Emerson named top 10 social media college

Emerson College has been named number eight in the country for its use of social media by StudentAdvisor.com, moving up five spots from its last ranking of 13.  Emerson was compared to more than 6,000 federally recognized colleges and universities in the United States for their mastery of public social media methods, tools and websites.

How did a small college like Emerson reach the top ten of higher-education social media?

“We’ve been seeing a lot more engagement on Emerson’s Twitter, Facebook and YouTube over the last few months,” said Dean Tsouvalas, StudentAdvisor.com editor-in-chief. “There was a lot of engagement especially around the EVVYS. It was such a big event that I think the excitement over that helped pushed Emerson up in the rankings.”

StudentAdvisor.com even linked to the EVVY Awards opening number #SoEmerson in their description of Emerson’s social media presence.

“Emerson students are using social media in all kinds of ways—to keep in touch with their friends, to plan events, and to share news and information,” said Andy Tiedemann, vice president for communications and marketing at Emerson. “They are a big reason why Emerson did so well in this ranking.”

Among the other colleges and universities that made the top ten were Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Notre Dame.

The rankings are based on how actively and effectively each school engages its audiences on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media tools, such as iTunes and podcasts. The ranking methodology also takes into account the size of each school’s population and other metrics, to gauge overall reach and effectiveness. A quantitative score for each school based on this information is then formulated.

Student Advisor.com, owned by the Washington Post, is an online destination that helps students and their parents find the right colleges.