Twitter handle: @ThunderbirdNews
Participant: Brian Camen
Thunderbird School of Global Management, Public Relations Coordinator
From which department does the Twitter profile run?
Communications & Outreach
How often do you monitor the profile?
The profile is monitored a few times per day.
What applications do you use to run Twitter?
The only Twitter applications we use is the basic search function. We have an RSS feed set up to monitor when people tweet @ThunderbirdNews.
Have you determined if more, students, alumni, prospective students, staff, or community members are following?
The Thunderbird Twitter account was rolled out during the last week of the fall trimester So far we have done a soft launch. Students are on break. As of January 5, we have 68 followers without any official communications being sent out to students, alumni and the rest of the Thunderbird community. Once we officially launch the account by notifying our constituents, we expect our number of followers to continuously grow. [Note: This Q&A e-mail interview took place during the Winter break. As of this writing, @ThunderbirdNews has 163 followers.]
What communication goals do you hope to meet using Twitter for your institution?
The primary goal for Thunderbird in using Twitter is to increase our public relations and communications reach to members of the Thunderbird community, prospective students and prospective corporate clients. Thunderbird has more than 38,000 graduates, and our alumni live and work in more than 140 countries. This is a great way for us to help them stay connected and informed about what’s going on at Thunderbird.
We also hope to increase the visibility of our recently launched Thunderbird Knowledge Network, a new Web portal that promotes thought leadership and engages participants in meaningful discussion on global management issues. The interactive site includes a combination of text, audio, video and graphics from Thunderbird faculty, alumni, and students. Twitter allows us to tweet about the latest blog, columns, polls, and forum updates to the Knowledge Network.
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Vedo's Thoughts: The most compelling things about @ThunderbirdNews to me is the good choice to engage in appropriate responses to replies and that they are targeting different members of their community - prospective students, current students, and alumni. I think the challenge for this institution will be to maintain a good level of relevancy for the community. They seem to be off to a good start.
Academia meets Twitter
