@IUBloomington tweets play into recruitment

Followers scrolling through IU’s Twitter account @IUBloomington can read tweets about events and news on campus. Sprinkled between updates, they’ll find @IUBloomington tweeting back to newly accepted students.

Thom Atkinson, IU social media strategist, oversees the official social media presence for the University as a whole, and for IU-Bloomington specifically.

Atkinson and two students respond to prospective students tweeting about their acceptance.

“The recruitment of new students is basically the creation of a relationship,” Atkinson said. “And the better the relationship you create with a student, the more likely they will complete the process to become an IU student.”

The concept of tweeting back to prospective students started a couple years ago, Atkinson said, when he noticed students tweeting to @IUBloomington that they were applying or had received an acceptance letter.

“Students express excitement online with no expectation of receiving a response from the University,” he said.

Since Atkinson manages the @IUBloomington account, he found tweeting with prospective students could create a personal connection with them.

Although not everyone who tweets to @IUBloomington receives a response, those who do get tweets back often express their enthusiasm, Atkinson said.

“The most common response is an individual will favorite that tweet,” Atkinson said. “(It’s) also fairly common for students to reply with something like ‘thank you’ ... It’s also not uncommon for students to brag about receiving a personal tweet.”

For Atkinson and his team, the goal isn’t to capture everyone who tweets about IU. This is primarily because of their limited manpower, Atkinson said.

“But also, we don’t want to make this an automated process as that would completely undermine our intent,” he said. 

Through the two years he has been tweeting back, Atkinson said he hasn’t heard of other universities following suit but imagines it they do.

It’s an important moment in the lives of individuals, he said, and they like to make the institution a part of it.

“Tweets are impersonal, but talking about an institution the size of IU, any personal attention any of us get is significant and has a profound impact,” Atkinson said.