The 10 Best Digital Marketing Features in Big East Basketball

Today's going to be fun.

It's the chance to recap what we've seen in the Big East Conference. I'll start with a summary of the order of finish and then I'll conclude with the most inspiring pieces, regardless of team. And you'll want to come back tomorrow, when I'll hit you with the Big East All-Twitter Team.

The Big East has some powerful examples of branding. Here's how they finished.

1. Marquette. Superfans and super amazing strength & conditioning section.
2. Providence. Coach Keno = most accessible head coach I've seen yet
3. South Florida. A team of Twitter superstars and a fantastic basketball blog.
4. Villanova. I love Nova Nation.
5. West Virginia. Excellent mix of academics and athletics.
6. Syracuse. Orange Empire is a powerful brand statement.
7. St John's. A Twitter juggernaut in the making.
8. Georgetown. Cool Blog ticker a signal of what's coming next.
9. Rutgers. Love the tour of their athletics facilities.
10. Cincinnati. Really cool access to social media via an accordion!
11. Pitt. Active Facebook page and 2 guides to the program.
12. Louisville. Coach Pitino has a site with big potential, though not realized yet.
    
13. Notre Dame. Blogs built into the site well, just need basketball energy now.
14. U Conn. Site framework features Recruits and Letterwinners - a nice start.
15. Seton Hall. Cool Twitter icon... but not much basketball depth.
16. DePaul. Blue Tube + YouTube is a great starting point. What's next?

I still get amazed when I think of all those programs together. Wow.

Now, as promised, here are my 10 favorite things about the conference. If you've just stumbled upon this blog, this is where it gets extra fun. This is the collection of most inspiring things across the 16-team Big East basketball marketing landscape. Let's go!

10. West Virginia's Twitter Directory. I love this for lots of reasons. West Virginia balances academics and athletics across their entire site well, and I loved being on the athletics site and gaining access to a very vibrant community that went beyond the court. As you can see in the image (or click here if you want to view it up close), the latest posts are visibly elevated. Nicely done! Here's that link again.


9. Georgetown and Cincinnati Maximize Space. Like real estate moguls, these two programs get the most value out of every square inch (or they strive to at least!) As you can see on the Georgetown site (link here), they include a little ticker at the top of the site, "Georgetown Blog Central." With any new bit of content on the blog, the site changes. Nice.



Cincinnati's approach (here) is to take social media and build it into an accordion-style navigation. You can see how they bring you access to Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Podcasts all in a nicely Bearcat branded space. Who'd have thought accordions could be cool?




7. South Florida's Twitter Swagger. Can you put swagger in Twitter? USF shows you can do just that in the image below -- as they provide a powerful visual and copy that embraces their digitally-active coach. Solid. Link here for the USF basketball site.



6. West Virginia and Syracuse re-think podcasts. This is cool stuff. Many schools do podcasts on their sites, and to be honest they all feel the same. Enter the Big East. West Virginia built out an impressive iTunes presence, that treats each program as you would a musical artist. You can subscribe by sport, of course. To check it out, click here and then click the little red icon in the corner.


Meanwhile, Syracuse is the first program I've seen to literally embed their podcasts into the athletics site. So you just click to listen now. No need to go someplace else. In a world of instant gratification, this is a solid move. Link here.


5. Marquette Strength and Conditioning. A visit to the recruiting section of the Marquette Athletics site blew me away -- it was packed with a list of drills and videos so deep I thought for a minute I was on another site. You definitely get the vibe they have command of getting you to your athletic potential. And that's powerful. Of course, all the videos are with MU coaches in the MU facility -- a nice way to show them off. The magic starts if you click here.




5. Marquette's Blog Strategy. Sticking with Marquette, I loved how they described their blog. Check the copy below (or the Blog out here.) You'll also be drawn to the consistency with which they give you access to other ways to follow the program.

And, as you can see below, they are making the athletics site a destination for live in-game blogging. That's cool - especially if they can enlist athletics department experts to lead these during games. I follow live blogs during NFL games and the power of this expert moderator is pretty amazing.



4. The South Florida Guide to Athletics. One of the things I loved about the USF site is that they maximized what they had in a powerful way. They've created a guide to their program (link here) that shows off the coaches and elevates their star players with video highlights, interviews, and imagery (see the image below).





3. Syracuse's Brand Statement. Follow the Orange 24/7. That's a powerful message, and it crisply gets you engulfed in their world - of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and (for one of the first times) Blogger. The branding is powerful and speaks to the passion of the fan base. This is clearly visible from the top of the home page, here.


2. The Accessibility of Coach Keno Davis. As you can see in the images below (or here), Providence has an extremely accessable coach. He is trackable on a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and through Q & A on his site. But what I was drawn to the most was his move to post his Linkedin profile (shown below). This is amazing for 2 reasons: 1) it is the business way and thus will help him maintain relationships with likely boosters and sponsors of the program and 2) his athletes will be graduating and entering that world -- creating both a great place for Keno to connect with them and also a way for him to help his former players hook on in the "real" world.






1. Marquette Superfans. I was enthralled with this. Marquette has done a great, creative job of elevating their program by this move -- essentially a website and Twitter site where students can go and get the skinny on the team they are playing plus make plans for the game. It elevates the players to a higher level, empowers the fans to heckle even louder, and most importantly, makes all this more fun! Click here.








How fun is this?

I hope you've enjoyed this ride. (Warning: shameless plug alert) Click here to follow me on Twitter -- I'll post links to my latest posts there, making sure you won't miss a beat.

What's next?

Come back tomorrow and we'll hit you with the Big East All-Twitter team.
And then we'll finish the week with a look at the coolest things in the world of basketball for the month of November...

Thanks,

Andy