Great Social Media Idea: Puppet Madness

In the spirit of this (off color... apologies) cartoon, I'm going to jump right in today.

Check out this brilliant, off the wall, charming, fantastically well-made, and utterly lovable video from University of Connecticut: 

 It kills me how good this is! We all hear so much about content marketing and how it's so important and blah blah blah that it's easy to tune it out in the same way we do when the dentist tells us to floss more, but things like this, right here, are why it's so crucial for the work we do.

Promoting hashtags and your social media presence is yeoman's work. Every brand out there is doing it, and it's very, very difficult to get people (especially those under the age of 24), to pay much attention. Even more challenging is showing people why they should use your hashtags and engage with you on social media.

Which is why this video is so, so, so freaking great. It makes hashtagging look FUN. Think about that for a second. That's pretty much an impossible task, yet UConn managed to do it in 140 seconds flat. Not only that, but it makes tagging photos on Instagram and posting them on Facebook look like the coolest thing ever, and it shows off some great school pride and school spirit. It's the type of video that can live on in perpetuity, racking up hits on YouTube from now until Google collapses because it is so fun and charming that people will always find it. 

This comment on the video says it all: "Brilliant! Makes me want to go to UConn! "

Also worth pointing out is UConn's great cross-promoting of this project, especially on Instagram (scroll down to posts from earlier in October). Also, be sure to check out what they are doing on social media in general... totally killing it!

One of my over-arching philosophies of social media management is to always hit the pause button and reflect on if I am asking people to do something for me or if I am doing something for them. Am I telling them to click on something or like something or whatever just so I can promote promote promote, or am I providing value - giving people things that they want to click on and want to engage with? Promotion is necessary sometimes, of course, but to pull it off effectively (i.e. getting eyeballs on it), you need to constantly be posting things that people are genuinely interested in.

As social media managers, we all know that the deck is stacked against us. Or, at least, we should know this. Not only does an overwhelming majority of our followers not see what we post (regardless of platform; though I'd say Twitter is the worst and Instagram is the best), but we are competing with countless other brands. It's tough to even get seen on social media, let alone noticed.

How do we break through these barriers? Great content is a great start, as UConn just showed us. Major props, Huskies!