The Foreign Service Journal, June 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2021 55 AFSA NEWS Boosting AFSA’s Social Media Presence Social media engagement is a vital element of AFSA’s public outreach strategy. It’s a useful tool to extend our reach beyond our traditional audience to broaden the domestic constituency for the U.S. Foreign Service. By increasing our activ- ity on social media, we raise AFSA’s profile and name recognition, which is, in turn, critical to our success in introducing the Foreign Service to new audiences throughout the country. Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook allow us to easily connect and share information with our mem- bers and current partners, as well as future partners and supporters. More and more people are looking to social media to stay updated on events and latest developments, and we want to capitalize on that. We have been working to develop engaging messages, interesting content and com- pelling graphics, and over the course of the last three months, have already seen some good results in the form of more followers and more engagement with our content. For example, from January 1 to April 1, we saw a five percent increase in Twitter followers. On Face- book, we saw the engage- ment rate on our posts increase from three percent to nine percent. AFSA members can help us. You can follow and repost the FS stories, event infor- mation and articles on social media. Share our messages and invites with friends and online communities! Not yet active on social media? We can help! See AFSA’s social media toolkit for ideas and sample mes- sages: it’s on the member outreach resources page: afsa.org/first-line-defense. Reposting content is an easy one-click process. With your help, we can reach many more people throughout the United States to let them know about the important and varied work of the Foreign Service and its role in keeping America prosperous and secure. Please start by following us on Twitter (@afsatweets) and Facebook (facebook. com/afsapage). As always, if you have any questions about our outreach efforts or, specifi- cally, about our social media engagement, please contact AFSA Strategic Communica- tions and Outreach Manager Nadja Ruzica at ruzica@afsa. org. n