MVC College Basketball Marketing: #6 Northern Iowa

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 , and #7 Drake.

Let's keep moving.

#6 Northern Iowa

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: LOTS of ways to follow the Panthers on Twitter

Weaknesses: Not easy to get information on this year's team, at all.

Full Scouting Report:
When I hit the Northern Iowa home page, here, I moused over the Multimedia button...


As you can see, this reveals the Social Media place for the Panthers.



Clicking in takes us here, to a place where we get a realtime feed of the Panthers Athletics on Twitter, along with a list of other ways to connect with UNI on Twitter and Facebook. From this space you can tell we have a total of 5 Twitter accounts for UNI Hoops. Really nice. Let's click in...


UNI Athletics on Twitter, here, is incredibly active. With 485 followers, they cover all sports and deliver updates on how each team's going... with a style that's very straight forward, news reporting. It's ok, but really isn't delivering any information you can't find anywhere else.



Head Coach Ben Jacobson is up, here. His 158 followers will certainly expand if he stays active, as he does a pretty good job covering his team and other teams at UNI.



Assistant Coach Ben Johnson is here. With 154 followers, he's funny - reporting on the team and in a recent case his bet with Assistant Coach Green to eat nothing but fruit for 24 hours. To me his Twitter site makes him feel like he's one of the guys... a prankster.




Yes, Assistant Kyle Green is also up, though his Tweets are protected. And Coach PJ Hogan is just getting started.



And finally, Basketball Operations' Derrik Netten is up, here. With 162 followers, he is active and really solid - infusing a little bit of personality into his connections on the team or sports in general. Check this one:

"Just touched down here in Carbondale....never thought 27 degrees would feel tropical, but it does!"

The UNI Facebook page is here, with just under 2900 fans...Which is nearing their goal - check this post:

UNI Athletics PANTHER FANS WE NEED YOUR HELP!! Currently our Facebook fan base is at 2,288 fans. Let’s set a goal and increase our page to 3,000 fans by the end of January. Make sure to spread the message and tell your family, friends, roommates, grandparents, whomever. If they have facebook and are a PANTHER FAN they should become

The presence on Facebook is ok, sharing updates on the team and alerting fans on upcoming games. But there is opportunity to better create excitement around what is a very strong program.



So all of this information is also available if you scroll down to the bottom of the home page, here...


Moving on to the Basketball home page, and you'll notice the Men's Basketball Social Media callouts on the lower right hand side of the page.



I'll zoom in to help you see this...




Clicking into the UNI Basketball on Facebook takes you here. Unfortunately, they require you to apply to get access here (not sure why) which likely is a reason this community is pretty small (12o fans). Come on, UNI... Make it easy!



Clicking into the UNI Basketball on Twitter takes you to Head Coach Jacobson's Twitter page. That's fine, but I'd much rather see a chance to follow all of the UNI staff on Twitter.... and as you saw earlier, there are a lot of them!

What I'd really like to see a way to combine all of the Panthers' presence on Twitter together and then fuel this into the site. That's potential for driving a tight connection to the program.

That's it. Come back tomorrow and we'll keep moving.