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, #7 St John's, #6 Syracuse, #5 West Virginia, #4 Villanova, #3 South Florida, and #2 Providence.
Which brings us to our winner...
#1 Marquette
The Digital Scouting Report
Strengths: Superfans, Facebook, Active Blogs, and Twitter: Personality of the program and school is all over this site. And it brings things to life.
Weaknesses: I'd love to see the personality of the coaches come to life on the site as well.
Full Scouting Report:
Checking out the Marquette home page, here, and you don't get the most incredible visual impact. I think it is the placement and size of that Aurora Health Care banner, but it doesn't necessarily feel like the athletics spot off the bat. That changes though, trust me! (foreshadowing alert)
You see a prominent callout for the On the Record Blog (link here). How's this for an amazingly well written blog description? “The exclusive home for behind-the-scenes access to each of the University’s 14 NCAA Division I programs including daily updates, videos, photos, podcasts, and much more.”
Wow.
Count me in!
You'll also quickly noticed a nice consistent list of other ways to follow Marquette Athletics once you've clicked in. Let's check them out... First, Facebook. I love the Marquette Facebook page. They take a pretty active fan page, add a video page and a YouTube channel (not sure why they need both) and let them all work together. Pretty nice.
Here's the YouTube channel inside Marquette's Facebook page. I love it when teams take their digital plan and have it all work together like this!
The Marquette Athletics Twitter page is here. They've got around 1750 followers, and they cover all things athletics. I took one look and had to follow them. Why? Because they add interest, and personality in a big way. It's simple, but check this style of communication from their page:
Video: Coach Buzz previews tomorrow's game (man, it feels good to say "tomorrow's game")
Simple, but so personal feeling...
They did a separate Twitter page for the opening game, shown here. I'm not a fan of doing this --they created a Twitter page for one day. Why not drive everyone to your basketball Twitter page, one that is good forever? You can hype opening game (cool idea!) but I don't feel it has to be on a Twitter page of its own.
And here's the Athletics YouTube channel. Loads of video, and a lot of honest, fun descriptions. I would be much more likely to click into watch a "ridiculous block" clip than a "highlights of last night" clip. I did click in, and, yes, it was ridiculous (link to that here).
They did a separate Twitter page for the opening game, shown here. I'm not a fan of doing this --they created a Twitter page for one day. Why not drive everyone to your basketball Twitter page, one that is good forever? You can hype opening game (cool idea!) but I don't feel it has to be on a Twitter page of its own.
And here's the Athletics YouTube channel. Loads of video, and a lot of honest, fun descriptions. I would be much more likely to click into watch a "ridiculous block" clip than a "highlights of last night" clip. I did click in, and, yes, it was ridiculous (link to that here).
Moving back to the Athletics home page, the Multimedia menu gives you access to everything we've seen thus far in one place and more (Golden Eagle Podcasts & All-Access). We'll get to those in a second...
First, I want you to scroll with me to the bottom of the Marquette home page. As you can see in this image, they also have a cool Podcasts icon here (along with the All-Access callout). Another way to get into the content...
The Podcasts promo takes you here, to the ability to download individual podcasts or click on to iTunes. You can't subscribe by sport, so it is a little cumbersome, but the content is here and accessible.
All-Access takes us to a familiar area (shown below). Many teams offer this up - a CBS Sports window that plays a mix of free and premium video content across all sports. The more I see these, the more I wonder why more teams don't break apart from the pack in how these are delivered to fans or athletes.
OK, I loved seeing the For Recruits menu on the home page. And I was pleasantly surprised at the content beneath it. Let's click into Strength & Conditioning.
As you can see, there is a motherload of workouts here. Wow. A lot of stuff. So much that I can't believe it isn't hyped on the site anywhere. I mean, as a high school athlete I want to know what the college team does so I can get with it now. And I want to know the college I go to can help me maximize my potential. This content does wonders for this!
Clicking in and you actually see the videos with a description of how to do the exercise. This is crazy. Cool stuff Marquette!!!
All amped up, it's time to move to the Basketball home page. As you can see, they have a call out on the right for "Live In-Game Blog..."
I absolutely love this live blog idea, check it out for yourself here. Fans can get together and chat with the Athletics program live during the game here. This creates a destination on the Marquette site during gamedays (if you can't make it to the game, of course). Just another way to make players stars!
The Basketball section also delivers a super cool 360 degree tour of the gym. I love this -- move around on the court and check out the view in any direction. It is powerful, giving you that amazing feeling of an empty gym with just you, working on your game. Emotionally powerful.
Finally, they elevate stories on players to their bio pages. So if you are the feature of an article or interview, it will show up on your individual page. Cool.
So, how can you follow the Basketball team on Twitter? I did some digging around (as it isn't super clear on the basketball site). Coach Buzz Williams is up on Twitter, with a gorgeous looking page, he just hasn't started posting yet. I'm signed up, waiting!
Marquette has a Men's Basketball Twitter page, here. It's too early to tell, but this has the potential of being an impact Twitter page - lots of posts and sharing of all things Marquette Hoops.
And, last but not least, check the MU superfans Twitter page (here). With 120 followers and a super active site it is worth checking. These Superfans are the student section - and I love it that they have their own community to follow the program. This has monster potential. Monster.
And, showing signs of that potential, the Superfans create a preview of each game - scouting the enemy. It is distributed online (and probably in person) and lets you the fan study the opponent -- no doubt making it much easier to heckle accordingly. It elevates your team and just makes basketball even more fun!
All in all, an inspiring presence online for the Golden Eagles.
Come back tomorrow as we go through the best things about the Big East Conference online...
Andy
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