Missouri Valley Conference Basketball Marketing: #4 Southern Illinois

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, and #5 Missouri State.

Let's keep moving.

#4 Southern Illinois

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Really nice presence on Twitter, between the Media team and Coach Lowery.

Weaknesses: Need to infuse energy and connection into the basketball section.

Full Scouting Report:
Hitting the SIU website, here, and I'm quickly drawn into the For Recruits menu right in the middle of the page. Solid start!



Mousing over the Recruits menu takes us here. I love this combination - the aspirational message "Become A Saluki" (which reminds me in a good way of Oregon's "Be A Duck") paired with Strength & Conditioning. Let's click ahead.

Unfortunately, I think the next steps are a little under construction, for now. There's some potential if you see the buttons on the right ("Why I became a Saluki" in particular!) But all of those buttons lead to coming soon messages... with no indication of when "soon is".



Meanwhile, the other half takes you to descriptions and images (covering all sports) of how the Salukis train in the weight room. It feels a little too general for my taste, but I love pairing strength & conditioning with recruiting. It's critical to getting you to your potential.


Ironically, the simplest part of the Strength & Conditioning area might be the most impactful. I love the visuals of showing the team training. Now move that into real time - hit us with updates when they are in the weight room.



Moving onward, the Multimedia menu gives us access to the Dawg Tracker Blog, here. It's a pretty good blog - giving coverage to all sports in a predictable manner - twice a week in season, once/week in the offseason. The voice is consistent and of an insider. Definitely worth checking out.




Moving on, the Fan Zone menu gives you access to follow the Salukis via Facebook or Twitter.


The Salukis on Facebook, shown below and here, gives you access to a pretty vibrant community of 7,000. They post event and game updates, but seem to be missing the opportunity to really ignite the fan base. (It's very informational but seems to be lacking in passion).


I was impressed to see the YouTube tab, anxious to see videos embedded.




The SIU YouTube Channel, here, has a nice look to it but is still pretty limited in content (9 videos thus far).



Clicking on the Salukis Twitter takes you here.

The Saluki Athletics Twitter page, here, is home to just over 500 followers. They cover all sports and are consistent in sharing updates to the Saluki site.



Meanwhile, Coach Lowery is up on Twitter, here, with just over 900 followers. Where the Saluki Athletics site is very factual, Coach Lowery brings a nice mix of personality - covering family, music, recruiting, and of course the squad. Really solid job.



Finally, Saluki Media (Tom Weber) is my favorite SIU rep on Twitter, here. He's only got around 75 followers (including me). What's great here is that there's a solid amount of updates and they all have a feel of authenticity and let you feel like you are close to (or a part of) the squad. Check this example.

"Salukis on the bus and headed for Bloomington. Everyone in good spirits after last night's amazing comeback."

Moving on to the basketball home page, here,



Zooming in on the side menu, you'll note the interesting navigation - elevating Media Guide into a higher visibility place and separating it from the rest of the deep hoops links. This was likely a good move as it is one of the deepest Hoops pieces here. But the one thing I'd call out is there's an opportunity to elevate Coach Lowery's tweeting much like Kentucky does with Coach Calipari, here.


I'll paste an image below to contrast the UK and the SIU approaches.


Finally, I clicked on the Media Guide tab... revealing a nice visual.


Clicking in, you'll see SIU offers the ability to navigate by chapters by clicking to the left-hand menu. Then you can flip through the catalog online. It's simple, but effective. What's missing though is a deeper experience in the day-to-day life of the Hoops team. It feels like between Twitter, photography, and the Dawg Bites Blog, we've got the right pieces to start. But we need to infuse this energy into the Hoops section of the site.


That's it. Come back tomorrow and we move on to the top 3!