The Ivy League's Social Media Footprint

Today we'll continue our look into the Ivy League. We will review their social media presence -- what they do and where they could improve. And I'll plot it all in one spot on a Social Media Report Card.

Then, we'll finish the week out by looking into the 8 Ivy League programs and elevating the best digital features I've uncovered.

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.

Let's start.

Social Media Exposure

The journey always begins with the conference's weight to social media. There are always stories, teams, and schools weighing in for home page worthiness. But the question I start with is... how easy is it to follow the conference? That doesn't necessarily mean quantity of places. But it does mean exposure to ways to follow the conference.

Hit the Ivy League site, and you'll note 2 ways to enter into social media -- via the bottom left-hand part of the site (see the Facebok and Twitter icons below)

and via the Main Navigation, under Ivy Interactive...

Let's check out what they are doing...

Social Media Roster Depth

The Ivy League's social media lineup is led by Facebook, as you can see here. With only 165 fans, I was pretty surprised. From what I know, the student population in the Ivy League is very passionate about their school and their league, and this level of support kind of caught me off guard.

When I drilled around I found a decent job of leveraging Facebook to share news and alerts around teams (like we saw on the Ivy Website yesterday). And, perhaps at its core, that's what the opportunity is here -- use Facebook to rally students and fans around the emotion in this league, rather than simply the facts about what happened today. It's subtle, but if the conference is so focused on Tradition, how can you own that in the digital world?

I do love how they allow fans to RSVP for Ivy League Championships by leveraging the events tab in Facebook. Smart, as it plays into the truth that (especially in college) who else is going plays a big role on if you go or not!

Shifting gears to Twitter, it's pretty clear that Twitter is also an engine of sharing alerts and breaking news, to an audience of 111 followers. This gives us the same opportunity here that we have in Facebook: share emotion.

If we put some numbers to the Twitter page...

1. Less than 1% of the time that a fan subscribes to the Ivy Twitter feed, they put the conference into a list.
2. The Twitter equivalent of student-to-teacher ratio: Tweets per Subscriber. The conference has tweeted roughly 0.45 times per subscriber.
3. Activity is pretty strong. Multiple times per day, with a heavier post level during game days.

Buzz.

To gauge buzz, I did a quick search for #IVY on Twitter. There were 50 mentions in the past 24 hours. Granted many of these were final score related, but nonetheless there is a lot of energy (and thus opportunity) here!

Intangibles

Synergy. I'm looking for the total impact the conference has across social media to be higher because the pieces work well together. To me, the Ivy League could get there by infusing emotion and connection into their voice on social media.

Report Card

Strengths: Buzz

Weaknesses: Intangibles, Voice on Social Media

Neutral: Depth of Roster, Exposure

That's it for now... But come back tomorrow as we start elevating the 3 best practices I found through the 8 Ivy League programs!

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