11
Nov
Posted by Ed Walker as Communications, Marketing, ideas, tools, web
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.
31
Oct
Posted by Ed Walker as Communications, Marketing, charities
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.
Some highlights from today:
Some inspirational words from Adam Singer. He makes sense, there is a LOT out there on the web but knowing your niche is important.
Not as expensive as I thought, but are they effective? Interesting post.
UCLan’s student newspaper gets a re-launch, two years after we first launched it. Good stuff, it’s going to be a great little site once it gets filled out with content.
30
Oct
Posted by Ed Walker as Communications, Marketing, web
A few I’ve been reading today:
How do you measure social media success?
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.
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.
27
Oct
Posted by Ed Walker as Marketing, charities, web
What I’ve been reading today:
Post about the modern marketing mix, where does social media fit into it and how or indeed can you measure the return on investment?
I sent this to my CEO, if you work for a nonprofit then you should to. Some good points made by Sasha and thanks to Seth Godin for the heads up.
22
Oct
Posted by Ed Walker as Marketing, blogging, web
Finally got through my feed reader backlog this evening, here’s a couple of highlights that are leaping out at me right now:
Good call from Adam Singer, and I think we’re reviewing everything we currently do at work and changing tactics pretty soon.
Chris Brogan with some great tips on how to build up your blog and build a community around it
More from Brogan about a group blog and how to do it. Currently considering something like this to be used at work right now.
29
Sep
Posted by Ed Walker as Communications, Marketing
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?
