Great YouTube Idea: Coffee with Carlson

To steal the intro from J.E. Skeets of the Basketball Jones: Good morning, sweet world! Welcome back to the latest edition of Social Media or Colleges, the only website out there that highlights the best examples of social media use in higher ed while also spicing things up with choice 90s jams. It may be poorly written, but it's got style, dammit!

It's also got a very sore author - sore in body and mind, alas - whose kickball team (goooooooooo RiKickulous!) lost in the semi-finals of the tournament on Saturday despite having the #1 seed. A tragedy for all involved (except the team that beat us, I suppose), but at least I got some consolation after it was all over. Pro Tip: Taking a pull of cinnamon whiskey is not a recommended activity after playing five straight kickball games in 90 degree heat and drenched in sweat.

But achy legs and scraped up knees, elbows, and hips (I've never met a head-first slide I didn't like... I wasn't called "Dirt Eatin' Joe" in Little League baseball for nothing!) won't stop me from sharing the good news about higher ed social media, because I'm good like that. And because I don't have anything better to do on Sunday afternoons and I take solace in this blog giving me purpose, despite the shockingly low viewer-count numbers I pretend I don't look at. 

At this moment, I'd like to direct your attention to the comment form on the right-panel of this blog, the one that invites you to submit a higher ed social media idea that you think is cool. It's OK if it's your own... I write about myself all the time! (See above.) I try my best to follow all the goings on out there in the higher ed digital world, but there are so many college and so many social media outlets that it's a Sisyphean task for one man.

So please, please, please make my job just a little bit easier and submit something, just like the fabulous Jamie Kvamme (I've never met Jamie, but she's a reader of this blog which by default makes her fabulous!) of the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota:

I wanted to pass along a new video series we started that's been much more successful for us. We started 'Coffee with Carlson' on the premise that we wanted to showcase what our community is doing, what's important to them, etc. in a more casual setting. We've have 6x more engagement/viewership of many in this series -- much more than any of our other videos, which is a success for us as a small part of the UMN.

Ever since I've seen Jerry Seinfeld's hilarious web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, I have wanted to experiment with an idea like this in higher ed social media. And then lo and behold, it pops up in my inbox all gift-wrapped with a bright shiny bow! These videos are great: short (2.5 minutes tops), personal, and authentic. They showcase a nice scope of the what the Carlson School offers: undergraduate students, graduate students, successful alumni, entrepreneurs, faculty, support staff, career services, etc. (The whole series is here.)

A college's story is often best told through its people, and what better way to tell the story of a school of business than through current/former students talking about how the school helped them reach where they are, and faculty/staff talking about how they can support tomorrow's future leaders. It's no surprise to me at all that these videos have resonated with their community and received significantly more engagement on social media, and I'm sure that the people highlighted in the series are honored to have been asked to and to be a part of the school's promotional materials. Making your people feel special is always a good thing.

To top it off, these videos were clearly thoughtfully put together, with a similar look, feel, intro, music, location, etc. Little things, but they go a long way in making this a tight, cohesive web series instead of a mish-mash of videos.  

Many, many thanks to Jamie for sharing this great web series, and way to go UMN's Carlson School of Management!