The Pac-10 Conference's Social Media Footprint

Today we'll continue our look into the Pac-10. 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 10 Pac-10 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 Pac-10 home page and you'll see that social media benefits from the fact that there aren't a lot of distractions to click into. Facebook and Twitter are both called out in the bottom left-hand corner of the site.

Social Media makes another appearance later in your journey. Clicking into the Blogs section, here, pulls in the latest Tweets from the conference.

Social Media Roster Depth

The integration into the site makes it clear that Twitter is the top priority. The Pac-10 on Twitter, here, has just shy of 6,500 followers. The style is really just leveraging Twitter to get the word out around articles and scores, but it's interesting to see how they list scores. For example, not Oregon 69 Portland State 0 but rather @oregonfootball 69 Portland State 0. I haven't seen a Twitter powered scoreboard before, but I kind of dig it. Feels like they should take this all the way home, for example, "Huge Win today for @oregonfootball -- blasting PSU 69-0."

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

1. 6.56% of the time that a fan subscribes to the Pac-10 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 just over 600 times -- or 0.13 per subscriber.
3. Activity is pretty consistent. Multiple times per day, with a heavier post level during game days.

Shifting over to Facebook, the Pac-10 has just shy of 8,700 fans, here. They leverage this page to publish game summaries and previews -- using Facebook as a way to get access to stories that are live on the Pac-10 site. It's not bad to have an extra connection to the stories, I'd just love to see some exclusive stories and energy here.

Buzz.

To gauge buzz, I did a quick search for #Pac10 on Twitter. There were 20 mentions in the past 2 hours, along with callouts for the Pac10 feed, ESPN Pac 10, and Pac-10 Football (which I didn't even know existed from the main site and may not be current as it hasn't been updated since June). A lot of energy 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. In this case there's so much potential for the school pages to serve as this. But it is lacking. Pulling in Twitter posts relevant to each school on their page could be a great starting point for this.

Report Card

Strengths: Buzz! Twitter scoreboards.

Weaknesses: Intangibles.

Neutral: Facebook, 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 10 Pac-10 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