Thus far our journey has shown us #8 St Mary's and #7 San Diego.
Let's go...
#6 Gonzaga
The Digital Scouting Report
Strengths: Definitely swagger across Facebook and Twitter.
Weaknesses: Really no story of the history of this program.
Full Scouting Report:Hitting the Zags home page, here, and you'll notice the lower right hand box daring you to follow the program across Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Let's Zoom in.
Nice. Clicking in takes you here, to a Promotions page. I thought I might be lost, so I double-checked.
Then I scrolled down and found it, the description of what I'm getting. This is good stuff, I just wish it was a little easier to get to.
Clicking in to GU on YouTube takes us here, to a powerful visual page. With 73 subscribers, the Zags aren't incredibly active yet on YouTube -- sharing videos created for the season but not much in the way of in-season content.
The Gonzaga Facebook page, here, is home to around 7,600 fans.
They do a nice job here of two things: sharing updates, and doing it with attitude. I'm a believer your Facebook page can have a little swagger to it, and I think this is well done. Check this example and tell me it doesn't get you at least a little hyped.
Finally, the Zags Athletics on Twitter, here, has 1,028 followers.
They also do a nice job of posting updates across all sports with personality. Here's a nice example:
"WBB: HOLY COW, Zags hold a 40 pt lead. Up 75-35 at 15:08. Viv has scored 7 pts this half, has 12 now."
What I don't like here is the links to other programs via Twitter. (See the boxes in the lower right, which I'll zoom in on now). Keep people glued into Gonzaga!
All of this content is also accessible via the Fan Zone menu on the home page, shown below.
Moving to the basketball home page, and you quickly see another way to get into Facebook. Nice.
I want to first point out the right hand side of the page, where you see a callout for the Decade of Excellence. This is what excited me about the Zags, going in. For 10 years, they have been the team that really shattered the myth about a Mid-Major breaking through to the National Stage. And here you get a chance to follow that journey... If you buy the DVD. I'm not against the DVD at all. I just want that energy pumped into the basketball site. This is the story of why you want to play at Gonzaga. And I know it's the lead story they give to recruits. It's why you want to be here, and it needs to come through, without the DVD.
The Gonzaga Basketball media guide is also available, shown in this tout (on the lower left hand of the site) and then browsable online.
But look to the far right and you'll see a big problem... links to the Youngstown and Butler Media Guides. Not good.
What I do like is that the hoops site gives you access to prior year Media Guides, though this content (like the DVD of a Dynasty) needs to escape it's confines and pump through the entire site.
Which sums up the Gonzaga site. There's attitude and swagger in the athletics social media areas. And there is a legacy of greatness on the court. They just need to converge, right here, on Go Zags.com. Come back tomorrow as we keep moving.
Posts
2 comments:
Couldn't agree more with the section about the visibility of other schools' Twitter accounts on your own. It offers recruits a direct link to your opponents (not only on the schedule but on the road wars). You could simply turn it off in your Settings profile. However, from a marketing standpoint, it's nice for your sponsors to see their own Twitter accounts in your sidebar. The more of a connection that your followers can make with your program and your sponsor (and their products), the esteemed worth oftheir sponsorship dollars goes up - people will equate your program with their sandwich, hotel, shoe, etc. And the bonus is, it costs you nothing, and has the potential to be bring in more money the next year. I suppose the answer would be to follow your friends tweets, just not your enemies.
Great comment Michael. I concur it is beneficial for the program to find ways of showing their sponsors are not just sponsors, but also friends or partners of the program. (That adds even more pressure to finding the right sponsors, right?)
Post a Comment