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.
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.
11
Nov
Posted by Ed Walker as charities, web
Some quality reading today:
Good post about charities needing to embrace social media. There’s a lot bandied around about facebook this, twitter that, but it’s sometimes overwhelming. That’s why Rachel Beer’s guide is an excellent starting point.
It hasn’t happened. But the web does provide a way for specialist shops to take hold of a market and dominate it.
New online only charity that aims to get young people to reflect their views in the media. Seems like a good idea, but as young people are ‘turned off’ from traditional media brands who says they will come back to them to comment?
Yeah! Great stuff. Any organisation that isn’t trying to understand, work with, get involved with the web and social media won’t win in the long run.
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.
