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Outreach Events and Media Coverage
The communications team has sought to increase and diversify
events held at AFSA. This year we held 23 events—ranging from
author talks and movie screenings toWorld Cup viewing parties—
at our Washington headquarters (nearly double the number of
events held in 2013). Our aim is to produce events and gatherings
that are both informative and welcoming to all of our members.
This year has been excellent for media coverage of AFSA. We
are proud that the “Voice of the Foreign Service” has been cited
more than 1,500 times in stories in nearly every major U.S. media
outlet and many outlets overseas. Much of the media attention fo-
cused on AFSA’s “Chief-of-Mission Guidelines,” released in early
2014, and the issue of the ongoing backlog of am-
bassadorial nominees in the Senate.
AFSA used the opportunity presented by
public discussion of ambassadorial appoint-
ments to build important new relationships that
we expect will have a long-term, positive impact
for our members as we move forward on this and
many other important issues by building AFSA
brand awareness and enhancing understanding
of the crucial work done by the women and men
of the Foreign Service.
We expanded our use of social media in 2014,
posting new kinds of content, attempting dif-
ferent kinds of engagement and doing more to
push out provocative content aimed at increasing
feedback and discussion. AFSA sees social me-
dia as yet another way to engage with our mem-
bers—and the public at large—and we welcome
comments, questions and retweets. The “AFSA
Daily Media Digest,” an online compendium of
the day’s news stories, opinion pieces and blog posts about issues
affecting the Foreign Service continued to grow apace in 2014. We
also added a fourth social media channel: the photo-sharing web-
site Flickr. This lets us share even more photographs from AFSA
events, Capitol Hill visits and our members in action.
We continue to see encouraging results from this social media
outreach. Our Facebook audience increased by more than 28 per-
cent this year. The number of Twitter followers rose by 101 percent
and YouTube views were up an outstanding 126 percent. All of
this growth is organic, as we do not actively promote our social
Authors from the
FSJ
’s annual “In Their Own Write” issue
participate in AFSA’s first Book Market in November 2014.
AFSA President Bob Silverman and State VP Matthew Asada, along with members
of the Chief of Mission working group, take questions from reporters during a press
teleconference in February 2014.
Author Ron Capps signs books following his Book Notes
presentation at AFSA Headquarters in July 2014.