Missouri Valley Conference Basketball Marketing: #2 Illinois State

We'll keep moving through the Missouri Valley Conference, 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. And I'd argue all of this is even more critical for the Mid Majors out there. Smart marketing can help build that connection that gets you the athlete you need.

Thus far our journey has shown us #10 Creighton,#9 Evansville, #8 Indiana State , #7 Drake, #6 Northern Iowa, #5 Missouri State,#4 Southern Illinois, and #3 Bradley.

It's on to our top two, Let's keep moving.

#2 Illinois State

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Great video strategy - across YouTube, Vimeo, and Facebook.

Weaknesses: Want more connection with this basketball team and coaching staff.

Full Scouting Report:
Hitting the Illinois State home, here, you'll notice a couple big prominent callouts. First, Boom. Facebook is definitely put front and center.

If you stay on the page for a minute, you'll notice Illinois State's Twitter & YouTube channels also rotate in this space.



I'm torn. I love the prominent, bold placement but, in the end, I like the idea of showing off all of the ways to connect, at once, in a prominent place. Which you have in this image (at the bottom of the home page), shown here.

And, finally, ISU gives you one other way to access their Social Media, via the Multimedia Menu at the top of the site. OK, it's time to dive in...

First, Facebook. Clicking in takes you here. The ISU Facebook community of 4500, and it really serves as a hub for all things ISU online. The Redbirds share updates on the team, along with pumping in video and events into their wall.

The Redbirds YouTube channel is set up as a separate tab, which is nice as by doing so it becomes really easy to share the ISU YouTube channel with your peers through Facebook.

ISU's Athletics Twitter is also pumped into Facebook. Same benefits - you don't need to go anywhere to see their Twitter updates, and it's super easy to share them with your friends from this point.

And, lastly, I loved this -- ISU built in a Music Player that is really a collection of radio broadcast clips of key Redbirds hoops moments (including a heartbreaking buzzer-beater against Drake). This is really smart stuff.

ISU has a pretty solid iTunes library. If you click in, you'll see both the Academics side (shown here)...

and the Athletics side (shown here)...

It's a solid starting point, and it is clear Illinois State puts investment in technology.

Clicking into Illinois State Athletics on Twitter takes you here. Covering all sports, they've got a little over 1,000 followers. It's an ok site, covering updates on all squads and new articles or videos that get posted.

Videos are available on Vimeo, YouTube, and via a Video Library. The Redbirds YouTube channel (here) has around 125 videos. The Vimeo channel (here) has 16 videos. The Video Library (here) has a ridiculous number of videos. Is this too much? No. Let's take a quick look.

The YouTube Channel covers all sports with quick clips, much as you'd expect.

Vimeo actually provides full games, online, for free. Now that's a killer thing for a recruit. His family can just go online and watch the game whenever they want? His high school or AAU coaches can watch his footwork or his shot? This is solid.

And the video library? Well... It's content. I'd much rather see that funneled into YouTube, and then allow people to sign up by sport. But the content is here.

The home page also gives you access to a Game Day Blog. Really nice stuff, with the potential to bring fans to the ISU site during the game. Clicking in, you'll see there is not just a gameday blog (which is pretty cool on its own), but also audio pumped in from the Redbirds Radio Network. Solid.

And Lastly, the home page welcomes Recruits. Solid. Clicking in (shown below) provides mostly eligibility information... though I liked seeing the MVC branding here.

Alright, let's move to the Men's Basketball section, here. You'll notice the video player in the right-hand side -- giving pub to the latest Redbird hoops videos and access to the depth of content.

I also came across this, which was pretty impressive. Former Redbirds Emmanuel Holloway and Champ Oguchi are blogging on the ISU hoops site (link here and here). Not only do you, the fan, get to follow along with success of grads but you, the recruit, get a chance to connect with former stars. It's smart.

ISU lists all of their athletes currently in the Pros here. It's nice to have, though they really need to be not just providing a list but rather providing us with the impact these players had on the program. And how the program helped them get where they are today.

Finally, as you can see below, ISU delivers their Media Guide online -- through a series of PDFs you can download. It's good info, just nothing phenomenal here.

That's it. Come back next week and we'll conclude our tour through the MVC!