Great Social Media Idea: It's All About the People

So... it's going to be another half-hearted blogging effort today. It would be exaggerating to say that I'm on my death bed, but it would not be exaggerating to say that I would welcome death before having another week like this past one. (OK, that would be an exaggeration too, but jeesh... it's time for Joey Joe Joe Junior Shabadoo to get on the mend.)

I pretty much always feature the work of "official" college social media pages, but today I'm going to take a bit of a left turn and feature two really amazing, and similar, student-operated projects: People of UCLA and Humans of Cornell University.

Inspired by the Humans of New York project that has spawned hundreds of similar campaigns in cities across the world, some very talented and enterprising students have started projects like it UCLA and Cornell and, I assume, several other colleges as well.

The UCLA page has gained nearly 2,000 followers in just three days (!!!) and the Cornell page has reached more than 5,000 followers in 40 days. Absolutely incredible, but no surprise given their talent as photographers and story tellers.

They offer an incredible window into the people that make up a college community. I especially love how it's not just students, but faculty and staff and even "forgotten" people like maintenance workers and even neighborhood folks that hang out on campus. 

I can't say enough about how this is what great social media content looks like. Telling the story of a college through it's people, and offering something way deeper than marketing fluff and fill-in-the-blanks and all the other junk that gives social media marketers a bad name.

You owe it to yourself to check these pages out, soak in all the goodness, and think about how you can take inspiration and translate it into your own work. I definitely have, and I hope you will too.

Wonderful job, students at Cornell and UCLA. You guys are amazing.