Gave a presentation to AMSU (Association of Managers in Students’ Union) North-West meeting this afternoon about what’s nearly been a year journey for our development of the web presences at UCLan Students’ Union.

It was a great chance to reflect on how far we’ve come, particularly in the last six months, and to take stock of some of the big changes that have happened as a result of our new website and approach to the web and social media.

The presentation was only a few slides long but there was plenty of discussion about how Union’s can use the web, and in particular how they can engage the membership through the web. Hence some discussions about online voting, the use of Ning as an issue based social network and the collection of members data to communicate messages properly.

It was useful to show what we’d been doing and hear that others wanted to follow suit, but needed to have a real think through what they wanted to do with their web presences. We also talked about what we’d got planned for the next six months and it looks promising.

Image from flickr: Felice de Sena Micheli

‘Are Students’ Union recession proof?’ that was muttered by our chief executive during a meeting the other day. He’s not the only one wondering. We’ve kicked off a discussion over on The Charity Place about how Students’ Union’s can respond to the challenges that are potentially ahead. So here’s my key points about how Union’s can respond to the threat of a recession, some are specific to UCLan but some could go for the sector as a whole.

1. Make sure no one can question our legitimacy. This means showing what we do, how we do it and why we’re important. This makes it harder for people to take things away if we are shown to be doing an excellent job. Also, as Union’s officially become charities it’ll be important to consider our impacts as an organisation and be able to measure them. The days of just giving money to said club and society and saying ‘that’s involvement’ is going to be harder to justify, or running said campaign because someone sitting in an office thinks ‘it’d look good wouldn’t it?’ are dead.

2. Get smart with technology. We’re looking at investing in technologies which will allow us to use students data to increase loyalty to student services, get smarter with how we communicate with students and ensure that destination events are promoted effectively. Poster/flyer blindness is rife and especially for us being a city campus we’ve got to compete for every single penny to ensure we are still the ‘gatekeepers’ of the student market and student pound.

3. Customer service. Ensure that commercial outlets are 100% switched on and ready to please every single customer who comes through the door. Students are going to be thinking twice about spending, and we need to make sure that when they do spend that tenner they are very happy with what they’ve got - not just the product but everything that comes with it.

4. Don’t rush into things. Just because there is a recession looming (or already here) doesn’t mean we should just retreat into the trenches. There are umpteen opportunities for Students’ Union’s to partner up with loads of different organisations and work with them to deliver services, create a market, deliver information and much more. This is especially relevant if there is going to be a big government splurge in spending, as some of that might be up for grabs for new projects or promotions.

5. Innovate. Be a leader, take the odd risk or two but make sure you’ve backed it up with resources. Not easy in a recession, but if you spot an opportunity to expand then make sure you’ve got the support behind it and do it properly.

6. Engage the membership. They after all are in charge, go out to the membership and ask them how they think things can be improved, get them onboard, get them working with you, for you, feeding back to you and most of all being loyal to you.

7. Develop niches. Ensure that while you’re appealing to the 18-22 student pound market that you’re developing niche products/services/communications that satisfy a particular demographic of the student body. We know that the demographics of students are changing to include international, mature, part-time, commuting and a whole host of other ‘groups’ - identify them and develop strands to appeal to them and bring them into the mix.

What do you think? Are Students’ Union’s actually recession proof? Or is that bullshit? Will some go out of business? How can they survive?

I spent a few hours on Monday at an NUS Services Ltd event in Birmingham about local business income generation. Well, it was supposed to be about that but the general idea seemed to be whether NUSSL could move into the student media agency area which is dominated by the likes of BAM, OnCampus, Student Media Group etc.

The overwhelming mood in the room was ‘No, you missed the boat about 5 years ago’. But, there is a huge area where NUSSL could provide something very useful to Students’ Union’s. Business solutions and in particular web based ones.

If I was in NUSSL and looking for ways to diversify I’d be considering:

- Taking an open source CRM solution and modifying it for Students’ Union’s

- Providing membership solutions in terms of clubs and societies

- Working on data solutions for Union’s to offer loyalty products such as swipe cards etc

- Offering training to Union’s on how to use social media, web technologies and how to generate income from the web

- Working on ideas for how to generate new revenue streams from mature, international, part-time and postgraduate students, because the student movement is not getting any younger

Unfortunately the event didn’t allow for much exploration of these ideas because it was dominated by lots of ‘no, no, no’ rather than ‘what about, maybe, could we’. NUSSL needs a culture change and to figure out what Students’ Union’s need in the 21st century to connect with their memberships and remains as the gatekeepers of getting messages to the student body.

Seemed to be a trend over the last few days as some great posts popped up about what the US election and in particular the Obama campaign means for marketing professionals, charities and nonprofit organisations. Here’s the best:

Seth Godin kicks off with a great take on what the elections meant for marketing professionals. He definitely believes that online is the place to be for campaigning.

Kivi was quick off the mark with what nonprofit organisations can learn marketing wise from the election. She focuses on the ability of the Obama to fundraise from a whole spectrum of people, small amounts building to one huge total. She also links through to the Getting Attention blog which has a good piece about what the election taught us about email marketing.

The Charity Place has a piece about what nonprofits can learn from the Obama campaign, and it’s more of the same. Engagement, make friends first and then ask for money - not the other way round. I think that’s an important one, build a connection and then ask for the money.

Fantastic blog I stumbled across today, it’s all about communications and marketing for nonprofit organisations. So if you’re in that sector or even if you aren’t then go and check it out. It’s written by the brilliant Kivi Miller. Go and check out nonprofitmarketingguide today, you won’t be disappointed.

A few I’ve been reading today:

• You can’t just have peanut butter

How do you measure social media success?

• Obama - the revolution will be televised

Short piece about how if Obama does win next week, it could cause a lot of people to start re-write the politics marketing books. He’s shown how online can connect with the grassroots but that you can’t just be online, you have to be everywhere.

• The nostalgia of the hyperlocal

Nigel Barlow points me in the direction of Andrew Grant-Adamson who makes some interesting points about whether online could be the future of hyperlocal. With local newspapers across the country in huge decline, could online present a return to the local, local, news agenda? I think it’s all a question of resources.

Apparently, it is the ‘Ipod’ generation - never knew I was an Ipod (insecure, pressurised, over-taxed, debt ridden) - who are going to suffer most in the credit crunch.

The Guardian article claims that we’re going to be struggling to pay back our debts, find it hard to come by credit and there will be an ever more growing distrust between us and ‘them’ - being the government, banks, institutions etc.

Well, how did we end up in this mess? Part of it has to go back to our education. Were we ever told about mortgages? About housing? About tax? About anything financial at school? No, we had plenty of sex education lessons but when it came to ’soft’ options like general studies they wasted the opportunity to teach everyone some useful and proper lessons from independent bodies.

You can’t rely on the mortgage lender (who gets a £500 kick back for providing you with a mortgage) to give you unbiased, professional advice about a product that you know nothing about.

My girlfriend and I recently tried to buy a house, and it was scary, confusing and nearly ended in disaster. All we had to ask for advice was Google and our parents. We had no idea about how the system worked (for anyone in a similar position, then Shelter has a fantastic resource for first-time buyers and much better than the directgov website).

So, Mr Ed Balls, instead of worrying about SATs tests why not make everyone more empowered and informed on really important things like finance by introducing some ‘life lessons’ in options like general studies at A-level. Then hopefully we won’t end up here again.

On a communications note there is surely the need for creating a fantastic government resource with practical advice for young people about things that ‘will soon matter’. The web is our natural playground, so give me the advice to my inbox at the time of my choosing. Don’t make me go to a citizens advice bureau which is only open from 9.15 AM - 3 PM (I have to work full-time remember, I’m debt-ridden and pressurised). Why not have a virtual advisor that I can ask questions to from my desk, or text a question to from my mobile? And don’t rely on the private sector to do it for you - I won’t trust their advice, even if I do now own a stake in them as a tax payer.

We’ve recently been collecting a lot of data about students where I work and we know want to make use of that data by sending out targeted email messages to students about the subject they’ve asked for.

To do this we need some sort of decent mass email operation. Currently we can use the HTML editor and mass email function on the University server (NovellClient Groupwise) but we cannot track very well the results of the emails and what users do when receiving it.

Been told to look into SugarCRM, an open source platform, that costs around £1,000 for an annual licence. Does anyone know of anything?