College Basketball: The West Coast Conference's Digital Presence

Going through the ACC (link here), Pac-10 (link here), Big Ten (link here), Big 12 (link here), Big East (link here), and SEC (link here) gave me context. Now we'll have a sense for not just what the Mid Majors do well, but also how they stack up against the rest of the conferences.

We covered the MVC here. Now it's time to turn our attention out west, to the West Coast Conference.

Let's go.

What's Good about the WCC Experience? Loved seeing the Commish on Twitter, plus nice job of leveraging YouTube into their site.

What Could Be Better? Really need a deeper basketball experience, to elevate the success this conference has had in the postseason.

Let's dive in...

Plowing into the West Coast Conference's website, here, and you get greeted by a scrolling window of ways to follow the program: the Commish is up on Twitter (killer), and you can follow the conference itself on Twitter and Facebook. I love the way these are worded (it's very action oriented: Become a Fan, Follow the WCC, Follow the Commish." On the other hand, I'm pretty distracted by the gigantic Zappos banner at the top of the page. I get why you do this, it just feels a little over the top. But let's get back to the good stuff.





Clicking into the Commish on Twitter takes you here. I'm excited at this in general. I'm not sure why more conference commissioners aren't doing this, because it's a fantastic way to have a nice forum with fans. Commish Zaninovich has 77 followers, but that number will grow as he gets the word out and keeps up with his style. Check this excerpt:

"Great day 4 WCC MBB. 4 for 4 incl. a big nat'l TV win for Zags over Illinois on "neutral" crt. UP, SCU & USF all undefeated in 2010 as well!"

It's simple but powerful. He's fairly regular and shares updates on the teams in the conference and where he is personally. Solid.



The WCC on Twitter takes you here, to a feed of score and standings updates across all sports. The WCC does provide us with links to new content (that's how I learned about the Road to Las Vegas original programming which is super cool). In total, they have 422 followers and probably need a bit more original insight to take this to the next level.


The WCC's Facebook presence lands you here. With 375 fans, there is a lot of energy in every post but those posts aren't very often. I'd like to see the conference get a little more engaged with fans here. Perhaps interact with WCC school Facebook or athletics Facebook pages. Just feels like something is missing.



OK, moving back to the athletics home page. On the right hand side you'll note a nice box that delivers Podcasts right here into the site. This is great, as you're able to check out podcasts right from the main page. The content itself is organized as a stream of consciousness list, rather than by program or sport though. I think a little branding here would help.



Also in this box is original video content. The WCC produces a weekly show, "The Road to Las Vegas," which chronicles each team as they push towards the conference tourney in Vegas.



Great to see this, and it gets better as they make it easy to share -- check the image below where this content is posted onto YouTube and then embedded into the WCC site.



All of this content and more is accessible from the main menu, Multimedia tout, shown here. (Side note: I've noticed this a lot. Would you call Twitter multimedia? More importantly, would a high school recruit? I'm not sure about that one.)


The WCC on YouTube, linked here, is just getting moving. They only have 14 subscribers, and have been sharing content once every week or two. As I mentioned before, I think they are doing great things in posting videos here and then pasting them into the WCC site. It just feels like they need to get a little more active and rally around a couple of consistent programs (like their Road to Las Vegas). Simply put, let us know what's coming and when and make it easy to follow you.




Clicking into Podcasts takes you to a really nice directory of WCC broadcasts, although they are still all included as one grouping (not by sport or by show) and it appears they stopped recording last May. Still, a nice foundation here.



Finally, I went to the hoops section, here. There really isn't much content outside of what we've already shared which is both good and bad. It's good that you can get to everything from the home page. It's bad if you consider people may click right into the Hoops section and thus miss a lot of the story.



To conclude this, here's my Pre-Looking at Anything Rankings.

1. Gonzaga
2. St Mary's
3. Portland
4. Santa Clara
5. Loyola Marymount
6. Pepperdine
7. San Diego
8. San Francisco

Come back on Monday as we'll start rolling through the WCC!

Andy