Over the holiday weekend, the University of Michigan Facebook page reached a milestone – 500,000 fans. Throughout the past year, we’ve been building on our base of fans by trying to create engaging content with a strong call to action. This led us to a network of 500,000 people that have genuine connection to the brand, much like our network of 500,000 living alumni, connected to Michigan.

Around the time we began to approach 475,000 fans, we were given an opportunity to work with one of our alums, Dhani Jones, on a social initiative. Dhani is a strong social media thought leader, and we could think of no better way to thank our Facebook fans than to have one of their own help, through the power of social media.

The video itself was written, shot, and edited at our office, with Dhani having a captivating on camera presence (and fabulous ad-libbing), we didn’t need more. By the end, the entire UMSocial team was anxiously awaiting the 500,000th like, excited to share the video with our fans.

We are thrilled to have come this far, and cannot thank our fans enough for their constant support and ‘likes’ – now on to 1 million!