As a reminder, we break down leagues based on how squads finished last season. Thus far we've checked out the ACC (here).
Thanks to Butler University's dream season, we'll turn our attention to the Horizon League, linked here and shown below.
You can stay plugged into this journey via this blog, via the Digital Hoops Blast Facebook page (linked here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.
You can stay plugged into this journey via this blog, via the Digital Hoops Blast Facebook page (linked here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.
Today, we'll start with a look into the Horizon League website.
What's to love about the Horizon League? (link here, shown below)
The Horizon League is a digital innovator. They put a serious investment out there, which inspired me to discuss the league previously, here.
The second you get here you feel it. The home page is alive. In fact, consider the image above and the image below together to give you a complete feel of the home page. As you can see below, they give us a well designed, easy to manage inventory of the news -- be it from the campus sites (Newswire, on the left), the conference office (Official Releases, in the middle), or social media (Twitter, on the right hand side)...
It's a lot of information but, thanks to the layout, you don't feel it. What we also have is a system that allows multiple parties (the conference office, member schools, and those on Twitter) to keep the home page dynamic. Nice stuff here.
This extends to the sport specific sections really well. As you can see below (or here), the Horizon League takes the same combination of Official Releases and Campus News (plus videos) and filters them down by sport. This doesn't just hold true for men's basketball -- it applies through everything, like cross country and tennis. NICE!
How could this be better? The framework is fantastic, as you can tell. That said, there are 2 opportunities to really take this to another level. First, look at customizing the Twitter offering by sport by leveraging hash tags. (More social media to come tomorrow) And, most importantly these pieces, albeit fantastic, are segmented. There's an opportunity for a moderator to bring those pieces together so that the page is less a summary of what's out there and more a dialogue on the sports.
Athlete Blogs are a world class framework.
As you can see below, the Horizon League offers us an opportunity to view a full world of blogs crafted by student athletes. The big thing to pay attention to is the left hand part of this image. You have the opportunity, at a click, to filter this down by school, by sport, or by a combination. Want only Valpo Basketball, you've got it. Brilliant. It's not just having student athlete blogs that's great, it's putting these into a very digestible and usable model. Check them out below or linked here.
How could this be better? Once you have filtered in by school and sport, make it easy to get updates. Don't make fans come back here again to customize and see their team/sport. Doing the hard work for them can be accomplished via a subscribe engine!
Video applies the same framework, plus sharing.
What's to love about the Horizon League? (link here, shown below)
The Horizon League is a digital innovator. They put a serious investment out there, which inspired me to discuss the league previously, here.
The second you get here you feel it. The home page is alive. In fact, consider the image above and the image below together to give you a complete feel of the home page. As you can see below, they give us a well designed, easy to manage inventory of the news -- be it from the campus sites (Newswire, on the left), the conference office (Official Releases, in the middle), or social media (Twitter, on the right hand side)...
It's a lot of information but, thanks to the layout, you don't feel it. What we also have is a system that allows multiple parties (the conference office, member schools, and those on Twitter) to keep the home page dynamic. Nice stuff here.
This extends to the sport specific sections really well. As you can see below (or here), the Horizon League takes the same combination of Official Releases and Campus News (plus videos) and filters them down by sport. This doesn't just hold true for men's basketball -- it applies through everything, like cross country and tennis. NICE!
How could this be better? The framework is fantastic, as you can tell. That said, there are 2 opportunities to really take this to another level. First, look at customizing the Twitter offering by sport by leveraging hash tags. (More social media to come tomorrow) And, most importantly these pieces, albeit fantastic, are segmented. There's an opportunity for a moderator to bring those pieces together so that the page is less a summary of what's out there and more a dialogue on the sports.Athlete Blogs are a world class framework.
As you can see below, the Horizon League offers us an opportunity to view a full world of blogs crafted by student athletes. The big thing to pay attention to is the left hand part of this image. You have the opportunity, at a click, to filter this down by school, by sport, or by a combination. Want only Valpo Basketball, you've got it. Brilliant. It's not just having student athlete blogs that's great, it's putting these into a very digestible and usable model. Check them out below or linked here.
How could this be better? Once you have filtered in by school and sport, make it easy to get updates. Don't make fans come back here again to customize and see their team/sport. Doing the hard work for them can be accomplished via a subscribe engine!
Video applies the same framework, plus sharing.
The Horizon League takes the same filtering method we saw earlier and applies it into the world of video with one big addition: they give you a short URL to copy, or a simple click to share each video via Facebook or Twitter. Really powerful, really simple. Check it out here.
How could this be better? Love the videos, love the organization. I would just love to see a schedule. It'd be great to know what's dropping, when, so that we can build anticipation.
Finally, take a peak at the Horizon League's approach to Championships, here. We see Championship portrayed in both videos and in words. As you'll note on the left hand side of the page, the videos have been filtered to show us "Championship Videos." Then, scan over to the far right and note the power of a collection of logos under the header "Reigning Champion." Nice.
How could this be better? Right now, there really isn't a way to go deep by sport. The sports are listed vertically, in order of their place on the calendar. But there's more opportunity here. Apply the same filters, bring in student blogs from their championship runs, pull in applicable videos, and conference releases. The info is all here, we just need to apply it.
That's it.
What's up next? Horizon week continues tomorrow. We will take a peak at how the Horizon League is leveraging social media. Then, we'll wrap the week up with 3 peaks into things I found fantastic across the 8-team Horizon League landscape.
Don't forget, you can stay plugged into this journey via this blog, via the Digital Hoops Blast Facebook page (linked here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.
Andy
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