Let's keep moving through the Big East Conference, looking at how programs market themselves. How they are communicating to young athletes online. It's 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.
#: St John's
The Digital Scouting Report
Strengths: Great Twitter integration, and a nice combination of Program+Assistant+Player Twitter presence.
Weaknesses: Outside of Twitter, not much basketball content here.
Full Scouting Report:
What you will see is a prominent St John's Twitter icon in the upper right, which rotates with the St John's Eye of the Storm blog (killer name!) and Facebook page - icons shown here.
You'll also note that at the top of the page (shown below), you'll see another place with easy access to Facebook and Twitter. Let's click in.
The Red Storm Facebook page is pretty well done. They have about 2300 fans, and deliver a pretty active combination of posts, shared updates, and video interviews with athletes. In fact, as you'll see in a minute, they do a nice job of connecting their Facebook page to their Blog. On the other hand, I will say the Facebook picture they've chosen (of their Twitter page) is a bit weird. I don't know, it just kind of takes away from this community.
Clicking on the Twitter icon takes you here, to a large directory of Social Media stuff. (But no mention of their in-game Twittering). A really solid job here.
The St John's Basketball Twitter page is here, with 870 followers and a nice job of engaging their community, sharing the St John's love to members who post, and of course providing access to new articles and videos that hit the St John's site.
Assistant Coach Chris Casey is up (although not that active) on Twitter. He's got around 80 followers and displays a little character... I just wish he did more often.
St John's is the first school I've come across to hype the Twitter page of one of their players, Junior Forward Sean Evans. He's active and you can't help but feel more connected to the team if you dive in here.
The Red Storm has a great Blog name and logo, the Eye of the Storm (here). The blog does a great job of providing original content - loads of 1-on-1 interviews, which is great. I just wish there was a way to cut right into basketball (or the sports you care about).
Clicking on the Video Icon takes you to a monster database of videos.... Lots of stuff, though nothing new since July. Why no YouTube?
Moving on to the Men's Basketball page, here, and you have a feel that is very much like many of the other of the schools we've seen. But we're in the upper half of the Big East now, and this is where we start to see separation in programs. So scroll down the page with me...
The bottom half of the site shows you how they pump in St John's Twitter updates into the site. Solid work!
It's hard to see it in the basketball page image, but the center of the site has the red box, shown here, that allows you to access the St John's Twitter page and Blog.
That's the extent of the experience that's available in the Basketball section. I'm a fan of getting the most out of what you have and it is clear that St John's is maximizing their presence on Twitter and connecting via their blog. Both are well done, I just would like to see more of a connection with Coach Norm Roberts and this year's squad. If they can add this, then leverage the 1-2 Twitter-Blog punch they are building, we're in business!
Up next, our top 6: Marquette, Providence, South Florida, Syracuse, Villanova, and West Virginia. Who's going to win this thing? Come back next week.
Andy
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