Best Social Media Idea of the Month: Marquette's Hand-Delivered Acceptance Letters

First - HUGE thanks to everyone who stopped by the blog in January, took the time to send in encouraging notes and submit ideas, and who have said nice things to me that I definitely don't deserve on Twitter and elsewhere. All you #hesm folks are incredible inspirations, and it's been such a blast writing this blog over the past (gulp) ten months.

In looking over all the posts for January, I was really amazed at how freaking awesome so many of the ideas were. I don't know what got into the water here in 2014, but pretty please send some of it my way. There were several things I could have named Best Social Media Idea of the Month, but I kept coming back to the great hand-delivered acceptance letter video from Marquette. You can read my original post about it, but if you want to skip my blathering on you can watch the video here:

Heartwarming, touching, inspiring... it's all that and more. Of course it's shooting fish in a barrel if you're part of the Marquette community, but even if you aren't it makes you excited for and proud of these incoming students that have worked so hard to achieve their dreams. I mean, come on... how can anyone watch that grandma cry tears of joy without feeling a few of their own well up?

One of the things I also enjoy about this video is the shagginess of it. By that, I mean how it's unpolished and authentic. It allows the student admissions ambassadors that put it together to really shine through. Could it have been shot on a nicer camera with better lighting and better audio and more expertly edited and all of that? Sure. But it would have lost that je ne sais quoi that really just helps it sing.

Take a bow, Marquette admissions and social media team. You deserve it.

But I can't end this post without giving shout outs to some of the other awesome ideas I had the pleasure to write about this month:

• Truman State University's awesome "When the students are away, the president will play" video.

• University of Minnesota's hilarious virtual therapy pets.

• Florida State University's cool graduation countdown and social media hub page.

• University of Virginia's clever Happy Birthday video.

Here's to a great February!