Big East College Basketball Marketing: #6 Syracuse

Let's keep moving through the Big East Conference, looking at how programs market themselves to young athletes (or fans) online. This is our chance to see how coaches and programs in a power conference stack up against each other -- and how they share what they stand for.

Thus far our journey has shown us #16 DePaul, #15 Seton Hall, #14 U Conn, #13 Notre Dame, #12 Louisville, #11 Pitt, #10 Cincinnati, #9 Rutgers, #8 Georgetown, and #7 St John's.

#6 Syracuse

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Very cool, very prominent, very innovative ways of getting people into their Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Blogging areas. And a great Blog.

Weaknesses: Visually, there's a lot going on, distracting us from the amazing parts.

Full Scouting Report:

Checking out the Syracuse home page, here, and you are immediately hit with one of the best entries into Social Networks I've come across. Not only are the 4 places you can enter (Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, and YouTube) super prominent and bold but they come with a message: Follow the Orange 24/7. Wow.

In fact, I like this image so much that I'm going to zoom in even further for you.

Clicking on Twitter takes you to a directory of everything Twitter or Facebook. As you can see below, it's a pretty solid and well organized roster of Twitter, complete with names and sports.

The Athletics Twitter page, known as SU Orange Empire, is here. They have around 900 followers and keep this pretty active - but really just give game updates and news updates as a feed. It's good they are active, I just want the insight and personality you'd expect with a name of Orange Empire. (Side note: Great name!)

Which is where Assistant Coach Rob Murphy comes in. Here's his Twitter page - he definitely offers personality. (I just wish he'd post more often!) He's right around 600 followers, and is very original. Nice.

Assistant Mike Hopkins is up on Twitter, just not linked to the Syracuse Twitter directory. He's fought through his lack of publicity and still built around 800 followers, and does a decent job, though he's also not very active.

The Orange Empire Facebook page is here. They've got around 3100 fans, which could be higher if they didn't require you to be approved in order to see the content. I did become a fan and can say that Syracuse uses Facebook well, as a method of regularly inviting me to events.

Moving on, I absolutely LOVED the Syracuse blog. Here's the link in case you want to visit. Really, you should. They do a nice job of giving you updates but with insight and personality. I loved taking the story of Coach Boeheim's 800th win (wow) and turned into a story about Coach Boeheim and what he's meant to the program. Sample this:

In 1976, when Roy Danforth left Syracuse University, the athletic department was ready to conduct a national search for a new coach. Jim Boeheim paid a visit to the Vice Chancellor and told him in no uncertain terms that HE, the lowly assistant with no head coaching experience, was THE man for the job. More than that, he told them he’d leave immediately for his next job if a coaching search was started. Nevermind that he didn’t have a next job at the time. Out of all the words that can be used to describe Jim Boeheim, competitive is one that most would agree on.

Don't you kind of feel like hugging that blog?


The Syracuse YouTube channel is here, with 56 videos across all sports. It's ok, the content is good - you just can't separate by sport. They didn't extend the Orange Empire branding here, which I wish they did, as it was really starting to grow on me!

Backing up to the home page again, you'll see that the Fan Zone Menu offers you access to the Blog and Social Networks. I'm really not sure the average fan (or the average young athlete) knows what the words "Social Networks" means. I'd much rather see this spelled out, even if it meant more items on the dropdown menu.


Please come with me as we move on to the basketball home page, here, and turn your attention to the box on the right hand side of the page, with "Video" selected.

I'll zoom in to make it easier. And you'll see a very cool piece of the site. They have built in Podcasts into the site itself so you can click and listen right from the Hoops home page. Solid. Now all we need is to filter this -- make sure you only get basketball podcasts to listen to from this page!

Scrolling down the page, you'll see that the basketball page offers a collection of links for additional info on the squad. I'll click through a couple.


Orange in the NBA. Great job of extending this Orange Empire branding into the other parts of the site. Solid work. As you'll see below though, there is definitely an opportunity to make this site more deep as it relates to the athletes who've moved on to the next level. Clicking on one of them takes you to their page on NBA.com -- missing out on the chance to tell us how they impacted the University... and vice versa.

The title is a little wordy, but I love this idea: "SU Former Player Websites." I can't believe no one else is doing this - it just makes sense. I just wish they took this insight and then gave us more of a visual look at the players behind their websites (and the websites themselves of course).

Syracuse offers a Media Guide you can flip through online and zoom in where you need to. It's definitely a solid piece.

I clicked on the Syracuse Coaching staff, super excited to see more about a group that includes one of the best of all time. And, as you'll see below, they do a nice job of elevating email addresses to make it easier for you the recruit or fan to reach out to them. As we saw with Nebraska (read it here), they should also consider using this as a way to get people into their Twitter pages. If you are looking at this page, that's definitely something that'd interest you!

Clicking on All Access takes you here, to a sea of videos and a request to register or sign in to fully engage with this area. You can filter by sport. It's all solid; I'd just love to see this content flood into the Orange YouTube channel and create one fully charged video area.

Coach Boeheim also has a site dedicated to his Coaches vs Cancer platform, here.

This site has a blog, though it hasn't been updated since May, here. I love seeing this, just wish we could see Coach Boeheim's take on the season. 800 career wins = great potential for a unique view on the sport.

And the site also serves as an archive for Coach Boeheim content that's out there, ala the Louisville Cardinal Clips. This is solid, it just needs to be updated more frequently and a little easier for people to find.

And, with that, that's a wrap. The Orange have a pretty powerful brand and they are set up well. With a little more in-season content on the current program, things could really take off.

So, what's next? It's time to move into the Big East's Top 5. Come back tomorrow... this is just starting to get good!

Andy