Emory launched a page on YouTube in January as a social marketing strategy to publicize the University through a popular channel of communication.

Marketing Specialist in the Communications and Marketing Division Nicole Anderson said that because YouTube targets such a wide audience, the website offers Emory the chance for “great exposure” among a larger audience.

Ever since the launch of Emory’s iTunes U collection in 2007, the Communications and Marketing Division has been working to get Emory’s name into the community by way of 21st century methods, Anderson said.

Executive Director of Marketing of the Communications and Marketing Division Jan Gleason wrote in an e-mail to the Wheel that the channel was created to serve as an aggregate for the Emory content that was already being posted onto YouTube by students, faculty and staff around the University.

“We think of YouTube as a channel that can bring Emory to life,” Gleason wrote. “We expect to reach primarily prospective and current students, both graduate and undergraduate, and a broad national audience in general through this initiative.”
According to Anderson, Emory is following in the steps of schools like Stanford University, which made its debut on the YouTube website last June. 

She said that Emory’s channel came just in time to be a part of YouTube’s new education initiative.

Last Thursday, YouTube launched it’s EDU site, which is a “volunteer project sparked by a group of employees who wanted to find a better way to collect and highlight all the great educational content being uploaded to YouTube by colleges and universities,” according to the YouTube blog. EDU is a YouTube division that brings together all college channels and material into one category.

Anderson said that Emory’s strategies are changing based on the new types of marketing that are available in this decade.

She said that in the past, publicizing a school meant advertising and receiving coverage in printed newspapers.

Now, she said, Emory is looking towards other mediums.

“Our goal is to really engage all of our audience groups. It’s really about having that two-way conversation,” she said. “By taking an approach to engage people with the University, we’re helping them care about what’s going on here.”

Gleason wrote that Emory is both expanding its current resources and looking into new resource options that will serve as additional social marketing strategies.

For example, she wrote, Emory will be taking advantage of the profile-like features for its Facebook Fan page.

There are plans to post videos on sites like FORA.tv and Big Think and to explore the uses of Twitter, a site that allows your friends to follow your status updates, Gleason wrote.

These social marketing initiatives are the result of a campuswide collaboration between groups such as the Emory Alumni Association, University Technology Services, Arts at Emory and the athletics department, Gleason wrote.

According to Gleason, these partnerships were vital to the launch of Emory’s public iTunes U page, which has seen more than 500,000 downloads since its debut.

“We are collaborating to create shared successes — and to leverage scarce budgets — throughout the University in the social media arena,” she wrote.

Although YouTube and other online tools help broaden the University’s public base, Anderson said that the University’s bountiful content, not the method through which it is displayed, is the forum that best speaks for the school.

“We have fantastic academic content, and having that out in the world will portray Emory in the best light,” Anderson said. “It’s going to say, ‘Look, we have great thinkers, great research ... and oh — it happens to be at Emory, by the way.’”

— Contact Alice Chen.