Friends, Fans And Followers: Texas A&M’s Social Media Presence Reaches Record Highs

Xbox avatars can now be outfitted with Texas A&M gear.

Texas A&M University has long been a frontrunner in the ever-evolving world of college social media, but the university continues to make a splash across a variety of social media platforms, setting the standard of successful engagement even higher.

Within the last month alone, Texas A&M has surpassed 300,000 fans on Facebook; 21,000 followers on ; 100,000 downloads of its mobile app; 21,000 followers on Foursquare, the popular location-based mobile networking site; and celebrated its fifth anniversary of distributing educational content through iTunes U.

With its brand already on the rise and fueled by athletic conference realignment talks, Texas A&M ousted Stanford University as the most influential college online, based on a record high Klout score of 73 out of a possible 100. To put this score in the context of celebrities, Texas A&M ranks between country music trio Lady Antebellum — Klout score of 72 — and teen idol Justin Bieber — a perfect Klout score of 100 — in terms of online influence.

“The number of friends, fans and followers simply tells us the size of our audience. However, our Klout score gives us an idea of our overall influence online,” explains Diane C. McDonald, Texas A&M’s director of social media and marketing programs. “The Klout score is closely connected to clicks, retweets and comments, so our high score is one indicator that our online audience is quickly and positively engaging with our online content.”

Texas A&M’s successful use of social media has been recognized nationally as well. In addition to Klout, highly regarded tech blogs such as Mashable have featured the university’s various social media platforms.

The university’s social media use has also been implemented to enhance academic programs. For example, at last weekend’s Chemistry Open House, attendees of the College of Science events could check-in on Foursquare to become eligible for prizes and other giveaways. In addition, Texas A&M is using its social media presence to reach younger audiences and introduce them to the university’s traditions. Throughout the month of August, the university engaged its incoming freshman class by encouraging its members to share their first Aggie experiences via Twitter with tweets, photos and video. The university then shared some of this student-created content with its online community.

“Social media is critical for us to create and maintain our community of spirit and build relationships with new audiences,” McDonald says. “It’s also important that we provide value to our friends, fans and followers by participating in conversations that we don’t necessarily start.”

The growth of Texas A&M’s social media presence has allowed the university to continue to extend its brand virtually, including recent partnerships with Xbox — users can now purchase Texas A&M gear for their avatars — and Cityville, the largest online Facebook game, says Shane Hinckley, the university’s assistant vice president of business development.

Followers of Texas A&M on Foursquare can earn the “Im a Fightin Texas Aggie” badge, which launched earlier this fall.

“Texas A&Ms presence in social media is a key element of our overall brand strategy. We have been able to establish a huge following within large online communities like Facebook and Twitter, as well as to extend our presence to less conventional forums like Xbox Live and Cityville,” Hinckley says. “As word of our success in social media has spread, Texas A&M is seeing an increase in national brands that are interested in partnering with us. This increase in interest gives us the freedom to more selectively find key partnerships and propositions that make the most sense and will provide the most benefit to Texas A&M.”

Texas A&M’s first-mover status in social media has been noted across the most popular social networking sites. The university was the first college to reach 100,000 fans on Facebook, the first university in Texas to launch an iTunes U site and the first university to integrate social media into its overall marketing strategy with the “Do You Wonder?” YouTube campaign.

The university was also the third — behind Harvard and Stanford — to partner with Foursquare. A true student-led initiative, this partnership has continued to thrive. Texas A&M was one of the first universities to have a Foursquare Collegiate Badge Program and recently launched a custom Foursquare badge at the beginning of the fall 2011 semester, encouraging students to check-in across 166 campus venues, including the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum, athletic facilities, sites of campus traditions and more.

Texas A&M was also the first university in the country to hold a campus-wide social media scavenger hunt across four social media platforms. To kick off the spring 2011 semester, students used their smart phones to explore the 5,200 acre campus, winning prizes along the way.

Listening to what issues are on the hearts and minds of the campus community, state and nation is critical to Texas A&M’s social media strategy, adds McDonald. This allows for the university to create the right conversations at the right time and jump into existing conversations to show that higher education is still relevant.

“Many of our social media initiatives are student-led and student-driven in a way that fits our strategy,” McDonald continues. “We have a strategic plan and guiding principles for our social media that will not change based on the next technological fad. Most importantly, we have a very loyal and large Aggie network that is full of great social media networkers.”

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