your relationships with them, or are you wasting your time, energy and dwindling budget dollars? Is your organization structured so that your communication activities can achieve their goals? 

The data produced by a communications audit also tends to be quite persuasive to leadership strategies — and justifies making important adjustments in the way your organizations conducts its communications. A thorough audit places a laser-like lens on an organization’s marketing strategies, activities, processes and, importantly, behaviors. And then it sets a new course for the future.

Keep these criteria in mind as you consider a communications audit:

• Audits provide the big picture assessment of strategic communications effectiveness. They ask the tough questions, typically by professionals outside the organization.
• Audits challenge assumptions that may have been operative for a long time and provide hard data that can foster alternatives and be measured for future activities.
• Audits are creative. They surface new ideas and innovative approaches because your customers are telling you what will work for them.
• Audits are more than SWOTs. Through interviews, questionnaires, surveys and materials review, they yield information and connect the dots, leading to strategic communications plans based on analysis, evaluation and goals.

To launch an audit, know what you want to accomplish and measure even if you don’t know how to get there. Whether the audit is internal, external or both, keep the end in mind. What is the outcome you seek? And how open is your organization to implementing the findings? How can you move the dial to make an audit successful and gain internal buy-in to the results?

Audits are especially effective in a time of reduced resources but greater demand for services because they take organizations back to their core marketing objectives. Getting ahead, yet working with less, means applying new and streamlined ways of advancing the mission to engage the market. A communications audit can put you in position for new connectivity and engagement with your constituents and customers, stronger internal communications partnerships and measurable ROI.