College Basketball: The Atlantic 10 Conference's Digital Presence

I'm pumped to move on to the Atlantic 10. As you might guess, every conference is an opportunity for me to find inspiration out there that we can all learn from. And our journey thus far, going through the ACC (link here), Pac-10 (link here), Big Ten (link here), Big 12 (link here), Big East (link here), and SEC (link here) gave me context. Now we'll have a sense for not just what the Mid Majors do well, but also how they stack up against the rest of the conferences.

We covered the MVC here and the WCC here. Now it's time to turn our attention to the A-10 Conference.

You ready?

What's Good about the A-10 Experience? Really smart use of a blog to hype what's new across all programs

What Could Be Better? The A-10 site itself needs an infusion of energy and a statement of what the brand stands for

Let's dive in...

Plowing into the Atlantic 10 Conference site, here, you see an interesting thing at the top of the screen: "Customize Sports." Now that had me very intrigued. I just had to click in.


Here's that callout, in case your eyesight is slipping from reading too many blogs. :)

Sadly, though, this customization is limited to customizing the scores or upcoming games you want to see. (Wouldn't that be sweet if we could customize the whole front page?) Wow...

OK, I moved on in my home page journey and saw the following on the right hand side of the page. Nice! Let's check out the ways the A-10 has for us to follow the league...


First, Twitter. The A-10 on Twitter takes you here, to their world of 625 followers. These followers get updates across all sports. It's ok, but makes me wish I could select the sports I want! They do denote the sports first in every post (ex: MBB), but it left me wishing a deeper connection.



The A-10 on Facebook takes us here, to their page with 386 Fans. Getting here reminded me of how much I like maps. And also of how much of a reach it is for St Louis to be in the Atlantic 10. (I guess no stranger than the A-10 having 14 squads but I digress)... It's early February and there's not been anything posted since late November. A big miss as we're in the heat of conference play now.



Then I came here, to the star of our show, the A-10 Blog (link here). Really, click in here (I'll wait). I'm a big fan of what they are doing here. It's clean and easy to digest, and this blog is fantastic in sharing insight into what games are being played and what coverage the conference is getting in the media. Easily one of the better blogs I've come across in the college space. But the key here is it's a foundation to grow from.



I'll zoom in here so you can get a better feel for the coverage they are highlighting. Really solid.

Moving on, I was intrigued to see the History callout on the site. I clicked in and, as you can see below, it's a lot of info. Good info, but missing the energy and emotion that this league has. Think of all the Pros, all the tourney teams, and all the great coaches who've been in this league. How can we bring this to the forefront?


And, finally, I came across the following box. It showed a nice way to keep in touch with the latest goings on in each member institution. I like the idea of elevating the top stories, I only wish it had the feel we just saw in the blog. I also would love consistency here (Some teams have articles, some teams have links only)...


Checking out the Hoops section, here, I love the feeling of the area. Lots of things at your fingertips.



You are given access to the A-10 Media Guide, which as you can see below is available as a series of PDFs that you can download. Good info, but needs to have energy infused!



You are pointed in the direction of other sites (College Chalktalk) to chat about the conference, which I'm ok with but I'd still want to offer a way to bring the life of a site like that into the A-10 site -- rather than send fans on to the other site for the action.



OK. For the rest of our A-10 action, come back tomorrow as I unveil a new approach to what we can learn from the A-10!

Andy