Pac-10 Conference Best Practices: Washington Shows Recruits The Power of All Sports

This blog is all about inspiration. Today we start with 3 days elevating best practices from the squads that make up the Pac-10. You can tune in on this blog, or you can follow along on Facebook (linked here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.

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 checked out how UCLA builds a case for recruits (here).

Let's keep moving.

Hit the Washington home page and mouse over Recruits.



Now click into Coaches, which takes us here, shown below. As you'll note, this takes us to a window where we can view all of the UW coaches in one frame, in a very consistent manner.




Naturally, I clicked into Men's Basketball, which opened up a frame featuring Coach Romar and his personal message to recruits.

There's several things I love about the approach here:

1. Coach Romar comes to us in a window that doesn't take away the view of the other coaches. It naturally leaves us in a place where we feel compelled to explore more coaches.
2. That window also includes the way to contact the coach, via phone or email. It's very easy to find.
   
3. The videos are uploaded to YouTube first, then embedded here, allowing people like me to simply play that video from their site, or blog.
4. The videos are short and sweet but consistent in elevating the reasons each coach loves UW and a tease into who they are as a leader.
   

I think what UW has unlocked here is there is potential in combining all of your coaches together to present a deeper look into what it means to be a student athlete at a school. Once you are a student athlete, you develop bonds with athletes on other teams, as you share that name on the front of a jersey. And this is done in a way that makes it very easy to explore. Well done.

How could this be better? Make this a franchise. Could we have consistent topics and continue this style of showing several viewpoints on the same topic? (Favorite spot on campus? Best thing about Seattle? Why they became a coach? What it means to wear the jersey?) Fantastic concept that could have big extensions!

Tune in tomorrow as we share more inspiration from the Pac-10! And, don't forget, you can follow along on Facebook (here) or on Twitter: I'm @pawlow34.

Andy