U Conn & Louisville Ask Fans For Photos on Social

As you have probably guessed by now, I have some kind of love affair with pictures. I'm a big admirer of them for so many reasons, but I guess when you cut right down to it, it is their ability to tell a story from anyone at anytime that just blows me away.

There's no team and no fan that can't take advantage of photography. But what's inspired me lately is seeing how teams are seeking more. They have come to the conclusion that more pictures = more opportunity to connect. And thus, they are asking their fans to join in the mix.

Today, we'll look at two examples of this... and then think about how we can all learn from it. First, let's go to the U Conn Huskies Facebook page, here. U Conn takes their profile picture and transforms it into a call to action for photos.

Let's zoom in. As you'll see below, they put it simple. "Post and tag yourself in a UConn Huskies for a chance to win great prizes." And this very photo/call to action appears in every post the Huskies make, into all 30,000 or so fans' News Feeds.

For a different approach at the same idea, let's hit the Louisville Cardinals Facebook page, here. As you'll see, the top way they are asking fans to Connect with the Cards is by sending your photos to the team. They have set up a specific email account (gocardspics@gmail.com) to send these to.

Interesting.

I'd look at this and say it is clearly a priority for both schools to have fans bring their love for the team by sharing pictures. And they are asking us to do something we already do (it's already behavior to post pictures, tag pictures, or email pictures). If you do this, you'll start to see the team as more of a friend and less of an entity... plus the team gets more visuals of their fan energy. Everyone wins.

But how could we make this better? How could the rest of us look at this to build our connection to our teams or fans? It starts with the goal. The goal isn't to share pictures. And it isn't to win prizes. What is that goal for you? Is it to create a visual identity of what it means to be a Cards fan on campus? Or to create a fan guide to the team? Or to put them onto iPads for the players? Or to become the Twitter skin for your program? I feel there is a step that's missing that can unite everything -- don't just share pictures because you can. Share pictures to become a part of something special. Something you can't do on your own. If we can paint this picture, create this emotion, we take our community and transform it into something addicting and uniting.

Hope you're digging this style -- If so, make sure you check back later this week for more best practice goodness! Feel free to follow along via Facebook (here) or Twitter (I'm @andypawlowski, here)

Thanks.

Andy