Great Social Media Idea: Graduation Whiteboard

True confession time: I am terribly, horribly, no good, very badly delinquent on my blog correspondence. So many of all you wonderful folks out there who have stumbled into this quaint little corner of the internet have sent in emails and idea suggestions - THANK YOU!!! - but I have been behind on life in general for quite a while now.

No excuse, I know, but it's true nonetheless... I have been scrambling for a few months now just to take care of the simplest of errands, let alone keep up with my email. Ever heard of the term email bankruptcy? Not even joking... I'm considering declaring it.

But mama and papa Kuffner didn't raise a quitter, so I'm going to resist the urge and dive in. If you've sent me something and wondering why I have never responded... I do apologize for that. I'm working on it.

And thank goodness I am working on it, because how else would I come across great ideas like this one from University of Virginia? (Slide left/right for a few examples.)

I'll let Virgina's Rob Seal take it away from here:

During Final Exercises (our U.Va. term for graduation) we asked members of our graduating class to write one word on a whiteboard describing how they felt. The results are on the U.Va. Instagram account. 

Not Earth-shattering, but a fun experiment and a nice counterpoint to our professional photography from the event. 

In a totally unrelated project, we also used Twitter to give away donuts during final exams recently, which was a ton of fun. 

First off: I love the whiteboard... it's an easy and fun way to let your graduates show off some personality during commencement, and - like Rob said - there is often power in having something more organic and unpolished in addition to what you get from a professional photographer.

Second: I love, love, LOVE the finals week donut giveaway!!! Ever since Matthew Anderson from Western Washington University wrote about doing something like this on the CASE blog, I've been a huge believer in doing fun little things like this that connect online and offline in such a wonderful way.

I mean, come on... this is the face of a happy (and satisfied) customer:

Thanks to all the quick students who tweeted back to us on twitter and received a free donut. Good luck on finals!

theuniversityofvirginia's video on Instagram

Well done, U.Va.! And many thanks to Rob Seal for sending in these great examples.