Best Social Media Idea of the Month: Perls of Knowledge

I'm a little bit late with this, but it's a free blog and a free country - I'll post my monthly social media award when I darn well please! So what if it's already 10 days into the next month?

August was replete with endless orientation/freshman welcome/move-in day social media fabulousness, but at the end of the day, I kept coming back to the amazing Perls of Knowledge video series from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. (Read my original post here.) So, congrats, Huskers - you win the Best Social Media Idea of the month award! Your check is in the mail. 

Honorable mention goes to University of Minnesota's Coffee with Carlson; University of the Pacific's user-generated Top Ten list; and Wake Forest's orientation Tagboard. (More on that last one here.)

There's a lot to love about this campaign, but most of all it is just so perfectly designed for social media consumption and sharing. Short. (So short!) Funny. Entertaining. Addictive in the way that you end up watching three or four before realizing what just happened. 

Best of all, they have a true goal beyond just being funny and getting engagement. The whole series is for admissions, as a port of entry for students interested in the school to learn more. It has complete buy-in from the whole university - it recently was the main feature on the landing page of university website - and it has been rolled out with purpose and clarity. Just excellent stuff all around.

And, might I add, effective at achieving its objective. At the risk of sounding like a left-coast snob, there is a stereotype about Nebraska and other "flyover" midwestern states as being boring and something of a cultural backwater. Luckily, I've spent a bit of time in places like Kansas City, Omaha, and - yes - even Lincoln, to know this isn't true, but there is still something of an image problem for those states, at least when it comes those of us who live within an hour or two of an ocean. So a video series like this - what with its freshness, innovation, and hilarity - is just the sort of thing to make students from outside the region take notice.

As I said in my original post, heaps (I used this word specifically for my long-lost Australian friend Pete Keen) of credit goes to UNL chancellor Harvey Perlman, both for his willingness to take part in something like this and for his obvious comedic chops. It's a rare university president/chancellor that would go out on a limb like this. And, of course, kudos to UNL's marketing people and creative team that put this project together.