Social Media Monday: LSU Football takes over #1 Ranking with Dismantling of West Virginia

There's no doubt who has the momentum in College Sports right now. Fresh off a monster victory over West Virginia, LSU is the new #1 team in football right now. Fans are no doubt feeling it -- and that makes social media the place to be.

Let's head over to the LSU Football Twitter and Facebook pages. I'm going to post a series of images from the game, and the aftermath and I'll come back at you with some reactions.

First, here's a snapshot early in the game and then postgame, on Twitter.

Now, here's the same posting times, on Facebook.

No doubt you'll note a theme, as the posts were identical (as are the profile pictures). This idea carried over into the postgame reaction, which I'll include below with Twitter first, then Facebook.

The only differences you'll note in the imagery above are two things: 1) the use of the #LSUWVU hashtag on Twitter and 2) the sharing and commenting stats from Facebook.

What do I make of all this?

You have to love the energy. It's a big game and I counted a total of 15 posts between the start of the game and the end of the game on both Facebook and Twitter. There's no doubt this school is in the mindset of bringing action to its fans. Check.

But is this the right execution? It is inside Twitter, where we have a tool designed for rapid updates. I'd love more emotion in the postings (Don't tell me "Defense forces another punt," but rather tell me "This defense is suffocating tonight. Another 4 and out.") But it's not the ideal strategy in Facebook, where we should go after engagement on fewer posts. (Do less, better!)

I get the idea of extending your voice out to more people. But keep in mind that the Twitter following (22,000) is much, much smaller than the Facebook following (521,000). Thus, I'd love to see Facebook become a focus in LSU Football's efforts. Leverage imagery, put emotion into posts, and limit the posts inside Facebook.

I'd love to see Facebook feel like Les Miles' locker room and Twitter feel like a passionate fan is doing the color commentary... In sum, we had great energy that was of the moment, we just need more focused emotion and recognition that simply syncing accounts isn't always the best strategy. The good news is there's a passionate fan base to work with, and a great football team to hype!

If you're digging this (thanks), don't forget to tune in again. I'll be back Wednesday with more digital best practices. Feel free to follow along via Facebook (here) or Twitter (I'm @andypawlowski, here)

Thanks.

Andy

SEC College Basketball Marketing: #9 LSU

Let's continue our journey, looking at how programs are communicating to young athletes (or fans) from a digital point of view. Websites and digital marketing are the great equalizer -- a place where every program can share what they stand for. The internet is always there, and always on. And, as they do on the court, the best programs take advantage of opportunities.
Let's keep moving.

Thus far we've seen #12 Alabama, #11 Mississippi State, and #10 Auburn.

#LSU

The Digital Scouting Report

Strengths: Nice video experience from the Geaux Zone to Facebook

Weaknesses: Limited ways to follow and get a feel for the basketball program.

Full Scouting Report:

The LSU Tigers Athletics page is pretty clean and simple, with the feel of a news site - very informative, but not as dynamic.



You'll notice on the right hand side the latest updates section with "More Headlines" giving you access to social networks. I'll paste it here, in case it's not clear. Maybe the wording is what is tripping me, but I was actually thinking we might be able to click on the Facebook or Twitter icons and see new content in this area...

Clicking on the Facebook icon on the side takes you here, to a community of roughly 20,000 fans. The Facebook presence is different than many I've come across in that they are attempting to integrate shopping for LSU gear into the site. I think it's a smart idea, though I'd like to see this evolve in 2 ways. First, rather than just linking to the LSU store I'd love to see them personally write posts about cool gear. And secondly, I'm intrigued about seeing opportunities for LSU gear to deck out your Facebook page.

LSU also has a large arsenal of video content inside their Facebook presence - this is a nice experience, albeit a very football-centric one.

Clicking on the Twitter icon takes you to the LSU Sports Twitter page, with roughly 6,000 followers. They cover all sports but it's very football heavy, mostly providing game updates of all teams.

Now I scrolled down to the very bottom of the Athletics site and came upon this image. Interesting. I clicked in...

The Facebook side gives you a nice look at what the LSU Facebook experience is about. How big is the community, what are people active about?


Meanwhile, clicking on the Twitter button takes you here, to a nice directory of all places LSU Sports on Twitter. It's solid, but as you'll see, there is still a gap in information about basketball, specifically... and there's a lot of sites that feel like they could all be merged together into one robust athletics Twitter. So, I ask you to recall the LSU Sports Twitter we discussed earlier as we dive through these...

The LSU Sports News Twitter (here) is a collection of links to the latest posts on LSU Sports.net. With around 1300 followers, it is a stream of updates of new articles on every team.

And the LSU Publications office (here) has a LSU Publications Twitter feed across all sports. So we have LSU Sports, LSU Sports News, an LSU Publications. All seem pretty decent at covering all sports... I'd just love to see them work together.

OK in search of hoops, I moved on to the Men's Basketball home page, here.

The basketball section gives you access to a pretty robust list of photo galleries on the squad. I liked this one, showing off their new practice facility. (Which really needs to be a section in and of itself!)

If you scroll down the page a little, you get this video content window. I'm game. I clicked in...

And, wow. I was hit with a video explosion. Literally had no idea this was coming and it is a premium video world. Lots of videos, albeit football gets the majority. You get coaches shows, press conferences, and highlights. It's very well branded and a nice space.

The basketball section also gives you access to their Media Guide (see below, killer graphics, and you can thumb through it online).

And, finally, you get a list of Tigers in the NBA. As you can tell, they are planning to update this with stats of how they are doing this season (but haven't yet)... Clicking on any player takes you to his NBA.com profile page. I'm not a big fan of this -- I'd much rather learn about their impact at LSU. What did they accomplish? Or what was their impact on the team and the community?

LSU in general has a lot of pieces to be great. They have the history and the fans, just need to bring it all together around what it means to be a Tiger.

Come back on Monday as we continue rolling through the SEC.

Andy