Best Social Media Idea of the Month: CSU's Tuition Video

Welcome back, everyone!

Really quick before I get into crowning November's "Best Social Media of the Month" victor - I have finally bitten the bullet and switched this blog's twitter account to @joekuffner. (Please follow! If you're into that kind of thing.) The erstwhile @smforcolleges has been put out to pasture, where I'm sure it will lead a happy life with all the carrots and hay it could possibly handle. (Allow me to be extra annoying and remind you that I have a Facebook page for this blog too.)

Now onto the main event, in which I give major props an excellent Colorado State University video that explains how student tuition dollars are spent. My original post about this video explains all the reasons why it is so great, but I'll elaborate a bit more here.

Before I forget, I want to give a particular shout out to the artist - Karina Mullen, a CSU alumna, which is really cool - and her company ConverSketch. It's amazing how such a complex and dry subject like budgets and tuition dollars can become so engaging with the right visual and graphic presentation. 

I think I gave the nod to this video over some of the other very strong ideas I featured in November is because of the importance of the subject matter. When articles like this and this and this and this and this and this (all in major national publications - and that's just from last month!) keep coming out that question the worth of colleges (or, at least, some majors), discuss the "higher ed bubble," and examine whether or not college is a good decision for everyone, you know it's 1) an entrenched national trend and 2) a major, major challenge for anyone working in higher ed marketing.

We can't take ever-increasing applications for granted anymore. It's up to us to better articulate the reasons why college is still a great investment for most students. And up to this point, I haven't seen a better, more social media-friendly way that this argument has been made than this video from Colorado State.

It's so critically important to show that universities are good stewards of tuition dollars and to highlight the still-significant ROI that colleges provide their alumni. The stats are in higher ed's favor, but how do you make the stats actually mean something to people, make them accessible? Colorado State found a way.

This issue is only just scratching the surface... it's been stewing for a few years now, and it's going to hit like a hammer soon enough. It's imperative to get out in front of it, and there's no better time than the present to start thinking of ways to communicate the true value of a college education in new, exciting, and engaging ways.

Big kudos to the marketing team at Colorado State University, and congratulations on such a fantastic idea and example of great social media work.