It’s that time of year again – college commencement speeches! With another class of graduating students, we saw a variety of keynote speakers share their wisdom at colleges and universities around the country.
Oprah Winfrey shared her best advice last week for the graduates of Harvard University. Interestingly enough, she encouraged the class of 2013 to “make time for face time” but not on Facebook.
She told them, “Even though this is the college where Facebook was born, my hope is that you will try and go out and have more face-to-face conversations with people you disagree with. Promise me that you’ll have the courage to look them in the eye and hear their point of view.”
Interesting advice to a generation that barely remembers a time when social networking was NOT around. You can read more highlights of her speech by clicking here.
Stephen Colbert spoke last week at the University of Virginia, where he too referenced the importance of social media. “So self obsessed—tweeting your Vines, hashtagging your Spotifys and Snapchatting your YOLOs—your generation needs everything to be about you.” Author John Green commented in his speech at Butler University that “the default assumption is that the point of human life is to be as successful as possible, to acquire lots of fame or glory or money as defined by quantifiable metrics: number of Twitter followers, or Facebook friends, or dollars in one’s 401k.”
You can find even more speeches here.
The underlying message is that social media has become a powerful tool. Not only is it being referenced by keynote speakers around the country, but it is being used to publicize excerpts from those very same speeches, evident of course by the flurry of real-time tweets and posts being made even as the speeches are happening!
The takeaway is this…it’s time to get started with social media. And if you’re still on the fence, then consider these stats: out of all Internet users, 67 percent are using social networks with one in three of them preferring to contact a company over social media versus reaching out by phone.
So, isn’t it time to get your message out there?
For tips and tricks on how to complement your practice’s social media profiles, feel free to contact us directly. And congratulations to all of the 2013 graduates!
What was your favorite commencement speech this year? Let us know!