Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Oregon State Basketball Gives Us a Facebook Welcome Video

What do you do when someone hits your page for the first time? That's a tough question, especially in social media. I mean, you want them to feel welcome, but you also don't want to come across as overly eager -- like you were sitting around waiting for them to click in.

Oregon State Men's Basketball tries a pretty interesting approach -- the Facebook welcome video.

Hit the OSU Basketball Facebook page, here.




As you'll no doubt note, you are taken into their "Welcome" page which greets you with a 100% focus into Coach Craig Robinson's video greeting. I'll embed it here so you can check it out.





If you watched the video (and if you didn't, come on - it's only 29 seconds of your time...), you'll see it is really simple - a scripted welcome to the page with highlights playing in the background. But it is amazing how such a simple video can have a monstrous impact on your impression and connection to the program.

But, how could this be better? I'd love it if the video was contextual. Meaning the OSU team updates this video throughout the year - after every game. Look at it as a way to hype fans for the next game, and to reward fans for coming to the Facebook page. Imagine if you logged in on a Tuesday morning right after the Beavers beat rival Oregon and the "Welcome video" was now a fired up postgame speech about what they accomplished... and what's up next? You'd feel not just connected but a part of the program... and I'd argue that's one of the biggest goals of a team's Facebook page!

I'll be back Friday with more best practices. Feel free to follow along via Facebook (here) or Twitter (I'm @andypawlowski, here)

Thanks.

Andy

1 comments:

sammi said...

You don't see welcome messages as much as you should, especially for schools and sports pages, this is nicely done. It was good that they didn't try to cram *everything* onto that page too, just a simple video and player listing. No one has ever said 'Go Beavers' with less enthusiasm though.

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