The EAA gets savvy with social media

Twitter. LinkedIn. Facebook. The Emory Alumni Association. It's a neat equation. With Emory's alumni audience steamrolling onto worldwide social media platforms, the EAA is working hard to make sure they have a friendly face (or profile) waiting for them when they get there.

Illustration by Cory Lopez 10C

As more and more Americans flock to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, universities across the country are jumping on the social media bandwagon. Alumni associations, in particular, are harnessing the power of social media websites to expand their reach and engage alumni, and the Emory Alumni Association (EAA) is ahead of the curve.
           
The EAA continues to ramp up its presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and positive effects are growing. The EAA’s decision to leverage such Web 2.0 tools was driven by simple logic: “If you want to bring your message to people, you generally have to go to where they are,” said Erin Crews 09C 09G, communications coordinator at The Galloway School and the creator of the EAA’s Facebook fan page.
           
And where are the people?
           
“They are overwhelmingly on Facebook,” Crews said.
           
Originally developed for college students, Facebook has grown into the world’s largest social-networking platform, boasting more than 300 million members worldwide—almost the size of the current U.S. population. And its users are extremely active: recent statistics show that in total, members spend 8 billion minutes on Facebook every day.
           
To tap into that burgeoning network, the EAA launched a Facebook fan page in July. Within less than two weeks, the page racked up more than 1,000 fans, a number that has grown to more than 1,300 currently.

Unlike traditional means of communication, social networks like Facebook are an effective “way to build a back-and-forth conversation with a group of people,” Crews said. “Just emailing information doesn’t cut it anymore.”

Fans who visit the EAA’s Facebook page will discover a variety of features: links to the daily post on the EAAvesdropping blog, recent campus news, updates on events, and pictures of Emory highlights. All stationed at one site in cyberspace, EAA’s Facebook page unites the various subgroups of Emory alumni into one common forum.

In many ways, the EAA’s Facebook is geared largely toward a younger audience, with most of its fans between the ages of 25 and 34. But Facebook is beginning to age: the median age of its users is now 33, and the fastest growing demographic is users over 55. With this shift in demographics, the EAA’s page is “garnering older fans,” Crews said.

The EAA has also plugged into LinkedIn, a premier social networking site with a more professional bent than Facebook. Launched in 2003, LinkedIn has a worldwide membership of more than 50 million and is adding approximately 1.5 million new users each month.

Just over two years ago, Paul Baker 07T helped Emory take hold of this new medium when he developed an EAA LinkedIn group. The network “provides another avenue to create linkage among people who are Emory alumni,” Baker said. The group now has grown to more than 2,900 members, and Baker expects to break 3,000 by the end of the year.

The group also facilitates a more interactive dialogue among Emory alumni. With a recently added job board, EAA group members can post and discuss job opportunities, promote networking events, and share career help and resources. “It offers a platform for posting news [or] events, for discussing items of interest either Emory specific, or for hearing opinions of people who came through Emory, reinforcing contact and connectivity,” Baker said.

LinkedIn helps “maintain a sense of belonging to a community,” especially for alumni who are scattered across the world, Baker said. Emory’s LinkedIn presence is decidedly more career-oriented than Facebook, drawing an audience primarily interested in maintaining professional contacts. It’s like a “Rolodex on steroids,” Baker said.

The EAA is also trying to capitalize on the web’s fasting growing social networking tool—Twitter. This microblogging site, designed for quick 140-character messages called “tweets,” grew over 1,300 percent in one year to more than 7 million users, according to the Pew Research Center. What’s more, these millions of tweets are increasingly coming from the 35-and-over demographic.

“Alumni engagement is one of our larger goals, and Twitter is definitely engaging them,” said Cassie Young 07C, coordinator of alumni programs and the EAA’s resident Twitterer.

Since April, the EAA has been tweeting almost daily, sharing Emory events, pictures, updates, and links. The “EmoryAlumni” Twitter account has already built a base of more than 500 followers. “We try to aim for all audiences—young alumni to more ‘seasoned alumni’ and domestic alumni to international alumni,” Young said.

Sometimes, the EAA will use Twitter as a marketing tool, promoting EAA programs and events while also “harping on the nostalgia of days gone past,” Young said. Unlike other, more-traditional means of communication, Twitter allows organizations like the EAA to connect with their audience in a “relaxed or low-key” manner, she added.

Through its Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn initiatives, the EAA has become a more networked organization (as has the University as a whole). And the EAA's efforts are bearing fruit, particularly among young alumni. Suzanne Kianpour 09C has an account on all three EAA social media sites. “Since I moved to Washington, DC, EAA social media alerts have let me know ways to connect with other alumni in this new city,” she said.

There is no question that social media represents a shift in the way we communicate. It has moved beyond the fringes—it’s mainstream: nearly one in five Americans who use the Internet also use some social networking service, according to the Pew Research Center. This means traditional media won’t cut it anymore: social media is the new frontier. There might still be a ways to go, but the EAA is certainly on the right path.—Cory Lopez 10C