The America East Conference Drives You To a Daily Blog of Original Content

America East Conference Week starts now.

Each week we will break down a different conference across the D-1 landscape, giving you a look into how they are connecting with fans (and recruits) across their website and social media. Along the way, we'll elevate a few things in each conference that are best-in-class: what we can learn from the schools that make up each conference.

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.

It's time to turn our attention to the new-look America East Conference.

Let's move.

Hit the America East home page, and (for the astute follower of this site) you'll note a new look to the site. The America East has taken a lot of steps to evolve their digital presence (compare my breakdown previously done in August, here). Chief among their improvements are focus. They brought in a cleaner look with a focus of driving you to ways to stay in touch with the conference when you aren't sitting on AmericaEast.org.

Specifically, you'll note a prominent call to drive you to their blog, boldly stated as "Keeping Fans Updated with the Latest News on America East." You'll also note there's access via the Blogger icon (above that text) and in the box on the right-hand side (AExtra).

Naturally, I clicked in, immediately. That took me here, to the America East Blog, AExtra, linked here and shown below. A quick glance at the images below will give you a great look into what, specifically, the conference is offering. And the results are powerful.

First, the post is by "Curtis Schickner, UMBC '12." What you might not grasp from that is that this is not an aberration. It is the style of this blog to mix expertise from a neutral party (the conference as a whole) with that of people on the ground (a fleet of student writers on each site!)

In fact, as you'll note below, there are profiles for each Blogger along with quick links to the Student Newspapers of each school.

As you'll see below, there's also easy access to the latest Tweets from the America East pumped here, and naturally links to each school's athletics page.

What you won't grasp from the images I'll add via an embedded video below. They have fun with this. As you'll note by clicking in, the conference sends their digital crew out to check out the action, even if it is as early as 5 am. Sports are fun, and passion is contagious. That's evident when you click in!



So, in sum, the America East elevates people on the ground, then brings it together with a perspective on love of the schools from their main office. We can all learn from this as it shows how a conference can truly work together with its schools to provide something special.

How could this be better? There's a lot of content here. And to some degree it isn't predictable. How can we make this something where you can opt-in and subscribe to stories you want? Or, how can we add a degree of programming to the mix? (Let us know what we should expect each day or week, for example). This can be done via a schedule that the conference releases each week. There's fantastic things going on, now all we need is a way to build anticipation.

America East week continues tomorrow. We will take a peak at how the conference is leveraging social media. Then, we'll wrap the week up with 3 peaks into things I found fantastic across the 9-team conference landscape.

Don't forget, you can follow along via the Digital Hoops Blast Facebook page (linked here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.

Andy