Ohio State Basketball and the Balance Between Athletics Department and Team Social Media

Should a program have both an overall Athletics Facebook page and pages for each team? This is a common question I hear and today, inspired by THE Ohio State University, feels like a good day to tackle this topic.

The quick answer is simply, it depends on your ability to do this the right way. With ample people and time, I believe a school should have pages for every program. Then they could maintain an overall Athletics page that hypes the most important posts from each individual program. That mimics fan behavior -- you have pockets of superfans for each program, then people with casual interest in what's hot across all sports. Thus, going deep in program pages and wide in an Athletics page makes sense.

Let's check out The Ohio State Facebook set up.

First, I went right into their Basketball Facebook page, here. I'd be lying if I told you the numbers didn't mess with me. As you can see below, there are a total of only 1,012 fans of the Basketball program on Facebook, with only 239 people "talking about this." As a side note, while the numbers are low, that is a pretty high engagement rate -- 24% of the fan base is talking about the program.

Next, I went into the Athletics Facebook page, here. The numbers are much, much higher -- 1,074,842 like them, with 49,439 "talking about them"... That equates to an engagement rate of 4.5%.

It does make sense that these facts would exist -- higher engagement on team pages, bigger scale on athletics pages. But at that level? That's craziness to me.

On a hunt for "why", I looked deeper into each team's presence. Let's take a look at a couple things. First, you'll see a post from the Ohio State Athletics page right after their HUGE win over Duke.

As you'll see below, one of those images was taken and re-posted on the Basketball page. The other two images weren't around...

When I went earlier in the game, I saw the emotional image and post below make the Ohio State Athletics page. I didn't see it on the basketball page.

So, based on my small sample size, it looks like Ohio State uses their Athletics page as their main page and then reposts as needed onto the Basketball page. With the disparity in size of communities, I can see how that is a tempting strategy. But tempting doesn't always mean it's the right path.

Think of it this way, if you have one small group of passionate fans, hit them with the best stuff, quickly, and they will love you for it. If your most passionate fans love you for what you do, they will tell other fans. And the numbers will grow. Strangely enough, this will limit what you post to the Athletics page, and by doing this position your athletics page as even more premium -- giving fans of that page exactly what they want (the best and only the best across all sports).

The good news is the pieces are here. It's much easier to shift your priority of messaging places than it is to fix your message. But to maximize engagement, that's exactly what THE Facebook page will have to do.

Tune in Friday for more NCAA Digital Best Practices. Or just follow me up on social -- I'm on Twitter, as @andypawlowski (here), and on Facebook as Digital Hoops Blast, here.

Thanks for reading,

Andy