Great Social Media Idea: Acceptance Letter Signs

Guys, this is a tough one for me. See, there's this really great social media idea I want to share with you, but it's from a West Coast Conference rival school... Santa Clara. (Dun Dun Duuuuuuun!!!) But the way I look at it, UP beat Santa Clara in the women's soccer national championship game in 2002 (our first of two titles, thankyouverymuch), so we've still got bragging rights, even if I do give them some major props here on the blog.

(It'll be a cold day in hell when I post something about Gonzaga though. Sorry Zags... just can't bring myself to do it.)

For a few years now, I've admired a social media initiative Santa Clara has implemented - yes, I have the frantic emails to my coworkers to back up the veracity of this statement and yes, I've been following a ton of schools on social media for years... I'm sort of pathetic like that - and when I saw that they had posted a new round of photos the other day, I knew it would make for a great blog post.

In their admissions packets, Santa Clara includes a fun little poster that says some variation on "Santa Clara Loves Me!" and they have encouraged admitted students to take pictures with them and share them on social media.

No matter what Santa says, the Pilots are still better than the Broncos.  :)

Super fun and cute, right? Check out all the pics from the latest round.

They have proved to be enduringly popular on Santa Clara's social media sites, and I think it's because everyone just loves seeing those fresh, smiling faces of incoming students and everyone can relate to the feeling of when they were first accepted to the school and the feelings of pride and excitement that go along with it.

It's always good to get those prospective students feeling school pride - and love - early, and it's especially good to get them to take a photo sharing that love on their own social media sites. Peer-to-peer marketing is the magic bullet for that age group (for any age group, really), and if they think getting a poster like this in the mail is so cool that they are willing to share it with their friends, there's a very good chance their friends will think it's pretty darn cool too. And, of course, the hope is that those friends will also eventually send in an application.

At some point, I should probably do a whole series on social media and admissions (that's an area I'm really keen on being a lot more intentional about), but until then, the sporadic post highlighting great work like this will have to suffice.

Good job, Broncos! But I hope these kids are prepared for the fact that they will be suffering endless defeats to the fearsome Portland Pilots over the coming years.  ;)