IU social media named top 10 most influential in country

On an average workday, the first thing Thom Atkinson does is check Facebook. Then, he goes to Twitter. He tracks conversations, posts and tweets. He bounces back and forth among social media platforms for the rest of the day.

For Atkinson, IU Bloomington’s social media strategist, this isn’t a diversion from work. It’s his job to keep followers of @IUBloomington and fans of the University’s other social media accounts informed and engaged. Atkinson is part of IU’s social media team, which oversees the online presence of each IU campus.

“What is new and different about our team is we’re not really media relations,” Atkinson said. “We’re not just internal communications. But people are listening to the things we talk about all over the state, all over the country and all over the world. So what we do, really, is public relations in the widest possible sense.”

This ongoing interaction between IU’s social media team and its followers — current students, alumni, prospective students and others — has landed IU among the top-10 most influential schools in terms of social media use in a recent Klout survey.

Klout is a San Francisco-based company that conducts research on social media usage based on three criteria, Klout Marketing Manager Megan Berry said.

The first is the number of people influenced by a social media user’s network. The second measures how much a network influences those people, measured, for example, in how many re-tweets a post to Twitter receives. The third measures how influential a network’s followers are to the network.

All this culminates in a user’s Klout Score, measured from one to 100, said Berry. While the Klout Score of IU and other universities can be tracked year-round, the company publishes a list of the most influential colleges on its blog every once in a while.

IU scored a Klout Score of 66 in the Sept. 30th study, ranking higher than schools like University of California, Berkeley and Louisiana State University.

“The average score is about 20,” Berry said. “Sixty-six is definitely a good score.”
While proud of IU’s accomplishment, Atkinson said the average Klout Score reflects an individual social media user, not a large institution like IU.

“The University as an institution is almost its own kind of celebrity,” he said. “Certainly, we’re no Ashton Kutcher, but we have these many deep, affectionate relationships with our students, our fans and our alumni all over the world, and I think that’s what this really represents.”