Mediaboss Marketing

September 18, 2012

Penn State has received another award to add to its collection.

The university was recently ranked No. 1 for its usage of social networking by Unigo, a company that provides university data and information to US News & World Report and USA Today for college guides and rankings, according to Bill Mahon.

Mahon is the current Vice President of University Relations, but will begin a new role as a journalism and public relations professor in January.

Described on Unigos website as the Top 10 schools where the faculty is on Facebook more than you are, the list put Penn State above Yale, Harvard and MIT, which were ranked No. 2, 3 and 4, respectively.

Unigo cited our Facebook page in particular, which now has almost 280,000 followers, Mahon wrote in an email.

Geoff Rushton, manager of the Office of Social Media in University Relations, said the social media department works hard finding ways to use social media to engage a wide audience, which includes prospective students, alumni, potential research partners and the public in general that might be interested in Penn State.

Were using various social platforms to tell the story of Penn State, and to the best of our ability to engage a really wide variety of people who would be interested, Rushton said.

He said the social media office, which now has a staff of four, examines the demographics of social media websites before they start using them to make their presence more successful.

In examining the demographics on Tumblr, Rushton said they found a lot of phrases like geek chic, which he described as young people wearing big thick glasses and embracing an intellectual scientific image as being cool.

Original post:
Penn State named No. 1 in social networking