Monitoring AFS-USA: A First Look

About AFS-USA

AFS-USA is the independent U.S. division of AFS Intercultural Programs, a 60-year old nonprofit that provides international exchange programs to high school and gap-year students for a year, semester, or summer. AFS-USA is a top leader in the United States’ high school intercultural exchange program industry. According to the AFS-USA website, the organization's mission is to work “toward a more just and peaceful world by providing international and intercultural learning experiences to individuals, families, schools, and communities through a global volunteer partnership.” To do this, AFS-USA finds host families and provides orientations and support to students visiting from different countries, recruits and sends students from the U.S. to other countries, and provides orientation and support for returnees to the United States. The organization is primarily run by volunteers in local chapters and backed by professional staff located at four main offices throughout the country. According to a presentation by Esra Kucukciftci, the Vice Chair of AFS-USA's National Council, about 13,000 students choose to study abroad with AFS Intercultural Programs. Of that number, AFS-USA hosts about 2,500 international students and sends around 1,000 American students abroad. AFS-USA is focused on reinvigorating its volunteer and alumni base. 

AFS-USA’s Target Audiences

One obvious target audience for AFS-USA is the high-school and gap-year age demographic (about 15-19 years old), which is the eligible age group for AFS’ programs. In addition to recruiting participants, however, AFS-USA’s audiences extend to the parents of potential participants, current and future AFS-USA volunteers, and AFS-USA returnees.

According to the AFS-USA website, over 370,000 people have studied abroad with AFS, and at least 100,000 of them live in the United States. This means that AFS’s audience is incredibly diverse in age, nationality, and gender.

In 2010, AFS-USA started the Returnee Initiative Task Force to focus on engaging with AFS returnees in order to refresh the AFS-USA volunteer base and broaden AFS-USA’s network. Though AFS-USA returnees are all ages, the main target demographics for the returnee initiative taskforce are the college-age and young professional returnees.

My Involvement with AFS-USA

I studied abroad with AFS for the year program in Argentina my junior year of high school (2005-2006). Recently, AFS-USA hired me as the Returnee Initiative Communications Intern. Part of my job is to reach out to returnees using social media, so understanding where the brand currently stands, especially with returnees, is very important to my success in this internship and for the success of the returnee initiative.

Initial Observations of AFS-USA in the Groundswell

AFS-USA’s main social media venues are its Facebook page and group (Study Abroad with AFS USA and Ask an AFSer!), its Twitter account (AFSUSA), its Flickr account (AFS-USA Intercultural Programs' Photostream), its YouTube channel (AFStv), and its blog aggregator located at http://www.afsblog.org/. Most of the engagement with these social media venues comes from future and current AFS participants. Very little engagement seems to come from returnees (essentially, AFS alumni). This could be that most of AFS-USA’s social media venues are targeted at future and/or current program participants.

The most recent video posted on AFStv

Searches on socialmention.com, addictomatic.com, twitalyzer.com, Google Insights, and compete.com revealed that overall AFS-USA has a positive, yet not very pervasive, reputation in the social media realm.

According to Google Insights, in the last year, worldwide searches for AFS USA peaked between March 21-27, May 2-8, and September 12-18. There were fewer searches in the fall and winter than in the spring, and there were the least between mid-December and early January. Regionally, searches came only from within the United States. Google Insights did not have enough information to provide more in-depth results.

A comparison on Compete.com revealed that traffic from unique visitors to the Rotary International website, AFS-USA's main competitor, is much higher than on the AFS-USA website.



According to Socialmention.com, in mid-February, the AFSUSA brand had a positive, yet not very well-distributed brand in social media. Overall, social mention

gave AFSUSA 1% in strength, 56:00 in sentiment, 57% in passion, and 16% in reach.



In mid-March, The AFSUSA brand mentions changed slightly, but not very significantly.



According to the listed sources on socialmention.com, AFS-USA’s content appears on many different kinds of social networking sites. The majority of original AFS-USA-related social media content comes from or is aggregated by AFS-USA in the venues listed earlier. Still, the content of blog and Flickr posts often does not directly reference the AFS-USA brand and instead consists of personal accounts of study abroad experiences that may mention the AFS-USA website. These personal accounts that are associated with but not generated by AFS-USA are beneficial for future and current AFS students, but they do not target the returnee population.

In this blog description from the AFS blog aggregator, for example, the author provides an enthusiastic description of what she is blogging about and references AFSUSA, but her actual blog posts are more specific accounts of her time in France.

One qualitative example of the AFS-USA brand appearing in the groundswell without the organization’s facilitation is the following exchange on Yahoo Answers. Yahoo Answers user Maggie O asks, “Can anyone suggest a reliable travel abroad program for high school students? I was thinking about spending a high school semester in France, and am having trouble finding programs. Can anyone suggest a program, and give me the link to their website? Thank you!”

Both users recommended AFS-USA, which is a positive reflection on the AFS-USA’s brand. While hurricane mentioned Rotary, one of AFS’ main competitors, she did not suggest one over the other.

The photos associated with AFS-USA on Flickr that I discovered through addictomatic.com are all positive and portray either smiling groups of diverse people or scenery-shots. These are consistent with AFS-USA’s brand strategy.

AFS Group, 2008-09 Year Program

Posted by AFS-USA Intercultural Programs on the AFS-USA Flickr

Though AFS-USA has an overall positive brand, because its strength is weak in the social media sphere, one displeased social networker can have a significant effect on AFS-USA’s social media brand presence.