Great Social Media Idea: #ThinkAndDo

Long day... gonna keep this post quick.

Today's great #hesm idea comes from North Carolina State, with their successful #thinkanddo Instagram contest.

Done in conjunction with a fully integrated institutional marketing campaign, this Instagram contest has been going on for quite some time now. 

It invites students, alumni, faculty, staff, and friends to tag photos that creatively show how they live out the "Think and Do" message in their lives. Not surprisingly, many of the entries showcase academic work and research, but there are a lot of photos of people doing things in the community, participating in school-related activities, etc.

Every month, a winner is selected for a prize... it looks like this month the prize is a GoPro - not too shabby!

I like this photo contest more than a lot of other ones I've seen because it encourages photos that show people being actively involved rather than just beauty/scenic/artistic shots. As nice as beautiful sunset pics are, pics of kids building something in a lab is a lot more useful as crowd-sourced marketing collateral and also gives access to photos that are often very difficult to get - kids working late at nigh in labs, students volunteering, clubs taking part in competitions, students studying abroad, etc.

Well done, Wolfpack!