Great Facebook and Twitter Idea: Freshman Advice

I had a wonderful time at my good friend Sam's wedding this weekend, but I'm pretty wiped out after several consecutive days of merriment and eight hours in the car today courtesy of a four-hour detour to Oregon's only National Park, the impossibly gorgeous Crater Lake. So today's post is going to be short and sweet, with no extraneous writerly flourishes from yours truly (save this paragraph, natch) and no analysis beyond showing off a good idea. Joe Joe needs some sleep. Deal? Deal!

Something that a lot of colleges do on social media around this time of year is solicit advice from the community for the new freshmen. I've written on this blog before about how people love anything to do with incoming freshmen, responding in droves to prompts for advice, tips, tricks, etc. as they adjust to college life. I follow several hundred (maybe 1000+ now?) colleges on various social media platforms, and this has been popping up very frequently and always - always! - gets great engagement rates.

One must-have for dorm life? For me, it was plenty of Capri Sun and Goldfish crackers. I'm not really normal though.

If you haven't done this yet, you should! I'm going to start doing it this week for UP, posting something once a week on, I think, Wednesdays leading all the way up to move-in day on Thursday, August 22. I might even do it more often (Saturdays or Sundays?) if people really are enjoying it.

Appalachian State has put a cool twist on this that I hadn't seen before, going through all the responses and posting a list of the top ones. Great way to re-purpose the content and get more mileage out of all that good community feedback.

Reliable raincoat? Pssssh. Portlanders don't wear raincoats. Or use umbrellas. We get wet and we like it!

Earlier this year, I made a word cloud (using the free website Wordle) out of the responses to a prompt asking who people's favorite professor was at UP... something like that could work really well for a prompt like WSU's that asks to name one thing students should bring to the dorms. 

Word cloud mania! 

Best of all, questions like this are not only a resource to the incoming students but a great opportunity for your social media community to connect with and welcome its soon-to-be newest members.

Good stuff here, and thanks to WSU and Appalachian State (plus literally dozens - if not more - colleges) for the examples of how this is social media engagement gold!