President Gary Ransdell has more than 3,500 friends. Big Red has more than 23,000 fans. WKU has more than 30,000 likes.

And all of these numbers are growing daily.

“Social media is where students are communicating,” said Robbin Taylor, vice president for Public Affairs.

“Our challenge is to be where you all are, to be where prospective students are,” she said.

WKU has big plans for expanding its social media outlets over the coming semester.

Corie Martin, manager of creative web services, said one of their biggest initiatives is FourSquare, a website that allows users to  ‘check in’  to locations around campus.

Martin said they are partnering with departments across campus like the WKU Store and hopefully, the WKU Restaurant and Catering group.

“We’d like to set it up to where students can go in these retailers and when they check in, they’ll unlock discounts,” she said.

Taylor said many divisions across campus are doing their own thing regarding social media.

“Social media is spontaneous,” she said. “It lends itself to a lot of spontaneity, that’s why we have to create more of and we like that everybody is doing it.”

Martin also plans to use the WKU Twitter and Facebook accounts to share news and photos with students and alumni. She said their university Facebook page has had a steady increase of close to 1200 “likes” a month over the past three years.