Now that we’ve welcomed in the New Year, many of us are pursuing our resolutions for 2019. It's also a great time for school leaders and communications professionals to take a new look at their alumni engagement strategies. Implementing a few concepts into your efforts can make a big difference when it comes to the connections to maintain with your former students.

Here are some quick ideas you should consider incorporating into your alumni engagement strategy in 2019:

• Collect more data: Like any business, you need to understand your audience if you are to effectively reach it. Focus on expanding your information collection efforts so that you understand who your alumni are and what kinds of information, events and opportunities most interest them.
  
  
• Provide a platform for networking: Many of your former students may be interested in connecting with their fellow alumni, but they might not have a good platform to make these connections. You can offer opportunities for communication and networking, including alumni networking events and online communication platforms.
  
  
• Offer volunteer opportunities: Each one of your alumni has different gifts, talents and skills that your school or district can leverage to reach your goals. You can create volunteer opportunities—such as mentorship programs or fundraising event coordination—in which your former students can participate.
  
  
• Leverage social media: Social media is an essential platform for alumni engagement. If you don't already, maintain an active presence online so that your alumni can follow what you’re doing. Social media enables you to update your followers with powerful, visual messages on a daily basis, which can help you establish more meaningful connections.
  
  
• Monitor your results and make adjustments: The key component to a successful outreach campaign is continuous evaluation and calibration. You never know which strategies and methods will be most effective. Use reliable measurement tools to help determine what is working and what’s not.

There’s no single, cookie-cutter strategy that works for every school or district, but you can take informed steps to improve your outreach campaign and make progress toward your goals. Why not make drastically improved alumni engagement one of your resolutions this New Year?