Now that we’ve reviewed the significance of the 2022 alumni reunion, navigated how to optimize digital alumni engagement and provided best practices for event logistics & welcoming up to 60% of your alumni back to campus, it’s time to discover how to build a strong alumni community.
With an alumni app, take advantage of these eight modern technological features to build a thriving alumni community online and build alumni engagement all throughout the year.
1. Spark alumni conversations with group channels dedicated to each prior graduating class
Each graduating class has their recollection of nostalgic memories, timeless trends, and shared stories and experiences. Give each class the opportunity to reconnect and go down memory lane alongside their former classmates with designated class channels. With invite-only or approval to join, ensure graduating class alumni are in their correct channel. Having a digital alumni engagement app with organized channels will also benefit reunion committee members as they distribute communications and continuously keep class members informed throughout the year.
2. Display upcoming alumni events for members to discover and RSVP
An organized calendar of upcoming events are key to successfully promoting alumni events. With an accessible and central hub, members know exactly where to find future activities, RSVP to events that catch their eye, or export and save activities and events to their preferred digital calendar to remember at a later date. Improve your digital alumni engagement, so your former students stay engaged with your campus and attend your events.
3. Utilize automated generated content to automatically pull in the latest alumni events and news
It’s easy for calendars to become jam-packed, making it more challenging to continuously create interactive content for your digital alumni community. To help, take advantage of automated generated content (AGC). Pull in sources from some of your favorite social media platforms or your alumni website or online news source automatically. In real-time maintain all the latest alumni happenings without having to dig through multiple sources. With this administrative assistance, put your attention to other priorities.
4. Increase digital alumni engagement with polls to discover their interests and build content just for them
Running out of viral ideas that your alumni community members will certainly participate in? Give them the chance to share their insight. Utilize polls to ask what in-person or virtual activities they would attend, or what genres of music or movies they like to help plan the next event. By conducting these mini surveys, you’ll have plenty of records to brainstorm and inspire your next set of content and activities that’ll be a real hit.
5. Enable alumni to build profiles and reconnect over shared interests
Profiles help all of us get a glimpse into each other’s lives, including a brief bio, what interests us, and best ways to contact each other. Maybe you’ll even learn something new about an old best friend or roommate of yours from back in the day. Encourage digital alumni engagement by encouraging users to build a dynamic profile to help get the ball rolling, and reconnect with past or potential new friends .
6. Offer a virtual alumni networking space to share career opportunities
From recent grads to former alumni from decades past there’s plenty of networking possibilities when alumni come together. Host a digital alumni engagement space where they can post and find career opportunities, offer mentorship, and broaden their professional network with their former campus community.
7. Host social fundraising through an alumni Donations Module
Provide alumni members the opportunity to donate and contribute back to their alma mater. Develop fundraising campaigns within your Donations Module to encourage alumni to give back when they can. Leverage social giving and a gamification approach to expand your efforts even further.
8. Access data and export analytics to improve digital alumni engagement
Assess the engagement of your alumni reunion app with reports to visually review which aspects of your community are performing well with your members. See which types of content have more interaction, check out which channels have the most engagement, and find out how much time is being spent within the app to make adjustments as needed and continually improve your digital presence.