Great Social Media Idea: Special Graduation Messages for Family

Here's another great graduation idea submitted via the suggestion box, this time from Stevens Institute of Technology.

It will be explained better below, but the gist of the idea is that Stevens solicited special notes from their graduating seniors to be shown on the jumbotron during graduation as well as tweeted out during the ceremony.

I *love* this idea.

Here are some samples of the type of messages they got:

This is awesome for a lot of reasons, but particularly because families and friends have a lot of sitting around and waiting to do during graduation ceremonies, and I love the thought of special messages from the graduates themselves popping up on the jumbotron and on Twitter... what a neat way to keep them engaged, make them feel special, and (bonus!) checking out/following your social media accounts.

I'm all about leveraging social media to make people really feel something and leave a meaningful and lasting impact, and this fits right into that... definitely something I'm considering stealing for next year's commencement.

As promised, here's more detail:

“I wanted to share a commencement idea we launched for the graduating class. We asked them to email us a special message directed to their loved ones to share the day of commencement on Twitter @FollowStevens and also on the jumbotron. In addition, we asked them to share memorable photos using the hashtag #StevensPride. The goal is to build a relationship with our future alumni community and foster a bond via social media.

We collected the stories on Storify and shared their footage on our main website.

Here are the links: stevens.edu and https://storify.com/FollowStevens/classof2015.

We collected their information within a 24 hours time frame and engaged with the content immediately.

Since the end of January, we increased the number of followers on Instagram by 122%. We plan to continue to engage with our alumni class on social media and stay connected. ”

Definitely be sure to check out the Storify with all the good #StevensPride stuff, and big congratulations on the huge increase in Instagram followers. Job well done, Stevens!