InstaCampus: The MX Instagram Challenge

Since downloading Instagram six months ago, I have been hooked. Suddenly, I have become an incredible photographer! Equipped with my toolkit of seemingly endless filters and focus isolators, all packaged neatly in an app, I head out into the world filtering and focusing Boston, friends, flowers, puppies and ordinary objects. I even helped to convince my alma mater, Bowdoin College (@bowdoincollege), to start an Instagram account! For these reasons, when I saw EverTrue client Middlesex School’s Instagram photo contest, I knew we had a winner. Middlesex has a special connection to Instagram as Kevin Systrom, Instagram Founder, is a MX alum, class of 2002. The contest asked alumni, students, parents, faculty and staff to submit their Instagram shots of campus and school activities. While the school’s Facebook page was used to host the contest and facilitate the voting (the shot with the most “likes” won the contest), Middlesex also promoted this on their website and ended up with 76 submissions and 1197 “likes”/votes total. Congrats to Middlesex for this creative and easy contest that really engaged the community! While it may seem that everyday there is a new social media platform introduced, I feel that Instagram has a real place in schools and colleges alumni relations and communications offices. Alumni love seeing photos to remind them of campus activities and memories and this is a perfect platform for that sharing. Instagram also makes it super easy to connect your Facebook and Twitter accounts for cross platform sharing. The school can also then follow alumni to stay connected. Stanford and Syracuse University both have very active Instagram accounts with 2,129 and 1,703 followers respectively. Other notable accounts to check out are Amherst College, Ithaca College, Oberlin College, Tufts University, Union College and, of course, Bowdoin!