Great Social Media Idea: Mock PSA

I'm still clearing out the inbox of ideas that have been submitted to me, and you should be excited about that because this one is totally awesome and hilarious!

I could waste my time tappity-tapping away trying to describe it, but why don't I let Gabrielle Linnell from Wellesley College do the talking, since she's clearly better at her job than I am.  :)

It's a 1-minute, student-produced mock PSA on the subject of "having the talk" with your parents about college affordability. Our team came up with the concept as a fun way to share a Wellesley invention we're proud of (a new college tuition estimator that takes five minutes to complete). We entrusted the project to a superb student assistant, who then came up with the final product. As of right now, the video has over 2,200 views in the last five days, which is great for us.

Here's the brilliant video:

It works because it's genuinely funny (the soft piano background kills me), but also because it comes from the authentic voice of students. Utilizing students and tapping into their creative energy is still something I struggle with doing (mainly for lack of effort on my part), so I am always impressed and inspired when I see such a successful project that is entirely student-produced. 

But I love this for a whole other reason too, which is that this video is about probably the most boring thing ever... a financial aid calculator. Important, for sure, and eminently useful for families, but still... YAWN. My financial aid office comes to me pretty often asking me to post things about info nights and important dates and all that, and like any dutiful social media manager I take post them to the resounding sound of crickets. Posts like those are like the zucchini of the social media world - yeah, they are useful and there are a lot of them, but man are they bland and boring. (No offense to all you zucchini lovers out there.)

But then I see something like this, and it totally energizes me to think about creative, outside-the-box ways to promote things that I normally would just hold my nose and post, trying my best to right some snappy copy with the link to attract attention. This video has more than 2,000 views - just think how many clicks it would have gotten if it just would have been a link posted on Facebook. Sigh... sometimes I really do feel like everyone is better at this job than I am!

Props to Wellesley College, and particular kudos to the awesome students who put this together!