Texts, Tweets and More!

Today Hu Womack of ZSR Library and Gretchen Edwards of Alumni Services presented on social media at the Raleigh Wake Forest Club’s April “Lunch ‘N Learn” event. The club hosts Lunch ‘N Learns once a month, which provide an opportunity for area alumni to gather for a program including lunch and a speaker. Pat Boone from Alumni Services coordinated this event, and attended in order to take care of all the details.

ZSR Library and the Alumni Office have collaborated on hosting Texts, Tweets and More: An Introduction to Social Media twice before for Winston-Salem alumni. The overwhelming success of those events made it a natural fit for the Raleigh WF Club. The presentation covers the basics of social media and is designed for the alumni audience to leave with not only a better understanding of social media, but an increased sense of how they can best utilize the tools in their lives. Hu and Gretchen provide information on current trends, helpful hints, use case examples, and even personal stories about social media so that those in attendance can make informed decisions on using social media going forward. At today’s event they discussed Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest.

(Click on the image below to view the slides.)

Questions were encouraged throughout the program. Alumni in attendance represented a range of class years, from ’64 to ’05; and career paths, from retirees to lawyers to a landscape designer. This diverse audience made for some thoughtful discussion! Inquires ranged from the mechanical (“How do I friend someone on Facebook?”) to the strategic (“What type of person should I connect with on LinkedIn?”). Hu and Gretchen talked about the nomenclature of each social network (Like versus Friend on Facebook, Tweet on Twitter, Circles on Google+, and so forth), how to become an industry influencer through sharing and analyzing content, the search functionality of hashtags on Twitter, and more.

All in all, Hu and Gretchen enjoyed connecting with Raleigh area alumni and bridging the gap between the offline and online worlds. They received great feedback and hope to take Texts, Tweets and More! to more alumni clubs in the future.