Since the creation of MySpace and Facebook, social media has grown at a rapid pace, reaching out to not only society’s youths but its elderly as well.

With new and different forms of social media constantly hitting the Internet, the way that members of the general public receive their information has and will continue to change to adapt to a faster paced society capable of finding out the latest news with the click of a mouse.

To reach out to its prospective, current and former students, as well as its faculty and staff, the University has created Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages, run by the web communications team in University Relations.

Andy Rainey, director of web communications at the University, said the University utilizes social media channels as additional outlets for high-quality and high-impact content that communicates the University’s key messages with the goal of reaching target audiences on their terms.

“Social media is a big part of our overall institutional communications strategy and is one way that we tell the UA story and engage audiences to interact with UA on a daily basis,” Rainey said in an e-mail.

Rainey said the frequency of updates varies for each channel based on the strengths and capabilities of the individual tool.

“On Facebook, we generally like to have one or two strong updates per day, including news, feature stories, video, photos, etc.,” Rainey said in an email. “We use Twitter as more of a real-time tool for sharing what’s going on at UA right now, so we post new content more frequently there throughout the day. For YouTube, updates are spread out based on the availability of interesting and timely video features.”

For all of the University’s social media outlets, Rainey said the school is constantly tweaking their timing and trying new types of content to find the best way to reach and engage our audiences.

Rainey said that, while it’s difficult to know the exact affiliation of each user of our social channels, the University does use demographic information to understand its audience and ensure its content is tailored to its users.

“For instance, on Facebook, we currently have roughly a 50/50 split between users ages 13-24 and 25 and up,” Rainey said in an email. “That likely implies that about half of our users are current and future students, with the other half generally being alumni, supporters, parents and others interested in UA. Almost a third of our Facebook audience is age 18-24, so current students and recent grads represent a large number of our users.”

Although the University seeks to engage its current students, not all of them find a need to check the sites.

“I have not checked UA’s Twitter because I am not interested in following events based on a status change,” said Hannah Emerson, a sophomore majoring in speech pathology. “That will only take me away from the present more than I already am.”

Others check the University’s social media pages more religiously.

“I check UA’s social media pages on a weekly basis so that I can keep up with upcoming events and important dates that I would not otherwise have remembered,” said Melanie Alexander, a sophomore majoring in biology.

To view the University’s social media channels, visit facebook.com/universityofalabama, twitter.com/UofAlabama and youtube.com/UniversityofAlabama.