Geneseo College Communications recently introduced Main Stream Geneseo, a website aggregating Geneseo’s social media sites in one easily accessible place. After the site’s introduction, promotion for the project began this week. According to Web Communications Manager Laura Kenyon, Main Stream Geneseo includes information from the college’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest and Tumblr accounts.
“In our experience, we have a lot of people who don’t realize that [Geneseo] is in all these social spaces,” Kenyon said. “We knew people knew we were on Facebook; we knew people knew we were on Twitter. But a lot of people didn’t know we had a Pinterest account or a Tumblr account or what have you.”
“This is a one-stop shop for people to see what’s happening in our social arenas to get a fuller picture of the Geneseo story that we tell online,” she said.
The site took between three and four months to create. Kenyon explained that this process involved research, an internal conversation within College Communications, work with Computing and Information Technology in developing the page, designing the header and creating a focus group.
“Before we rolled this out, we did a couple of focus groups with about 40 students,” Kenyon said. “They liked that there was a spot to see all of the stuff and the functionality of it – that it updates and scrolls across the screen dynamically. We’re pretty pleased with that.”
Although this project took time to develop, it wasn’t costly. Purchasing the site’s design template only cost the school $9.
“I don’t expect people to be coming to this page all the time and be checking what’s happening,” Kenyon said. “What I’m hoping people will do is that this will raise awareness of these other places and then they’ll look for Geneseo in the channels in which they already are … comfortable.”
She explained that, in order to promote Main Stream Geneseo and determine its success, College Communications is asking the Geneseo community to use #GeneseoStream when posting about Geneseo on social media. They will then share this information, as long as the content is appropriate.
“We’re really looking for content that tells the Geneseo story and the Geneseo experience and will be interesting to other people in the Geneseo community,” she said.
Examples of posts include but aren’t limited to watching the sunset, eating at Mama Mia’s with friends or studying in Milne Library.
The site can be accessed through the link on the bottom right of the Geneseo homepage, through the homepage carousel or directly at www.geneseo.edu/mainstream.