Continuously driving growth for Newhouse PR

This semester, our team had an amazing experience working with the Newhouse PR department. The Newhouse PR department is nationally recognized for its excellent faculty, curriculum and professional opportunities. Our team worked to promote all the opportunities that the department offers for future public relations professionals. 

Specifically, our main focus was to increase traction on the Newhouse PR department’s main social media outlets, including the Instagram and LinkedIn accounts. Our targeted main audience was prospective students who would be applying to colleges this semester. With Professor Anthony D’Angelo, the chair of the Newhouse PR department, our team was able to make some great progress.  

This semester’s team was composed of five members: Account Supervisor Leila Yang, Account Associates Allie Shust and Kaitlyn Paige, Freshman Intern Annabelle Mistretta, and myself as Account Executive. Our exciting work as a team started with creating a content calendar and setting our goals for social media. 

With a focus on Instagram and LinkedIn, we aimed for two social posts a week. When brainstorming content ideas, we aimed to feature courses, faculty members, abroad experiences and other unique opportunities available at Newhouse. 

The main categories of our social media posts include course spotlights, faculty/student interviews, Newhouse resources highlights, and club spotlight posts. For example, we highlighted COM 107 through an Instagram post. As COM 107 is a first-year course that all Newhouse students take, we thought this would be appealing to many incoming students. Another project we especially had fun working on was the Career Development Center (CDC) post. During our content preparation progress, we found that a lot of current Newhouse students have not used the CDC resources. So the CDC introduction post was designed to inform not only incoming students but current students as well.    

Among all of the social media platforms we worked on, our team observed the most growth on Instagram. The Newhouse PR account followers increased by 3.6%, measuring a wide reach from all around the nation, including major cities such as New York City and Los Angeles. We also successfully met our target audience of prospective students, as the highest portion of viewers ranged from age 18–24. In terms of accounts reached, the percentage increased by 1,337%, with interactions from 374 different accounts. 

Working with our team members to create effective content was an excellent experience I could never get anywhere else other than Hill Communications. Not only myself but all of the members were able to grow professionally and develop valuable skills through our partnership with the Newhouse PR department. I greatly anticipate the Newhouse PR department’s continued success.