Great Social Media Idea: Biggest Fan Contest

Apologies in advance for this being such a short post... I've been horribly sick the past few days and am just now becoming able to do more than a Veronica Mars marathon with 7UP and Saltines.

Portland State University, the large state school in downtown Portland that the school I work for (University of Portland) gets mistaken for pretty much non-stop, recently crossed the 25,000 follower mark on Facebook and is putting on a fun contest where they are seeking out entries for their 25 biggest fans.

(Side note: Oh, the joys of doing media relations and working really hard to get a cool story or an expert professor on TV only to have the reporter say on air "students at Portland State University are blah blah blah..." SO ANNOYING. Rant over.)

First off - I love the graphic, which I'm assuming - though I could be wrong - was designed by my kickball teammate (Go Rikickulous!) and super talented graphic designer Brett Forman. They are using a version of it as their FB banner right now, and the square shape is a dead giveaway that it was properly sized for Instagram as well. I've seen a lot of "We've got X number of Fans Now!!!" posts, and so often they don't get a whole lot of traction because, to put it bluntly, the design sucks. This, on the other hand, is the opposite of sucks.

I'm not quite sure what the reward will be for being named one of the biggest fans, but knowing Christian Aniciete, all-around great guy and Portland State's ace social media guy, whatever he's got planned it will be cool. No matter what, it's a neat thing to highlight fans, and I'm sure the people who get chosen will be thrilled to be featured - it takes a special someone to self-select themselves to even enter a contest like this, so you know you'll be choosing from some hyped-up fans.

The entry form itself is very simple, and - not sure if PSU is going down this road or not, so this may be moot - it also has the potential to double as a great way to get new/updated contact info for the database. (This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately... a recent campaign I've been tangentially involved in exposed a shocking number of young alumni who have opted out of email solicitation and/or have not provided their personal emails beyond their old school address.)

OK... that's all for now. Time for more sleep. After maybe one more episode of Veronica Mars, that is.