With more than 81,000 followers of its @IUBloomington account — tops in the Big Ten — IU uses Twitter for a mix of news and entertainment. It shares pictures of the Nearly Naked Mile or a photo essay of “The Squirrels of IU.”
There are also more urgent applications, demonstrated early on the morning of Oct. 27, when the university’s communications staff joined emergency management’s IU Notify system in posting alerts about a man with a knife on campus.
In its lightest and most serious moments, social media can be used for “community building,” according to Mark Land, the head of the university’s communications department and one of IU’s more active fingers on the keyboard in the Twitter-sphere.
“More and more, our students are engaged in social media,” Land said. “We are more conscious than ever that our students are following us.”
Who’s tweeting?
Land, known as @newsland333, has tweeted more than 4,600 times since joining Twitter more than four years ago. He wishes he had thought of the #IUsaidYes idea, but it’s something he can take no credit for.
Land has learned that running a Twitter feed takes a passion for it, including all of the back-and-forth that comes with social media. And no matter how prominent the public figure, Twitter might not always be in their comfort zone.
When Land moved to IU from Cummins, he checked to see if IU President Michael McRobbie wanted to try tweeting.
That was one of their very first meetings, and Land remembers how that conversation began — and quickly ended. “Don’t ever expect me to tweet,” McRobbie told him.
Unlike Purdue President Mitch Daniels, who now has a following of more than 9,000 people for his handle @PurdueMitch, McRobbie doesn’t want to be followed personally.
Land has approached the president a handful of times to see if his attitude has changed, to see if he’s become more comfortable with the idea, but to no avail.
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