From the Nominator

"We asked Hawkeyes to share their favorite pizza place via Facebook on National Pizza Day. Those comments (nearly 400–generated from an unpaid post) were then leveraged to create a story featuring user-generated responses that was published online in Iowa Magazine. The story was distributed to alumni via email and social media. 

This simple extension of a Facebook post resulted in an engagement bonanza from University of Iowa alumni—many wanting to share memories and weigh in on the establishments that made the list. It became one of our most engaging pieces of digital content ever. In 2021, the online story drew more than 5,200 page views, making it the seventh most visited story, and recorded the second-longest average time on page at nearly 3 minutes 30 seconds. Additionally, it received the most clicks of any single item in our e-newsletter last year, yielding more than 2,500 clicks in an email sent to approximately 128,000 alumni and friends. 

The story also generated buzz on social media, resulting in more than 5,000 engagements on Facebook and 55 comments. In a display of even deeper engagement, about 30 people emailed in responses to the story, some sharing personal stories, like a marriage proposal over slices of ‘za. Several of these notes were published online, causing another click spike in a later email newsletter, bringing an additional 1,300 email clicks related to the story.   

We saw this content as an opportunity to spark deeper online engagement among alumni."

From the Judges

Love, love, love this and when something like this happens! It is so easy in higher education to forget that sometimes the simplest things--such as posing a question about your favorite pizza place on National Pizza Day (which might have been perceived as a throw away question on a social media post)--can get us the closest to our goals. This idea can definitely be replicated at other institutions, and I appreciated all the tracking numbers.