Online communities was a good discussion point at the recent user groups, different institutions are at different stages in their online community and the services offered range from profile update pages to well established communities with thousands of members. Many alumni teams are complementing their own online community and offering information, news and events through facebook. There seems to be a general concern over how/when facebook should be used in every day alumni relations, although mostly the social networking aspect offers good feedback on how alumni group themselves together and what information/services they like to use.

Ultimately today’s communication methods have evolved and progressed and so every institution has the opportunity to have an online presence with 24/7 access to all alumni across the globe. The biggest opportunity for online communities is in offering enhanced services to international groups or chapters.

What have you found works well on your community?

How do you use Facebook?

How do you keep alumni coming back to your site?

We've recently gone live with NetCommunity (March 08) and it's a point that's close to my heart.. I've noticed that most of our alumni register for the website, meander around, look up their classmates and then don't return... given that I'm placing a lot on Alumni being able to update their records online (to save me posting out 120,000 forums each year and then some poor soul having to type the responses back into RE) I'm keen to investigate ways to make our website somewhere people want to return to...

 So, if anyone has any suggestions???

I'm currently looking at "hooking" people in with discussion forums and surveys (Haven't done eithe rof these yet but will do soon...)

How are other people getting on??? How often (on average) do people return to your site?

Richard

Our NetCommunity site has been live since October 2006 with membership just topping the 4,300 mark.  Your alumni behaviour pretty much mimics what ours do to begin with. 

We found that we can generate flurries of activity when we send out our quartely newsletter - contains general news and events and specific community reminders where we're looking for the alumni to do something and provide direct link to the appropriate page on NC - things like "x hundred have added a photo to their profile, you can add yours here" or "x alumni in China have offered to help our student recruitment officers, can you help?"  We managed to generate considerable activity and lots of new registrations when we sent out an e-christmas card last year to everyone we had email addresses for.

We started issuing an alumni membership card at graduation in 2005 with a lifespan of 2 years.  To get a replacement they have to confirm their address or update through NC.  New members of NC also get issued with the alumni card with the same renewal conditions. 

We've also tried to stimulate interest by setting up discussion groups (based on a questionnaire of early members).  The discussion groups have proved a resounding disappointment - the only one with any postings at all is our "Looking for" board where members can place a posting for lost friends for whom we do not have contact details.

Our alumni have always been keen to offer career advice to current students but we've never had a mechanism for making it happen.  This year we invited all final year and postgrad students to become student members of our NC where they are able to access the directory of alumni members who are offering career advice, post their CV and request a mentor.   

We are also working on getting our schools to set up their own sub-sites within NC thus providing a direct communication channel back to the people that the alumni really want to talk to. 

It all takes time, effort and patience - there is no magic bullet. 

Regards

Christine