In articulating and realizing an intentional and strategic social media program, we have generated results that demonstrate the community--‐building capability of social media. Over the course of one year, we transformed our social media activity from personality--‐devoid one--‐way broadcasting to personality--‐rich two--‐way interacting. The research that followed this fundamental shift provided new information about our users that enabled us to tailor our Twitter activity and shape our community around a target population of undergraduate students. In so doing, we have formed a community that has shown new interest in social media content published by the library. Following the application of our social media program, our student user community grew by 366 percent and the rate of interaction with our community grew by 275 percent. Our research demonstrates the value of social media as a community--‐building tool, and our model can guide social media in libraries toward this purpose.