The Missouri Valley Conference's Social Media Footprint

Today we'll continue our look into the MVC. 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.

Starting tomorrow, we'll finish the week out by looking into the Valley's 10 schools 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 MVC Home Page, shown below, and you'll see two entry points to social media. In the bottom right, there are touts for both Facebook and Twitter. Social Media is also called out on the left hand menu.

Social Media Roster Depth

Let's explore. Starting with the left hand menu (social media) takes us here, to an overall directory of all social media in the conference. Pretty cool to see everything in one space -- every social media option for every school and every sport. I love the concept, but question if it is expected. Simply put, it isn't intuitive to click on Social Media from the conference site and get access to everything for all members. I'd almost prefer to see just the Valley Social Media here, then add specific team pages that can serve as the launching points for this awesome content.

The Valley on Facebook is here, with 2,250 fans, shown below.

As you can see below, the Valley gives us access to the same Social Media directory shown above within Facebook as a tab...

Finally, the Valley has a tab specifically created for polls. I like this, as voting is a simple thing that anyone can do and shows you, at a glance, what the beat of the crowd feels like. Check this out, here. Super cool. And I hope they expand these in season...




Shifting gears. Clicking onto the Twitter banner takes you here, with 1,800+ followers.

The Valley Tweets all the time, sharing updates on every program in every sport, or so it feels. From what I can tell, there isn't much other activity - observations, hashtags, retweeting, etc. All in all, it really is quite a bit to take in.

Let's get specific and put some numbers to this activity...

1. 5.1% of the time that a fan subscribes to the MVC feed, they put the conference into a list.
2. The Twitter equivalent of student-to-teacher ratio: Tweets per Subscriber. The conference has tweeted over 12,000 times -- or 6.7 per subscriber.
3. Activity is all the time. As in 26 times in the past 24 hours.

How could they be better?

There are a lot of posts. But there's not a lot of personality. To me, Twitter activity is about quality and emotion, not quantity. I'd like to see a lot less activity and a lot more personality.

Buzz.

To gauge buzz, I did a quick search for #MVC on Twitter. There were lots of mentions, but they had nothing to do with the Missouri Valley. It was some form of tech thing. Then I tried @MVC and didn't see anything. There's an opportunity for the Valley to start hash tagging!

Intangibles

Synergy. I'm looking for the total impact the conference has across social media to be higher because the pieces work well together. In this case we need it badly. The Social Media directory is a good starting point but it is a list, not a system.

Report Card

Strengths: Facebook Polls. Social Media Directory

Weaknesses: Buzz, Intangibles, Twitter

Neutral: Depth of Roster.

That's it for now... But come back tomorrow as we start elevating the 3 best practices I found through the 10 MVC member schools!

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