Big East College Basketball Marketing: #5 West Virginia

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, #7 St John's, and #6 Syracuse.

Here we go...

#5 West Virginia

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: One of the best tech setups by a University I've come across. And they consistently balance academics and athletics throughout the site.

Weaknesses: We don't really feel what it means to be a part of the Mountaineers basketball program. And maybe the weirdest URL I've seen on any program.

Full Scouting Report:

Checking out the West Virginia home page, here, with the weirdest URL I've seen for an athletics home, MSN SportsNet.com. I get that this is likely done by a partnership they've negotiated. And, as you'll see, the content is really good. But the URL itself is not intuitive and not something that's easy to remember or build a brand with. Alas, let's dive in.



The first thing I'll call your attention to is the social media icons in the upper right hand part of the site, for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and iTunes. Let's zoom in quick.


If you scroll down the page, you'll notice you have additional access to follow the program on Twitter and Facebook. I love the idea of giving multiple places to stumble upon these points of connection. Nice. The other thing you'll see is the "Basketball Beat." (Or you might have noticed that first, I guess...) Let's click in.

I like this. It's an advantage of partnering with a media entity to develop your online presence. MSN Sports offers up their Mountaineers Hoops expert to respond to fan questions here in the WV site. Cool.



Moving back up to the top of the page, you'll see that the Multimedia menu is a gateway to intreractive content: Facebook, Twitter, Podcasts, YouTube, the Video Vault, and Mobile Web. Wow.

Let's start with Podcasts. As you'll see, WVU has one of the most dynamic iTunes platforms I've come across. But it takes a minute to figure it out. First, clicking on Podcasts takes you here, to a mountain (no pun intended) of available content, shown here.

From this page though, you are invited to click on to their iTunes page. You can do it with me by clicking here. It's simply amazingly well set up (and a little surprising given what we just saw with the previous list).



I clicked onto the Basketball playlist (shown below) and you can subscribe for hoops content to come with you to your iPod or iPhone. Killer. Nice branding, nice organization, nice content. I'm pumped!


OK, moving on, let's visit the WV Facebook page, here, where they have a very active group of 41,000+ fans. I was also intrigued by the WVU Resources tab on their Facebook page. Take a look.



Let's click on the Facebook Resources tab, and you'll see they've built the WV academic and campus resources into their athletics experience. Cool.


Moving right along, clicking on WVU Twitter takes you here, to the most thorough Twitter directory I've come across. Just take a minute to soak this image in.


Wow. That's extremely thorough and, as we saw in both iTunes and Facebook, a nice mix of athletics and academics content. It feels natural, and balanced.

Moving on, the WVU Sports Buzz link takes you to the WVU athletics Twitter page, with roughly 1900 followers and lots of in-game updates. (Shown below)




The WVU YouTube Channel is here, taking you to the University's channel. Within that, you can dive into Athletics where there are 82 videos across all sports, along with a feeling that these are updated very regularly. And, again, you'll feel the Academics/Athletics balance. Consistent.




Moving on to the Video Vault section, provided by MSN. I get having this content, as it is the best all time games. But what I don't get is why it is called out as a separate area. I'd much rather see this as a natural part of either (or both) of the iTunes and YouTube pages.



Up next, the WVU Sports Widget. This is very 'techy', but I liked it. It showed another benefit WVU gets from working with MSN Sports. The tone is interesting, as they are packaging this for a blogger to take and embed in their own blog. That way any time WVU updates the athletics site, blogs who have signed up for this are now updated as well!

And, lastly, it's worth noting that WVU does a great job of pulling together a Mobile website, as shown here. Most kids are looking at the web from their phones, and I love seeing that WVU is thinking this way!



OK, after that action-packed menu, I was very excited to move on to the Men's Basketball home page, here. You'll notice in the yellow box on the right hand side a callout for "Welcome Recruits." Let's start here...




You get a general overview on the campus, and the athletics programs. And the ability to take a virtual tour of the campus. Solid stuff, just wish we started to get a little more of a feel for Coach Huggins and his program.

Here's the Campus tour. I do like this, just wish it was given by a player or a coach and not just a tour for anyone. But it is great stuff.

Clicking on the Mountaineer TV All Access takes you here, to a pop-up window of content that you can filter by sport to watch. It's a little clunky, but there is good info. I just wish it was a little easier... or that they could take this content and build it into the YouTube or Podcast experiences we saw earlier.



The basketball section also serves up access to their media guide, shown below...

As you can see in the image below, it is simply an online version of their printed guide, but they do introduce a cool way to navigate through it (shown at the bottom).

WVU takes all content on players and puts it into the player bio pages. (See Devin Ebanks' profile below) It is a smart way of building a deep library of information on each Mountaineer player -- it is just a little bit hidden. I'd love to see a deeper emotional build on each player. Same content, just elevate it so we know it is here!



And, finally, you'll see the NBA Mountaineer Tout displayed prominently on the Men's Basketball page. I love this as it is the dream of most high school athletes -- getting to this level. Let's click in.




WVU delivers us a list of active and former players. It's informative, sure, but it misses the emotion and the story of how they got there. Especially with Joe Alexander -- tell me about his time in the Big East, what makes him special. Help high schoolers feel like that could be them!


That's it. A solid experience that mixes academics and athletics in a well-designed and consistent way. We are down to the Final 4 of the Big East! Who's next? Come back tomorrow...

Andy