The West Coast Conference's Social Media Footprint

Today we'll continue our look into the West Coast Conference. 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 WCC 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 WCC Sports home page and you'll find social media in two places: The banner in the upper left hand corner of the site (which rotates between the WCC and Commissioner Zaninovich on Twitter) and the Multimedia menu in the main nav. Both are shown below.

Social Media Roster Depth

As you can gather from the above, the WCC hits us with a social media approach on 4 platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and iTunes.

The site layout would lend me to believe Twitter is king, so we will start here. Clicking on the Twitter menu in the nav (or on the WCC on Twitter banner) takes us here, to the WCC Sports on Twitter. The conference has 818 followers and covers all sports and schools with this feed. It's always a challenge to keep a conversational feel when you have such a broad audience (8 schools X 12 sports by my count), but I feel the conference does a nice job of adding some personality into their posts.

You wouldn't find it from the main nav, but WCC Commissioner Jamie Zaninovich is up on Twitter, here, with 326 followers. We don't see it very often - a person in leadership who puts him or herself out there for fans (and alums, media, or even recruits) to connect with. But what it does is it puts a face on the conference. It makes the conference office feel less formal and more approachable. And, honestly, many conferences can (and probably will) steal from this model.

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

1. 9.2% of the time that a fan subscribes to the WCC Twitter feed, they put the conference into a list. For Commish Zaninovich, the list rate is 6.4%.
2. The Twitter equivalent of student-to-teacher ratio: Tweets per Subscriber. The conference has tweeted roughly 1.62 times per subscriber. For Commish, it's 0.63/subscriber.
3. Activity is pretty consistent. The conference tweets multiple times per day; the commissioner tweets a few times each week.

The Conference's Facebook presence is here, with 726 Fans. As of now, it seems that the conference leverages Facebook primarily as a way to subscribe to WCC news -- as they publish stories to this platform as they hit the main WCC site. This is an opportunity for the conference to evolve and develop a voice in this platform.

A tool that could help that voice is imagery. Photography is currently limited to 4 albums, shown below. After what we saw yesterday, the conference has a big opportunity to infuse more images into Facebook.

Next, WCC Sports on YouTube takes you here, with 40 subscribers. It's evident from hitting this site that video content is important to the WCC. (That comes through loud and clear). I'm especially a fan of the individual team offseason (summer) reports, which you can check out for yourself here. This content is amazing in that 1) it is on a schedule, 2) no one else can tell this story, and 3) school websites can help promote this content. Fantastic work!!!

The full YouTube Channel is shown below:

Finally, the WCC has a presence on iTunes, here. Fans can sign up to get the latest WCC conference audio podcast, covering all sports. The challenge is that this content hasn't updated since May 2009 -- meaning we should either infuse new energy or take this section off the site until we have that content. Love the idea though, as it allows fans to take the latest news from the conference with them on the go... and this content isn't something anyone else could deliver!

Buzz.

To gauge buzz, I did a quick search for #WCC on Twitter. There were 3 mentions in the past 24 hours, and a lot of #WCC references that had little to do with the conference (WCC is apparently a popular acronym!). Nonetheless, there is opportunity to improve here, and to curate a conversation along the way.

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 WCC could get there by creating a blog that packs the emotion this conference delivers in one spot.

Report Card

Strengths: Depth of Roster, Commish Zaninovich on Twitter, YouTube content plan

Weaknesses: Intangibles, Consistent voice on Social Media, Synergy

Neutral: Exposure

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