What makes something a best practice? This isn't about the most intricate experience. It's about looking at the world from your consumer's point of view and delivering something that hits it right smack on the head. In the case of colleges, I'm treating the primary consumer as that prospective student athlete.
Thus far, we've shown how Saint Louis leverages a blog to show student athletes away from the competitive scene (linked here).
Let's keep moving.
Hit the Dayton Athletics home page (here), and you'll see the first navigational element is for GoDaytonHoops. (Nice!) It is in this section that we uncover inspiration.
Click in, and you are taken to the landing page for the Dayton Basketball Experience (shown below, linked here). The site is very cinematic, with an impressive video playing in the background that delivers a feel that you are viewing this inside an arena.
Now, turn your attention to the bottom menu: Dayton takes the concept of a blog and turns it into a direct look into their program. The title is aspirational -- Experience Flight. But the beauty is that we get a look into 3 components of their basketball program: Game Day, Off the Court, and Facilities.
First, Game Day (linked here).
Dayton takes us through what happens on a game day in text and images. You see how the team approaches shootarounds, pre-game meals, and preparation. And you feel it through the crowd imagery. Then (as you can see here), there are game day perspectives offered up by head coach Brian Gregory. Check this sample post and feel game days and what they mean to the program.
"After the game, many members of the media asked numerous questions about the seniors and their undefeated non-conference careers. I wish they could have simply seen the pride in the locker room after the game by these seven men. The eyes of the underclassmen were on them and the underclassmen took great pride in contributing to the senior class's accomplishment, just as much as the seniors that finished that feat... We are successful because leadership is embedded into the culture of the program."
Next, off-the-court. This is a look into what makes the members of the squad who they are.
There's a gripping post on walk-on player Dan Fox, linked here. Depicting his heart and desire, the post emotionally captivated me. Check it:
"I literally had been watching the workout for 90 seconds when I heard the loud grunting and saw sweat pouring off of an individual's practice jersey. It was Dan Fox and he was doing a ballhandling drill with so much passion, so much intensity that 90 seconds into the drill he was already into a full sweat..."Deep. This is a great take as it connects us to the effort and not the effort of the best player on the team -- but the spirit that embodies the Dayton program. How authentic does this come across?
Finally, let's take a look at the Facilities Component to the Blog. Clicking in here, you see that the Flyers give us not simply a tour of the gym but rather a tour of the academics center. I loved this, because as a player you aren't spending all of your time in the gym... and we see that they offer a fantastic place to study, work on the computer, or meet in small groups. Brilliant stuff.
In sum, Dayton takes being a part of their program and divides it into 3 areas: On the Court, Off the Court, and Facilities. Those areas serve as filters to help guide content through the season. They then bring that content to us in the form of storytelling. Count me as hooked. To the rest of us, what are the stories that you have? And how can you create a way to get them out there?
How could this be better? Let us subscribe and share. The message is here, but the Flyers rely on us to come and find it. The challenge is how do they bring this to us, rather than rely on us to come to Dayton? One suggestion is to add in Facebook and Twitter share functionality into every blog entry. It's simple and allows for easy passing of these stories. Secondly, they can ask us to sign up to hear the latest. A simple email box could prove magical in impact -- as the stories are definitely worth signing up for!
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