President Joseph Aoun is the latest tweeter at Northeastern as he garnered more than 200 followers Tuesday, his first day on the social networking site.
Aoun is one of dozens of university administrators and organizations with Twitter handles, all vying for the attention of students in a crowded social media field.
“The communications and marketing staff is in contact with each other and most, if not all, of the accounts,” Northeastern Director of Communications Renata Nyul said, who applauded Aoun for joining Twitter. “This is absolutely encouraged and I think it’s a great thing.”
Kelly Dwyer, Student Government Association (SGA) Director of Communications, said Twitter has the potential to encourage more dialogue between Aoun with students.
“I think it’ll be a great way for him to connect with students, groups and offices on campus,” Dwyer said. “I’m hoping it’ll make him a little more approachable.”
Whether or not students want to follow Aoun on Twitter will be a different matter, Dwyer said.
“There are going to be students who say ‘Why would we care?’ and there are going to be some who are really interested,” she said. “We don’t get to hear from him too often and it’ll be interesting to hear where he’s traveling to.”
Aoun, @PresidentAoun, wrote in his first tweet he was on his way to a higher education forum in England. As of last night, Aoun follows Northeastern-related accounts such as Vice President of Alumni Relations Jack Moynihan’s @HeyJackNU.
Nyul said Aoun is handling his own tweets and her office has nothing to do with his account.
“We are following each other, we are retweeting and I can see a lot of students following these feeds,” Nyul said.
Besides SGA, numerous student groups and professors manage Twitter accounts separate from Northeastern’s official account, @NewsfromNU. Journalism professor Dan Kennedy, @dankennedy_nu, was listed this month on BostInnovation’s Top Boston Area Professors, Deans and Presidents to Follow on Twitter.
SGA manages both the @NortheasternSGA and @NUSGAPres accounts.
Dwyer said all of these different Northeastern-related Twitter feeds have the potential to inundate students with information, creating social media clutter.
“It gets to the point where students aren’t really noticing [feeds] a lot and have started to become a little immune to it,” she said. “At SGA, we try to keep our posts to a minimum. It would be wise for the university to direct their accounts a little better, but it’s also on the students to follow ones that are important to them. If they want to study abroad, they should really be following that account.”
Dwyer said she and her communications committee are trying new methods of social media outreach to interact more with students, rather than constantly blasting them with information.
She said up until recently groups needed to rely on traditional methods of outreach like posters, in addition to social media, to effectively get their messages out.
Now, Dwyer said, most students hear about events through Twitter or Facebook. But Dwyer’s not abandoning the paper method altogether.
“From my point of view, I think we should use every method to get messages out there,” she said.
News Qs: Now that President Aoun is on Twitter, what should he tweet about?
By Zack Sampson, News Staff
“Policy, you know, letting us know about what they’re doing with the YMCA. Just different things like that that students aren’t always informed about right away.”
– Chet Eckman, senior finance and accounting major
“Maybe articles about Northeastern, information regarding the university, maybe some fun facts as well.”
– Bryan Mulcrone, freshman chemical engineering major
“The only thing I’d be interested in knowing is things that happen around campus in terms of safety. I know Northeastern sometimes tries to hide that stuff from students – I think that’s important. He should tweet about campus events that aren’t always well-advertised, like Homecoming Week which people don’t pay attention to because we don’t have a football team anymore.”
– Emma Caggiano, middler business major
“I think it’s kind of pointless for him to have a Twitter, honestly. Maybe tweet about issues at the university, but he doesn’t really want to hear anything the students have to say. And I’ve already read a couple of tweets from people saying, ‘I’m not following @PresidentAoun, he hasn’t said anything, he has nothing important to say,’ and I kind of agree with that.”
– Tara Fernandez, senior communication studies major
“Probably talk about new programs that they’re working on at school or things that the school’s focusing on in terms of obviously, co-op, career services, athletics — things like that that they’re trying to change about the school, because a lot of things happen and no one ever hears about them.”
– David Gass, middler communication studies major
