Great Social Media Idea: Live Commencement "Tweet to Screen"

Whenever I see a "text to screen" promotion - be it at a concert, a movie theater, a sporting event, whatever - I always enjoy it. It's silly, for sure, but there's something so fun about being able to see something you or your friend texted in pop up on a big screen for everyone to see. I can't help myself.

And, I can't imagine a better place to have it then during a multi-hour ceremony that is, as part of its nature, boring as all get out: graduation. Which is exactly what Minnesota State-Moorhead did this year during its commencement ceremony:

Super fun, right?

Not only that, but MSU-Moorhead embraced graduation selfies - which, though I can fully understand why a lot of schools have banned them, do make for fun and sharable social content - and did a great job promoting its #MSUM2014 and #DragonPride hashtags, which trended locally on Twitter and together got 3,000+ tweets. 

But don't just take my word for it - check out this great article from the MSU athletics website that has a full recap of the commencement social media activity. A choice bit:

MSUM also allowed selfies, which had been banned by many institutions across the country like the University of South Florida. MSUM even shows tweets from the crowd on the video board as students walk across the stage. "We wanted people to share how much they love MSUM and the experience of graduating," said Digital Marketing Specialist Meghan Feir. "This gives everyone a chance to feel like they're a participant rather than a spectator for the ceremony."

Pulling off something like a tweet-to-screen board at commencement takes full buy in from university leadership, so props to the MSU-Moorhead executives that had the sense of humor and guts to make it happen. I'm sure there were people who were concerned about the appropriateness of it at a lofty academic event like this, but it makes me happy to know that there are leaders willing to embrace an interactive social media feature on such a huge level.

Well done, Dragons! And H/T to my co-worker Jon Brooks for tipping me off to this idea.