Writing content that will engage alumni and drive traffic to your community site can be tricky. Often you will need to produce content for a broad readership, while maintaining enough relevance for each member to want to return to your site. We have compiled a few of our best tips and examples of great content for alumni below. 

1. Categorise your content

One of the easiest ways to keep alumni engaged on your site is to separate your content into easy sections that alumni can use to find the content that interests them the most. For example, Berkhamsted splits their news into School News, Old Berkhamstedians and Travel Grants, so that alumni can easily see the content they want to read. 

2. Use alumni-generated content

A popular way to generate content in communities is to offer the chance to write or be featured to your members. St Joseph Institution International has a list of questions that their alumni can send in answers to, in order to be featured as one of their alumni spotlights. It creates a lot of quick, easy content and makes alumni feel good to be mentioned!

3. Reference their school year

Alumni are typically far more likely to read content where they might recognise the person being covered, so always make reference to their school years when writing the headline of your alumni features. Concord College always references school years in their communications to alumni and achieve high engagement, with readers clicking through to read the full article on their community site.

4. Stick to the same formats

One of the biggest problems facing content creators in a development office is lack of time. Sticking to familiar structures can help to speed up the process of creating your content, for example, creating a round up after each reunion or event, which will help to get alumni excited for the next event and prompt sign ups.

5. Give you alumni a reason to share your content

Alumni have a powerful voice to drive engagement; by creating content that alumni would want to share with their peers, you can easily increase your readership. Some of the best ways to create shareable content are to include photos, and to mention relevant or influential people when you share your content on social media or through your communications. With ToucanTech, your members receive an email notification when you tag them in a community post, so they’ll never miss your content!

Find more top tips on fundraising, engagement and data on our blog.

ToucanTech customers are creating bespoke online spaces for their members to connect and drive change. Discuss ways to engage your membership association with an experienced ToucanTech engagement evangelist; organise a time to talk to the team here.