- Higher Education
How to Grow Alumni Engagement with Video for Lifelong Relationships
Alumni communities are an important benchmark of a higher education institution’s health and value, and today, more than ever, institutions can grow alumni engagement with video. When alumni remain engaged with their alma mater, they reap the benefits of networking, career building, and lifelong learning. Institutions and current students also benefit from mentoring, reach, and impactful fundraising efforts. Today, turning graduates into engaged alumni who give remains a top priority of higher education institutions everywhere.
So, how might institutions continue to grow alumni engagement online? This is especially important when 90% report commitments to higher digital transformation. Read this guide to find out.
Benefits of Growing Alumni Engagement
Drive fundraising among alumni.
Most higher education institutions face reduced budgets and enrollment, and fundraising has become even more important. Traditionally, alumni have been a valuable source of donations. In 2022, gifts from alumni to their colleges and universities amounted to $13.5 billion (22.7% of overall giving), and in 2023, alumni gave $12 billion (20.7% of overall giving), according to research from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). Keeping alumni engaged in fundraising can make a difference in your success.
Boost admissions and outreach efforts.
Showcasing alumni achievements can be a valuable component of prospective student outreach. Higher education institutions that maintain close relationships with alumni can share their successes with potential students and families with impact accomplishments made possible in part by the institution’s programs.
Develop proud ambassadors for the institution.
Stay relevant in alumni lives, and stay relevant in the world. When institutions offer engaging experiences to keep alumni plugged into their campuses, they can cultivate global ambassadors These connected alumni may be willing to speak at campus events, attend recruiting events in their regions, and share their positive institutional experiences with their personal and professional contacts.
How to Grow Alumni Engagement with Video
Today, institutions can consider more robust and creative video communications for an inspiring future of digital engagement online. The preference for video over text is growing substantially, especially among younger generations. With 70% of institutions working towards integrating more AI tools on campus, generative AI promises to help video creators make more content than ever.
Here are video ideas to help spark alumni engagement.
Let alumni tell their stories.
Put a face to your institution and its success. Highlight accomplishments and stories of alumni in the world to ignite emotions and shared values, and institutions can build community over time.
Engage different bands of alumni.
It’s important to ensure that younger and older alumni have access to each other. A magazine or newsletter doesn’t quite provide opportunities for feedback or networking. Online videos can make alumni of any age feel like they know each other, and a branded video platform can provide options for interaction among alumni.
Bring your campus to alumni with recorded lectures.
Keep the learning going even after graduation. Your campus is a melting pot of research and forward-thinking conversations. Many alums are nostalgic and love opportunities to return to campus. Bridge the gap by offering academic course videos for alumni to watch.
Campus documentary-style updates.
Show alumni what you’re working on to inspire them to give to fundraising efforts. This could be the dean of engineering providing a guided video tour of the new building or someone in the athletics department showing facility updates. It’s all about showcasing the return on their investment.
Create an exclusive online experience.
Provide exclusive content to your alumni community so they feel you’re investing in them. Panopto Connect, a branded online video portal with access permissions and content provisioning, can help.
How Panopto Connect Grows Alumni Engagement with Video
Panopto Connect provides institutions with a customized online video library where you can publish fresh, relevant content to a diverse range of viewers in an easily navigable format. Here are some ways it helps connect with alumni to make an impact.
Design your portal to reflect your institutional mission.
Keep your institution top-of-mind when sharing videos with your alumni community with customized portal playback, imagery, and banners. This also helps focus your institution’s message and personalize the experience. Reach alumni with more impact by taking back control of how you share your video content.
Curate content for alumni the way you want.
Panopto Connect provides flexibility for administrators to design content personally for alumni. This could include easily navigable sub-pages based on different topics, tags, and categories, but it also includes designing custom carousels for the content they can browse.
Power immersive learning experiences.
Whether it’s the story of a new initiative on campus, the accomplishments of recent alumni in the news, or more, keep your message in focus with an embedded ‘in-portal’ player and high-level video summaries. Panopto Connect also offers relevant video recommendations to keep viewers engaged.
Stay in control of access.
Maintain full control of secure distribution with customizable access permissions for viewers worldwide. This way, you can invite only people you’d like to your portal–or segment viewership for videos across different departments or even marketing efforts.
The Future of Growing Alumni Engagement with Video
It’s an exciting time to innovate how your institution grows campus connections.
Video offers a promising way to build relationships in digital spaces, but the right technology tool matters. Existing video platform solutions might not have the flexibility to create an online community experience or keep you in control of sharing and permissions. To design your alumni message the way you want, take your power back with Panopto Connect.
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