Ranking: U of Minnesota has a lot of social media clout

These days it’s all about social networking and influence — even among colleges. And it looks like the U of M ain’t too shabby.

A piece on The Huffington Post puts the U in 9th place — behind fourth-place University of Wisconsin, unfortunately, and tied with the U of Texas-Austin and Marquette University  — according to scores generated by Klout, a Web site that evaluates the “influence” of Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Klout scores range from 1 to 100 and take into account about three dozen factors such as number of followers, retweets and comments by other users.

As Huffington Post writer Megan Berry explains:

Twitter influence is a revealing metric for colleges.The most influential ones must be both tech-savvy enough to have a well managed Twitter account and have the most influential professors, alums, and others engaging with them.

The rankings:

1. Stanford University: 70
2. Syracuse University: 64
3. Harvard University: 64
4. University of Wisconsin – Madison: 64
5. University of California – Berkeley: 56
6. Butler University: 56
7. Tufts University: 55
8. Temple University: 53
9. University of Minnesota: 52
10. University of Texas – Austin: 52
11. Marquette University: 52
12. Indiana University: 51