Great Social Media Idea: Admissions Awesomeness

My brief foray into longform writing is over! Back to featuring great social media ideas, and my friends - I'm starting this week off with a bang.

I've got quite a few suggestions to sift through (THANK YOU to everyone for submitting so many wonderful ideas!), but I had to start with this example from the University of Florida for the sheer magnitude of what they pulled off on a recent admissions decision day: a hashtag trending nationally on Twitter; a specialized website; creating personalized graphics for admitted students; customized social media and phone background/banner images; and a potential reach of more than 1.6 million users on Twitter. 

Not too shabby.

Be sure to check out the custom website for all the great content... keep scrolling and your jaw will keep on dropping. Amazing stuff.

Not only that, but here's a recap from Florida's university relations blog, as well as a fun behind-the-scenes video:

From the blog:

Every year on Decision Day – the day high school seniors find out if they are admitted to the University of Florida – Admissions and the #UFSocial Team are faced with the challenge of making a 50,000+ student campus feel personal and welcoming to the thousands of high school seniors who receive acceptance letters from the University of Florida.

In 2013, we tackled this challenge by adding the hashtag #UF17 at the bottom of the decision letters to accepted students. This gave the new class of 2017 a chance to share their excitement and interact with each other even before getting on campus. On Decision Day, our team (Bruce Floyd) responded to students using the hashtag.

This year, we wanted to add to give students more than just a hashtag. In addition to tweeting back to students who were just accepted, we also wanted to give them something, an experience.

Florida does have the benefit of their admissions letters being sent out on one day (or, at least, it appears that way - apologies if I'm wrong on that)... a massive one-day event like this is more difficult for schools where admissions letters get sent out in waves, like they do at my school. But still, there's no reason why this has to be a one-day event. As I've written about before highlighting University of North Florida's admissions efforts (what is it with the Sunshine State and awesome admissions work?), a lot of these special admissions projects can work as a yearlong campaign.

They've got a team in the Final Four, they're being featured on this blog... looks like everything's coming up Gators this week!  :)