Have you ever seen a brand post a meme on Twitter, laughed at it, and then thought of the brand again in relation to the meme? That’s the goal for the Center of Academic Success’ Twitter presence, hoping to relate to students currently attending the University.

Marketing and Communications Director for the Center of Academic Success Amanda Rabalais is responsible for promoting and advertising the CAS, along with being in charge of the LSU CAS (@LSU_CAS) Twitter account. She said she enjoys getting to create content that will appeal to students.

“I think what students really resonate with in the memes is this concept that there is no call to action,” said Rabalais. “[Memes] can exist as a funny, relatable joke. They can sit back and laugh.”

Rabalais started talking about the “science” of memes when she posted a photo of her succession document she had been working on:

https://twitter.com/amanda_rab/status/1100509899988045829

The account’s purpose is for students of the University to be aware of the services CAS offers, and the memes help the account gain popularity through likes and retweets. They are the highest-yielding posts from the account.

“If we can get students where they live and go into social media and relate to them where they feel comfortable to talk with us and use our services, then I’m doing my job right,” Rabalais said.

Rabalais also is in charge of the LSU Testing Center account (@LSU_TestingLab), and is currently in the early stages of improving both of the centers’ online presence. Rabalais has different approaches to each account due to the CAS needing to be sold to students, while the Testing Lab is used by every student regardless.

“It may seem like I just post memes all day, but it really does require a large amount of research and just being able to understand trends and demographics,” Rabalais said. “There’s a little bit more that goes into it than most people would imagine.”

Along with the research, Rabalais said she considers many factors before posting, including whether it is appropriate, and whether it is too “cringe-worthy.” She said she remembers memes back when she was in high school that would not be funny if posted today due to the ever-changing evolution of content online.

The CAS also has an Instagram and Facebook account run by Rabalais, yet all three have their own “personas.” While Twitter has a big focus on humor posts, Facebook’s demographic is parents who may want to share what they see with their children, and Instagram focuses on being aesthetically pleasing to fit in with how many people use the photo-based app.

The CAS hopes the memes will draw attention to their services they provide in the basement of Coates.