Though UNH alumnus Tyler Wentworth ’08 graduated with a major in political science, the vast capability of social media has seemingly pulled his career path in a direction that he didn’t see coming. 

Currently the senior producer of social media under the Communications of Public Affairs department (CPA), Wentworth now works with the university’s social media accounts to help promote the multitude of stories that UNH has to offer.

“When I was a [UNH] student, Facebook was founded and throughout my undergraduate years, social media was coming into its own and really became a force when I started coming into my career,” Wentworth said.

After graduating, family and friends encouraged Wentworth to get involved in the profession of recruitment. He eventually landed jobs at first  Lasell College and then at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he worked for several years. It was at these universities that he first found a passion for telling the stories of campus community members through his management of Facebook pages and other social media platforms. Wentworth began working for UNH in 2013, and he now commands the university’s social media realm.

“I’m passionate about the stories this institution wants to tell and it drives me,” he said. “I want to be able to share that voice with the public…we have students that are top class.”

According to Wentworth, about 90 percent of the population at UNH checks their social media accounts at least once a day; Facebook has 1.79 billion users and, in the United States, 68 percent of all adults have a Facebook account.

“Social media has become an ever-present part of everyday life,” Wentworth said.

Wentworth and his colleagues, who he calls his “mighty team,” manage the main university account, along with various alumni and student social media accounts.

“The main account serves as our voice for the institution. Here we talk about funded research, or admissions related content, snow days, etcetera. We use our social media accounts to talk about how we represent our stakeholders and our students,” Wentworth said.

“The alumni account is engaged toward a particular section, we try to engage close to 140,000 alumni around the world. We focus on telling alumni stories, whether they achieve great things, win awards and just the accomplishments [our] alumni make,” he said.

The department’s student interns, whose respective majors include communication, business and studio arts, run the student accounts. This program allows the interns to serve as the voice of the student body through the student account while simultaneously getting social media and marketing experience.

The UNH student Snapchat has also started a “Takeovers” program, where selected members of the UNH student body share a day in their life as an UNH student, including their class time, extracurricular activities and other aspects of their student life.

“Our UNH student Snapchat account allows for organizations around campus to show what they do, and then we download the stories onto our Facebook page to allow our students’ [stories] to live on…because the 24 hour thing is terrible sometimes,” Wentworth said.

For Wentworth, social media is more than a platform for self-expression, rather it opens a gateway to pursue his passion to provide a stronger voice to tell the many stories of the UNH community.