Great Social Media Idea: Making Memories... With a Golf Cart

Wouldn't you know it... I fire the blog back up again on Tuesday, and I already got a great recommendation come through on the suggestion box! (Hint: it's to the right.)

Check out this fun video from University of Illinois, where they had someone dress up as an iconic campus statue (the Alma Mater) and gives students a ride to class in a golf cart!

I particularly love the great social media interaction throughout, from the tweets popping up from the students on the golf cart (super fun!) to encouraging students to tweet at the main university twitter account to ask for a ride.

If you'll allow me to get philosophical for a moment (and really, you've got no choice: My blog, my rules)... I'm a huge proponent of doing things like this - fun, silly, random, ridiculous... pick an adjective. For all the carefully crafted and strategically planned social media promotions, often the most memorable and most powerful are the ones that are unexpected and don't have a "point" other than to make people smile. 

Think about it this way... ten years from now, when all these students are sitting around a table with their buddies from colleges, this is the type of thing someone might bring up: "Hey, remember that time when someone dressed up as the statue and gave people a ride to class?" "Oh yeah!!! I love my alma mater... let's all donate a thousand bucks to an endowed scholarship."

OK, so maybe that last part is wishful thinking, but for reals... a big part of our role as social media managers (in my humble opinion) is creating memories. Done right, it's about a whole hell of a lot more than getting "engagement" and promoting events and yet another #tbt photo. Our job is to push ourselves to think big and help enact the fun, silly, random, ridiculous things that make college college, you know?

Here's to the crazy ones, the rebels, the troublemakers... or something like that.

Big thanks to Meaghan Downs for sharing this idea!