With a Twitter account with nearly 400,000 followers, almost 40 times the population of students at SVSU, Andy Rexford is expanding his influence beyond campus.
Business management junior Rexford started and maintains the Twitter account @CollegeStudent, which tweets about topics relatable to college students.
Rexford’s success on the microblogging site began in March 2013, when he first opened the account with the title “Lazy College Student” based on the Lazy College Senior meme.
Vanguard photo | Jamie Loubert
Above, business management junior Andy Rexford works on the Twitter account he started and maintains @CollegeStudent, which has about 400,000 followers.
Eventually, he dropped the word “lazy” from the title in order to appeal to a wider audience.
“I decided that after a while, there are only so many lazy things you can tweet about,” Rexford said. “(Now) I tweet things that people can literally relate to, like ‘Oh, that applies to me,’ so they’ll retweet it.”
Rexford primarily focuses on schoolwork, finances, social issues and relationships in his tweets, but tries to stay away from any posts about drinking or partying because in general his followers are uninterested in those topics.
“I kind of just know what would do well and what wouldn’t do well,” he said.
Rexford spends a few hours a day preparing tweets for the next day. He draws inspiration from Reddit, Tumblr, friends, his Twitter timeline and his own ideas.
The Twitter account grew quickly after its creation, gaining 8,000 followers in the first day. After 20 days, it had around 50,000 followers. Traffic slowed down during the summer with 135,000 followers, but at the start of the fall semester the account was gaining 2,000 followers a day. Rexford’s next goal is to hit 400,000 followers, up from nearly 390,000.
Part of Rexford’s success is due to his persistence in trying new ideas for accounts until one worked.
“I had a different one before that that was kind of big, and I kept trying to think of different ideas for a new one,” he said. “I went through probably five different ideas that didn’t really gain well, so I just stopped doing them.”
Rexford tweets about seven times a day: usually five regular tweets, and one or two advertisement tweets.
Businesses and corporations that have college students as a target audience reach out to Rexford to advertise due to the popularity of the Twitter page.
Having such interaction has provided Rexford with useful experience in the world of business.
“I have really good relationships with a lot of companies now who I would never have had contact with,” he said. “It’s definitely taught me marketing on a massive level.”
To follow the Twitter account, go to @CollegeStudent.
