Great Social Media Idea: Video Tribute to a Beloved Staffer

This is a really great one today, folks. Of course I like all the ideas that I post about on this blog, but sometimes something really jumps out when I'm going through my feeds and just sings, you know what I mean?

So spend a few minutes with this beautiful, loving video tribute to Andrew Gaines, a retiring shuttle driver at Creighton University.

THIS. This is what social media for colleges is all about. Universities are full of people like Andrew Gaines, from professors to janitors and everyone in between, who care so much about young people that they give their lives to serving the students.

We all know about the looming threats of MOOCs, and what better response to the criticisms that colleges are a dying model and everything can be learned online than to show something like this that shows so profoundly the critical importance of students learning from and being cared for by people like Andrew.

In just a few short minutes, you can see so clearly that this man represents everything Creighton hopes to sell prospective students on - this is a place where you'll be cared for, where you matter, where people know your name, where you're not just a face in the crowd, etc. Watch this, and you get a real sense of the community of that place and the people that exist within it.

And not only is the messaging wonderful, but it's a lovely bit of filmmaking too... big kudos to the team at Creighton that put this together.

Predictably, it has been shared many times on social media, eliciting comments like this:

There is absolutely, positively no way a university could buy an ad as good as having an alumna sharing with the world how wonderful her experience was with Creighton and with its people and how well supported she felt there.

I've written about the power of highlighting campus legends in the past, and its absolutely true in this case - every college has someone like this, and it's well worth your time to seek those people out and spend some time with them. And if you can swing it, you could do a lot worse than what Creighton did - follow them around for a day and see what earned them such legendary status.

Hopefully this video has left you inspired to do something similar on your campus - I know my wheels are already turning. Thank you, Creighton, for the wonderful video and inspiration!