SEC College Basketball Marketing: #4 Georgia

Let's continue our journey, looking at how programs are communicating to young athletes (or fans) from a digital point of view. Websites and digital marketing are the great equalizer -- a place where every program can share what they stand for. The internet is always there, and always on. And, as they do on the court, the best programs take advantage of opportunities.
Let's keep moving.

Thus far we've seen #12 Alabama, #11 Mississippi State, #10 Auburn, #9 LSU, #8 Vanderbilt, #7 Ole Miss, #6 South Carolina, and #5 Arkansas.

On to the Final 4...

#4 Georgia

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Coach Fox is fantastic on Twitter, and the G XTra video library is authentic and DEEP.

Weaknesses: Two opportunities to take things and make them incredible: Coach Fox's personality on Coach Fox.com and the G Xtra video library on YouTube are not being leveraged yet.

Full Scouting Report:

Clicking into the Georgia athletics site, here, and you get hit with a large image window, which can combine video and images (like this example). Georgia pumps in the latest athletics headlines into this section.


They include the ability to navigate the latest videos into the main window by clicking a button on the left side, like this, changing the site upon the launch of new features.


You'll also (hopefully) notice the icons in the upper right hand corner. Just in case you can't, though, I'll zoom in. I love how this section is branded "Stay Connected." Simple and effective.


Let's check it out. Clicking on this box takes you to this directory. Handy...



Let's dive in. First, Twitter. The Georgia Athletics Twitter page is here, with 2200+ followers.



They cover all sports with personality and even institute challenges with their Twitter page -- where they challenge students (or fans I guess) to find a cutout on campus. For example...

"Cut-Out Challenge Clue #3: I've been quiet since March... but things will get started in here again this Fri. night and Sun. afternoon..."

Interesting. And fun. Twitter contests are great as they create that feeling that you have to be connected, always!

Head Coach Mark Fox is also up on Twitter, here.



I clicked in and instantly became a fan (and a follower). He is fairly active and very interesting. Very personal. Check this post. He's got just under 200 followers, but if he keeps up the pace, this will grow, fast.

"Our team managers are great young people-They work really hard for us. BUT they made an awful attempt trying to do our players lay up series"

Moving onto Facebook, I clicked in and came here, to the athletics fan site.



I'm not sure what to make of it to be honest. On one hand, I loved that this site is updated and seems to have a bit of personality to it. I also loved seeing a tab dedicated to GeorgiaDogs.com. On the other hand (and maybe it was the URL as their picture), it felt a little much to me. When you do click on the GeorgiaDogs.com Tab, it takes you here, to an image that drives you to their website. I'd love to see a little more Georgia Dogs content here rather than simply a banner ad to click on...

The Georgia Athletics YouTube channel is here. I'm not sure what happened, but the site hasn't had any new videos in the past 6 months. Before that, it was very active, crossing all sports. I'd still love to be able to select to view videos by sport, but the quantity was outstanding.

Finally, it may not be pretty, but there is a mobile site here. It is text driven, as you can see here, but I was pretty glad to see them thinking this way.

We'll continue on our tour through the Athletics home page. The middle of the site gets you access to the latest videos and highlights. Let's click in...

As you can see in the next few images, G Xtra gives you access to a LOT of content. You have a daily update on Georgia Athletics piped in. (nice!)

They post game highlights after each game (across all key sports)

And, most importantly, you get access to features on the programs... including this one, a 3 part series on Assistant Coach Kwanza Johnson. It has a very intimate feel, and is well worth the watch.

OK. Let's back up to the top of the home page. Clicking on the athletics menu gives you access to Coach Mark Fox's site. The site is simply a ticket sales system, with a cool feature you can use to have Coach Fox call yourself (or a friend). It's neat, I'm just not sure why we need that at Coach Fox.com. As we've seen on other programs, the Head Coach's URL can be a very powerful way to connect.

Moving on to the basketball site, here, brought in a couple of unique things.

First, I loved this... every player on the roster has a Personality Profile. These are simple text lists, not intricate videos. But you get a real sense of who these kids are as athletes -- how many songs are on their iPods, what they are most afraid of, how they chose their number... Solid. Side note - I'm not sure why they don't extend this to their coaching staff... it'd be a nice simple thing to add in and would be invaluable to prospective student-athletes.

You get access to the 2009-10 Basketball Media Guide, which you can browse online or download...

Georgia also gets you connected into Coach Fox's Twitter page (nice) and hypes Dawgs in the NBA (nice again!)

That said, clicking into Dawgs in the NBA takes me here. To a table of stuff that from what I can tell doesn't reference the NBA anywhere. I'm a little confused...

So I back out of there. Then, lastly, Georgia takes the latest video programming features and builds them into the basketball site (see below). Nice!

That's it. Georgia finds many ways of getting you access to the right content -- they just need to ramp that up even further!

Come back tomorrow and we'll move to #3.

Andy