Great Social Media Idea: A Different Type of Heart Hand

When you blog, you learn things about yourself. You learn a lot about motivation (or, in my case, lack thereof). You learn about discipline (or, in my case, lack thereof). You learn about your ability to write (or, in my case... do I even need to say it?). You also learn things such as this: Apparently I'm all about the heart hands these days. (See here.) Which is strange, because I've always thought heart hands pretty lame and way overdone. Yet here I am, posting them on UP's Facebook page and now writing about them on this blog. Go figure.

Quick hit on the philosophy of this blog: I want to use this as a place to provide examples of things that I like, in the hope that they will somehow be helpful to others while also providing me with inspiration and ideas for my own professional work. Generosity of spirit - that's my motto. (Plus I want to tap into that consulting gravy train - there's not much competition out there for social media consultants, is there?) Lately, I've been feeling pressure (from where, I can't say) to feature really "great" social media stuff, when sometimes what I really like are sort of mundane, everyday things. Like one of my very first posts back in April, when I liked how Nebraska used spacing in their post. Kinda boring, right? But useful. I have to remind myself: We can't all be doing amazing campaigns all the time. Sometimes a tip about how to make life a wee bit easier is just as helpful as inspiration from a major social media initiative.

With that being said, I absolutely love this image from Soka University, of orientation student ambassadors making an elaborate heart hand to help welcome new students. 

Sowing... the seeds of love... seeds of love...  sowing the seeds of love!

I like it for a lot of reasons - it shows many smiling faces (always a plus!), it's clever, it feels very authentic, and it is a heartfelt (get it?) sign of community from current students to new ones.  All things that make for great, engaging, successful social media.

As we all head into Orientation weekends and move-in times, think about walking over to meet with the student leaders (who are FULL of school spirit) and asking one of them to pull out their phone and put together a collage like this. I'm sure they'd be happy to oblige, and it would be a fun way to involve them with what you do in social media while also helping them achieve their goal of welcoming the students.

Sometimes, it's the small things... simple and successful... that mean the most. Thanks Soka University!  And special thanks to Soka student Hideo Suzuki for taking the pics and putting them together!