Reaching out to university alumni through social media

By Tema Frank. Alumni departments turn to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and more, to engage alumni. This past October, when Felix Baumgartner became the first person to break the sound barrier in a free-fall jump from the stratosphere, the alumni relations department at McGill University realized that the person who designed the outfit used for the jump was a McGill graduate. Within hours, the department had posted an article about the designer on three separate Facebook pages: that of the alumni department, the faculty he’d graduated from, and a volunteer-run branch of alumni. The opportunity to piggyback on news to deepen connections with alumni is one of the many ways social media can benefit university alumni and development offices across Canada. “We need to be where our alumni are,” says Derek Cassoff, director of communications for McGill’s office of development and alumni relations. “We need to be in their newsfeeds.”
And the alumni are decisively there – on all platforms of social media, including Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. More than 90 percent of online adults now use social media regularly (according to the U.S. 2012 Digital Marketer Benchmark and Trend Report) and younger alumni prefer to communicate by social media rather than by email or print. This means that social media is no longer optional for effective communications with alumni. Read more...