I officially love Twitter.  Over the summer, I dove into the Twittersphere and have fully adopted it into my professional life.  Even though I've been fortunate to gain a small following on my @edcabellon Twitter account, I've really wanted to grow our Campus Center Twitter account as well.  I still believe that students are out there on Twitter, I just needed to find them.  Well last night, I did just that.

I signed onto my "@BSCCampusCenter" Twitter account, knowing that First Year students had moved in and many returning students were about to make their trek back to campus.  I went through "http://search.twitter.com" and typed in "BSC".  As the search completed, many of the results turned in the tweets about the "Hertha BSC" German Football team, but a few turned back some Bridgewater State College commentary.  One student's tweets though, stood out:

So I started following her on Twitter, read a few more lines of her Twitter feed, and then started reading her Blog that was linked from her Twitter bio.  She had a video blog post up and some very insightful, and well written blog posts.  Within about 15 minutes, she started following our @BSCCampusCenter account and then Tweeted:

Well, that got my attention   So I read more of her Twitter feed and noticed some BSC references, but nothing too out of the ordinary, so I decided to send her a Direct Message (DM), which is a private message through Twitter that only she would be able to see:

Thinking nothing of it, I went along and continued my search for more BSC students.  Within minutes though, I got a DM back, that just blew me away…..

At that moment, it dawned on me.  That simple act of connecting and communicating from a BSC office made her feel more a part of the community.  Then, in her Twitter feed, I noticed that she had tweeted to everyone:

I was beyond excited!  Twitter had given us the opportunity to connect in such a unique way.  We hadn't even met in person, yet she felt more engaged with the college.  Her view of BSC changed in that one Tweet, at least enough to accept my invitation to come in and meet me and our staff to further our conversation.  Her reply?

I will continue to use Twitter to connect with more students in this way and encourage you to do the same!  Share this story with your colleagues who still may be weary about using Twitter to connect with students, because it can work!

Best wishes on a great opening for you all!