Our journey through the ACC in search of the best digital experience continues. This digital recruiting world is much different - it actually puts everyone on a pseudo-equal playing field. This is a chance for coaches and teams to share what it means to be a part of their system. And (as we are seeing) not all digital is created equal. We last left the story here, talking through #12 Boston College, #11 Miami, and #10 Georgia Tech. Let's keep moving.
9. Virginia Tech
We're going back to back with "Tech's". A quick click into the Virginia Tech site, here, and you really don't see anything that grabs you. The main page elevates key upcoming matchups (and a countdown clock in the upper right corner), but to find any multimedia or excitement, you really have to search for it.
I'm going to zoom into the bottom navigation (so imagine yourself scrolling down to the bottom of this site and squinting as you checked out the lower right portion). Here you can (kind of) see hokieTV.com.
Sadly this time imagining wasn't worth it. As you dive into Hokie TV, you get a collection of press conferences and videos. No explanation, no order, just a tray of videos. To me, it looks to be a place to go to watch live games, which I guess could be cool. But on top of no explanation, you really don't have any context (not cool at all) and no way to take this experience with you, if you happened to want to.
So let's move off the home page and dive into basketball. One click in and, wow. You definitely get hit with something. What exactly, I'm not sure. It is a maze of information thrown at you, and as you no doubt can tell, pretty difficult to see (I even wonder if it will show up on my blog, or if I'll need to change icon size?
What you will notice is the Holiday Inn logo on the right. They keep consistent color and logo for Holiday Inn (a Hokie Sponsor, I guess). What you won't notice is the post of Coach Seth Greenberg twittering. (it's in the news feed in the second column). Would have been great to see them leverage the color and logo of Twitter here. My concern will get bigger when there is more news coming our way around the program and Coach Greenberg's tweeting disappears completely off the site.
Why am I so frustrated that Virginia Tech didn't hype Coach Greenberg? He's actually one of the more active guys online I've come across. As you can see by clicking here, Coach Greenberg is nearing 2,000 followers with over 370 tweets. He is offering people a chance to really get to see what makes him tick, on a day-by-day (or multiple times a day!) basis. Exactly what I'd expect a potential recruit (or their family) to value. Come on, Hokies, hype this!
From what I could tell, there were no other VT hoops coaches on Twitter. The athletics department has a non-sport specific twitter feed here, with just over 800 followers and 1,100 tweets.
All in all, the passion and effort to connect from Coach Greenberg is the reason we don't see Tech further down. But they aren't winning any recruiting battles from this experience.
Stay tuned for the next step in our ACC journey tomorrow!
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