September 17th is constitution day. Today I got an email from University of Phoenix pointing me to this information / quiz. Interesting, but unfortunately it stops there.

What if instead of (or in addition) to this quiz, University of Phoenix developed a Facebook application that was a Constitution quiz. Then I could take the quiz, and show my score to my friends, who could also then take the quiz, etc. It might not go totally viral, but for sure if it started off in the enormous community of University of Phoenix students / teachers / alumnus /employees (the school has ~ 430,000 current students alone) it could go pretty far.

There are even a few pre-built Facebook constitution quizzes out there, just waiting for a benefactor to come and sponsor them. Imagine the reach, and the information about your audience you could garner?

Social marketing requires a different mindset. You can’t decide you want to get in front of Facebook users and buy your way in. Instead you have to be more opportunistic, looking for content the community might be interested in and offering it up when you run across it.