Posted by Brad, Chief Explosion Officer
BlueFuego has arrived at NACAC! Stop by Booth #1234 to say hello if we haven’t had the chance to meet, and enter for your chance to win a shiny new Macbook Pro! We’ll draw the lucky winner on Saturday. Also, we have a few BlueFuego shirts with us, so come let us know you read the Fuego Files and we just might have one for you. 
Don’t party too hard on Thursday night at the awesome events such as the YouniversityTV Omega Bowl II or iDrink 6.0, because you’ll want to get up bright and early for my Friday 8:30am presentation in Room 314. I’ll be talking more about Integrating the Social Web into your Recruitment Strategy. (Seriously, don’t miss it. But seriously, I’ll see you out on Thursday night.)
If you’re at NACAC, hope to see you soon!
Posted by Brad, Chief Explosion Officer
WOW! When BlueFuego created the Race to 100K, we had anticipated a close race between Texas A&M and LSU. We could not believe it when the Aggie Nation reached the 100,000 fan mark a mere 90 seconds before LSU, capping off a monumental comeback over over 17,000 fans in less than 36 hours. (That’s almost 8 fans a minute for 1.4 days. Another way to look at it: For the past 14 days, they’ve gained 2.5 new fans per minute.) The 50,000 new fans on the TAMU Facebook page are more than all but 2 schools in the nation have on their entire page. Think about it… TAMU’s new fans this week would make the top 5 pages in the nation on their own! Texas A&M gained more fans in one week than 99% of colleges and universities have on their Facebook Fan Page. Quite the accomplishment! Congrats again from BlueFuego on winning 100,000 pennies. They truly proved it this week…. don’t mess with Texas!
We quickly sent the 100,000 pennies to TAMU for their Scholarship Fund, and a special ceremony to celebrate the win was held last week on campus. They posted pictures on their Facebook page, here are a few from the album.
The "100K Pennies at Sully Ceremony" celebrated the great show of Aggie Spirit in the Race to 100K Fans on Facebook.
Texas A&M Interim President R. Bowen Loftin, Class of '71, congratulates students.
Another big congrats from BlueFuego to TAMU for their photo finish on the Race to 100K, and to LSU for being the second school to cross the 100K mark. If you missed the finale, check out http://bluefuego.com/race for the video recap of the event. To all other schools continuing their march to 100K, good luck!
By the time you read this, you might have missed the Race to 100K! We’re hosting a contest for any college or university fan page on Facebook. The first institution page that reaches 100,000 fans will get 100,000 pennies donated to a scholarship of their choice!
The two schools that have broken out of the pack are Texas A&M and LSU. Both schools are now within 5,000 fans of 100,000 total fans as they race for the prize. LSU surged ahead early in the week, but TAMU is fighting back…. quickly. Here’s a snippet from their Fan page:
In a tremendous showing of Aggie spirit from around the world, over 9,000 new fans joined the official Texas A&M Facebook page in the last 24 hours. The surge to 92,500 fans is in response to the question, “Should Texas A&M concede the Race to 100K Fans to LSU?
Until Tuesday night, Texas A&M University had the top university-sponsored Facebook page in the world with more than 83,000 fans. In one day, LSU surged from 81,000 to 96,000 fans – putting the Aggies in second place. With the sudden gain by LSU, everyone watching the contest expects that LSU will win the race by this weekend.
However, in a tremendous show of Aggie Spirit from around the world, Texas A&M rallied from 83,000 to 92,500 fans in the last 24 hours. LSU has almost reached the goal with over 97,500 fans. While it’s a long shot for the Aggies to reach 100,000 fans before LSU, a second comeback in the next 24 hours would show the spirit and strength of the Aggie network.
Aggies, this is your page. This is your race. Invite your Facebook friends to become fans by clicking “Suggest to Friends” in the upper left-hand corner of the Texas A&M Facebook page.
Texas A&M has achieved tremendous growth in the past 29 hours. They’ve averaged one new fan every 8.5 seconds and have grown at over 10 x’s the rate of LSU today. At this pace, Texas A&M will hit 100,000 fans in 11 hours or less. To watch the race in real-time and keep an eye on each school’s progress, hop over to http://bluefuego.com/race. As one TAMU fan says, “This is more fun than the presidential elections.”
Check it out!!
Earlier this week the team at Indiana University East launched their socially integrated homepage at http://www.iue.edu. This new homepage is the result of a lot of hard work and new social web strategy, in addition to lots of buy-in and support from the top level. (Yes, you can find their Chancellor on Twitter at @Paydar. According to http://whendidyoujointwitter.com, he was on Twitter months before @presidentgee.)
We’ve worked with the team at IU East for several months now and helped lay out the framework and strategy for their social web efforts for marketing and recruitment. It’s exciting to see this project come together! Tweets, Flickr pictures, YouTube videos, and a large piece of real estate dedicated to the student bloggers.
Congrats to the team at IU East for a successful launch of their new site! Be sure to check it out.
“We are experiencing record enrollments at Indiana University East, and it’s been great to have BlueFuego as a partner in our growth and success. They bring first-hand experience, a wealth of research, and a creative, cutting-edge approach. We’re excited about working with them again for the 2009-10 academic year and continuing to harness the power of social media.”
Rob Zinkan
Executive Director for External Affairs
Indiana University East
—
Are you ready to Ignite the Fuego? Contact us today!
Are you a fan on Facebook? http://facebook.com/bluefuego
Posted by Brad and Joe, BlueFuego, Inc.
When we released our initial research on Social Web Callouts six months ago, we had a hunch that the numbers were going to quickly grow. Now that we’ve compiled and crunched the numbers again, we’re excited to share some of our findings with you. Please feel free to pass this along to your co-workers and colleagues, especially if you are trying to make the case for your institution!
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License
Of the 1,387 four year schools researched on August 1, 2009:
562 schools (40.5%) had one or more Social Web Callouts (SWC’s) within the criteria.
54 schools (3.9%) had SWC’s on all three criteria (Main, Admission, Alumni).
161 schools (11.6%) had SWC’s on 2 of the 3 criteria.
Of the 1,387 schools, 247 (17.8%) had SWC’s or links on the main .edu homepage. Of these 247 schools:
78.1% linked to Facebook
64.4% linked to Twitter
44.5% linked to YouTube
21.0% linked to Flickr
12.2% linked to MySpace
9.3% linked to LinkedIn
6.1% linked to YouTube (Embed)
Of the 1,387 schools, 235 (16.9%) had SWC’s or links on the main Admissions site. Of these 235 schools:
80.9% linked to Facebook
45.6% linked to Twitter
29.8% linked to YouTube
12.3% linked to Flickr
10.2% linked to MySpace
9.9% linked to YouTube (Embed)
3.4% linked to LinkedIn
Of the 1,387 schools, 282 (20.3%) had SMC’s or links from main Alumni site. Of these 282 schools:
87.23% linked to Facebook
42.20% linked to LinkedIn
40.78% linked to Twitter
18.44% linked to YouTube
12.06% linked to Flickr
11.77% linked to MySpace
5.32% linked to YouTube (Embed)
