Great Social Media Idea: Outcomes Tweets

Good morning, friends! I hope this morning the alarm - as it's want to do on Mondays - didn't roust you from a dream in which you were kissing Valentino by a crystal blue Italian stream. (Fun fact 1: Prince is perhaps my #1 favorite artist of all time. Fun fact 2: He wrote Manic Monday, and actually recorded a demo of it before giving it to The Bangles, mainly because he had the hots for Susanna Hoffs... and who could blame him?)

I had myself a busy weekend of class and kickball and wedding planning, so today's post is going to be a quickie but a goodie.

Check out this tweet (which was one of several!) I saw from Colgate University last week:

Congratulations to Joanna Howe ’16 who will be working at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP after graduation @sullcrom . pic.twitter.com/RPG2gusvyh

— Colgate University (@colgateuniv) April 4, 2016

What a good idea, right?!? Anyone working in higher ed knows that higher ups LOVE touting outcomes, and it's the time of year when many seniors - at least, the ones that are proactive and smart and have their act together - are getting their post-graduation jobs lined up. So why not celebrate their accomplishments with some pics and tweets?

Even better, Colgate's Matt Hames said that they timed these posts to coincide with their first big April visitation day, meaning prospective students and their parents - probably the most likely demographic to be interested in outcomes information - who were visiting campus and checking out Colgate's social media pages were seeing a stream of smiling seniors who have already locked down some great jobs.

This is one of those classic win-win ideas that can get you some good engagement on its own merits, but also score you some major points with deans, admissions folks, career services/alumni, etc. If you're worried about how you can identify seniors who have jobs lined up, connecting with some popular faculty members would be a great start - it's very likely they were references for many of the students. And professional majors like accounting, nursing, engineering, education, etc. will likely have a good collection of students to pull from.

Great idea, Colgate!