Guest blog by Shannon Riffe, Online Marketing Strategist, Office of University Development

With dozens of U-M affiliated athletes taking part in the 2012 Summer Olympics, we wanted to harness the excitement for the games and the passion of our audience to do some visual storytelling on the Leaders and Best Facebook page.

In the week leading up to the Opening Ceremony, we posted images of Michigan athletes, overlaid with a quick fact about U-M at the Olympics. In keeping with the goal of our page, one of these facts was about the impact of donors on the student-athlete experience. The other two facts were not philanthropy-specific. Over the four days we posted these graphics we received a total of 172 new likes and crossed the 1,000 Like mark for our page.

Our best-performing post, about the high number of Wolverines on the Men’s Swimming Team, received 280 Likes and 503 Shares. It was our most popular post ever and highly viral with a virality rate of 46.92%!

An international event + visual, social storytelling = the message of Leaders & Best reaching an even wider audience.