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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

It’s GAME DAY, y’all!  College football begins in earnest tonight, and both the South Carolina Gamecocks and Vanderbilt Commodores will be in action from the SEC tonight.  This is my favorite time of the year, the weather is cooler and football is in the air, I love it!  Today we are going to wrap up this series with a look at how the final two SEC teams; The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels are using social media to connect with their football fans, and maybe recruits as well.

How The Alabama Crimson Tide Uses Social Media to Connect With Its Football Fans and Recruits

As with most SEC schools, Alabama focuses most of it content delivery via the Big Three of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  On Facebook and Twitter, there’s a good mix of content from Fall camp, as well as visuals designed to program the larger football program, etc.  One thing I noticed was that Alabama was using social media to promote a ‘flash sale’ of tickets to some of its game at a special low price for only 4 days.  Smart thinking, and Alabama also uses Facebook and Twitter to push its fans back to its main RollTide.com site for practice updates and information.

But its on Instagram where Alabama really shines.  The football program is an absolute beast on IG, they have the perfect mix of promotional content, but also giving you photos AND videos from backstage at the program and fall camp:

The Crimson Tide putting in some work today at the start of practice #RollTide

A photo posted by Alabama Football (@alabamafbl) on

In fact it was the fan reaction online to this short video posted on IG during the Summer that prompted me to do this series:

Commitment takes no days off. #HuntFor16 #BuiltByBama #RollTide A video posted by Crimson Tide Football (@crimsontide_fb) on


Fans LOVE this type of content that goes behind the scenes and gives them a Backstage Pass.  Alabama is the template for how every college football program should be using Instagram to connect with its fans.  They pump out an insane amount of content, both in visual and video form, and they cover all the bases.  Promotional, behind-the-scenes, spotlighting accomplishments of key players both past and present.  They do it all, the only quibble I have with Alabama’s IG usage is that they have two different accounts, this one that’s billed as the official account of Alabama football, and then this one that’s run by the Alabama football staff.  Not sure why they have two different accounts, and amazingly, they post different content to each.  Still, Alabama’s IG usage is amazing, in fact it’s so good it makes me wonder if in another year or two Instagram could become more important to teams like Alabama than even Facebook or Twitter, as the site becomes more mainstream.

But it turns out that Alabama has one more social media trick up its sleeve.  Remember that on Tuesday I mentioned that September 1st was the beginning of the period where schools could reach out directly to recruits in the 2017 class via email and DMs on Twitter?  Bama did exactly that on Tuesday, sending recruits they are targeting in the 2017 custom graphics like this one:

Remember when I mentioned that schools can leverage social media to connect with fans AND recruits? This is a perfect example of how Alabama is doing the latter.  Alabama DMed these ‘interest cards’ to 2017 recruits starting on Tuesday.  It’s a great tool to let recruits know you’re interested and to make them feel good about playing for your school.  Click the recruit’s tweets above and you’ll see he got similar DMs from other schools like Tennessee and Florida State.

Overall, I’m impressed with Alabama’s social media usage.  It’s solid on Facebook and Twitter, but they really shine on Instagram.  BTW no Periscope for the Crimson Tide, it seems.  If they had a killer Periscope and YouTube presence, they would clearly be the class of the SEC when it comes to social media.

How The Ole Miss Rebels Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans And Recruits

The first thing I notice is that Ole Miss football has an account on Facebook and Twitter….but no dedicated Instagram account?  Wow that’s surprising, the athletics department as a whole has an IG account, but I couldn’t find one for just the football program.  As this series has developed, we’ve learned that most every SEC team is making great use of Instagram to create visual and video content that connects with fans.  I’ve come to expect it and Ole Miss not having an IG account for the football program really seems like a fumble.  They are making extensive use of Facebook and Twitter, but the sparse content on IG really puts their overall social media efforts in a weaker light.

The Rebels also have a main YouTube account for the athletics department.  One thing I did notice is apparently the Rebels last year and this year are producing a video series chronicling their football season.  I thought this was pretty interesting, here’s what appears to be the first episode, covering Fall Camp:

Best single piece of content that any SEC school has created for its fans.  I’m blown away by this video and if I were an Ole Miss fan I would so excited about this series!  The quality is on point, this looks like a series that would be produced by ESPN or The SEC Network.  As disappointed as I was with the Rebels lack of a solid IG presence, I’m far more impressed with this content, and am honestly surprised that more teams aren’t creating long-form video content like this.  Well done, Ole Miss, well done.

 

So that concludes my look at how each SEC program is using social media to connect with its football fans and recruits.  This series has been SO much fun that I’m not ready to end it.  I think I’ll give away some awards….

Best Overall Social Media Usage: The Texas A&M Aggies.  Solid from top to bottom, but the fact that the Aggies have been on Periscope since the Spring really puts them over the top, I give them major early-adopter points for that.  Honorable mentions go to Alabama and Miss State.

Best Single Piece of Content For Football Fans: The Season – Ole Miss Football Fall Camp 2015.  Mentioned it above, just blown away with the quality, it gives fans a recap of the 2014 season plus about 15 minutes of behind-the-scenes coverage of Fall camp, even lets you go inside a football staff meeting.  Excellence.

Best Single Piece of Content For Football Recruits: Dreams by the Georgia Bulldogs.  This video is spectacular, you will want to lace up your sneakers and play for the Georgia Bulldogs after watching this.

Best Facebook Usage: The Alabama Crimson Tide.  Several SEC teams do a pretty good job on Facebook, including Alabama.  But at the end of the day the Crimson Tide has something that no other SEC program comes close to matching: Over 1 Million fans on Facebook.

Best Instagram Usage: The Alabama Crimson Tide.  Not only does the Crimson Tide produce a ton of content on IG, they cover all the bases; a mix of video and visual content.  They focus on promoting ticket sales, on covering Fall Camp, and spotlighting current as well as former players in the NFL and even past legends.  This is the blueprint for how a college football program should use IG to connect with its fans.

Best Twitter Usage: The Arkansas Razorbacks.  The Hawgs not only tweet up a storm on Twitter, they’ve also been known to live-tweet football press conferences, which I think is a brilliant idea that I’m shocked other teams haven’t thought of doing this.

Best Periscope Usage: The Texas A&M Aggies.  The odds are your favorite program isn’t even on Periscope yet, as only a handful of the SEC teams are so far.  When you think about that, understand that the Aggies were Periscoping during their Spring Scrimmage back in April!  That’s being an early adopter!

 

I hope you had as much fun reading this series as I did writing it!  If you want to catch on the entire series, here’s each entry:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

Today: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

 

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Auburn Tigers and Arkansas Razorbacks

It’s game week, y’all!  Welcome to the 6th installment in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience series!  This week we will be wrapping up the series with today’s look at how Auburn and Arkansas are using social media to connect with their football fans and recruits, and on Thursday we’ll do the same for The Alabama Crimson Tide and the Ole Miss Rebels.

This is actually a huge day for SEC programs and their social media efforts.  September 1st is the first day that the NCAA allows schools to contact recruits for the 2017 class directly via Direct Messages on Twitter.  It’s still too early to judge how teams will be using Twitter to reach out directly to recruits since the only way we’ll know is if recruits share that info as schools aren’t allowed by NCAA rules to discuss recruits by name.

How the Auburn Tigers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans and Recruits

Here’s the complete list of social media channels and accounts for Auburn.  I appreciate the fact that Auburn has a very clear-cut and organized listing of all their accounts in one place.  This is the easiest to navigate and cleanest list I’ve seen so far from any of the SEC teams in this series.  There is a Facebook, Twitter and Instagram account of the football program, and Auburn lists NINE different social media accounts for the athletic department as a whole.  I also noticed that when you click on the link for Auburn’s Periscope account, it takes you to this page that explains what Periscope is and how to use it.  Smart thinking, because most fans have never heard of Periscope so it’s a nice touch to educate them.

As with most SEC teams, Auburn’s football program is making use of the Big Three: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to distribute content for fans.  As I mentioned above, Auburn also has a Periscope account, but they are making very sparse use of it, and apparently aren’t sharing any scopes from Fall camp, which is a bit disappointing.  I can understand not wanting to share video from actual practices, but other SEC programs like Miss State and Tennessee are regularly utilizing Periscope to share press conferences and interviews from coaches after practice.  This is something Auburn could be doing as well.

On Instagram, Auburn has been sharing some photos from Fall camp, about one a day, but no videos.  However, the one thing Auburn is doing very well is using its social media accounts to link to content on its main website, www.auburntigers.com.  Here’s a couple of examples from Facebook and Twitter:

AuburnFBNote that Auburn is using different content on both Facebook and Twitter to push fans back to the same link on their website.  Auburn is probably doing the best job of any of the SEC programs so far when it comes to linking back to the content on their website.  This might not seem like a big deal but it really is, Auburn is driving engaged traffic back to its website with each of these updates.  They are leveraging social media accounts to build up online properties they own, which is what you should be doing as well. How the Arkansas Razorbacks Are Using Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans and Recruits Arkansas has a pretty sparse collection of social media accounts, typically sticking to the Big Three for each sport.  The football program has the familiar accounts on Facebook(If anyone from Arkansas’ SM team reads this, you have a bad URL linked for the FB account, need to edit that), Twitter and Instagram. While the content frequency to the Facebook and Instagram accounts are a bit light, Arkansas is tweeting up a storm on Twitter: 

One thing I noticed that Arkansas has been doing is live-tweeting press conferences from the football coaches! Of course, what a great idea!  The Hawgs are also sharing some backstage content about the weight program, etc, but the live-tweeting really caught my eye and it’s a great way to build a following on Twitter.  Also, for those SEC teams that aren’t interested in sharing content via Instagram or Periscope from practices, live-tweeting PCs is a great idea as it gives you complete control over what is and is not shared.

The rest of Arkansas’ social media usage is pretty straightforward.  But like Auburn, they are doing a nice job of leveraging social media to drive traffic back to their www.arkansasrazorbacks.com website.  Yet they still find time for some fine hawg-callin’…

ArkansasFB

So far in this series, I think top-to-bottom, Texas A&M is doing the best job of leveraging social media to connect with its fans, with Miss State and Tennessee close behind.  More specifically, I think Miss State is doing the best with video content, Arkansas is the best on Twitter, Georgia does the best job in using social media to connect directly with recruits, and Auburn is probably the best in using social media to drive traffic back to its main website.  But we still have two teams left to examine on Thursday, and I have a feeling my Crimson Tide may have something to say about which team uses social media the best.

Here’s the complete series so far if you want to catch up:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

Today: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

Thursday: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

 

See y’all on Thursday for the end of this series and the kickoff to the college football season!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Georgia Bulldogs and Missouri Tigers

Welcome back to the 5th week of the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  Each week leading up to the start of the college football season, I’ll be looking at how the SEC teams are leveraging social media to connect with their fans.  After today we’ll have 2 more installments coming next Tuesday and Thursday, as the season starts that night.  You can catch up on former entries in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience here.

Here’s the schedule for the series:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

Today: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

How The Georgia Bulldogs Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football FansRecruits

As I’ve been going through the SEC Social Media Fan Experience series, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about how each team does with sharing behind the scenes content from its Fall camp.  Fans love these videos as it gives them a sense of how practices are run, which players are doing well in practice, etc.  So I was a bit surprised when I checked the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram channels for Georgia Football and found almost no content from Fall camp.  No videos, no recaps, nothing.

So is this an example of Georgia really dropping the ball when it comes to giving fans the content they want?  Maybe….or maybe not.  While Georgia isn’t sharing very much content from their Fall camp, they are also sharing a lot of content devoted to how former Georgia players are doing in the NFL.  Also, I kept seeing the phrase ‘Commit to the G’ sprinkled throughout the content Georgia was sharing.

Then I came across this awesome video on Georgia’s Vimeo channel:

Now Georgia’s content focus makes a lot more sense.  Georgia isn’t targeting fans with its content, the Bulldogs are trying to connect with recruits.  Remember when I started this series I said that social media was a great way for college football programs to connect with both fans AND recruits.  Georgia is the first SEC schools in this series that’s focused the majority of its social media content on connecting with recruits instead of fans. BTW note that one of the last shots in the above video is Todd Gurley posing with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during this year’s NFL draft.  That’s no accident, the video is designed to show recruits how amazing it is to play in Athens, and that playing for Georgia will also help them go on to play in the NFL.

This goes to the heart of what all good social media strategies are about.  Last week we looked at how Texas A&M is doing an amazing job of leveraging social media to connect with its fans through Instagram, Periscoping practices, even a kickass smartphone app that pulls all their social media content together in one place.  It’s easy to look at what Texas A&M is doing with video, photos, livestreaming, and then look at what Georgia is doing and think the Bulldogs are behind the Aggies.

But you have to remember: Georgia is creating content that helps it reach its unique goals for social media.  Texas A&M is trying to connect directly with its fans, while Georgia is trying to connect directly with recruits.  Different goals which means a different approach to content creation and distribution.  Both programs are doing a great job of creating content that connects with their desired audience.

 

How The Missouri Tigers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans  

Missouri’s social media efforts seem to be a bit lax, to be honest.  And it’s also a bit difficult to find the football program’s social media accounts, when I clicked on the main site’s Social Media section, I was pointed to the Facebook page for the Tigers’ football program, and the athletic department’s Twitter account.  Some Googling led me to an Instagram account for the football program as well as a YouTube account(which hasn’t posted new content in 10 months) and one for Twitter.  If I had looked at Missouri’s football social media accounts at the start of this series I probably wouldn’t with such a critical eye, but after seeing how well some of the other SEC programs are leveraging social media to connect with football fans, what Missouri is and is not doing stands out.

Yet the Tigers do seem to hit most of the high points. There’s a good mix of fan-oriented content, especially content that highlights players and markers that let fans know how close the season is to starting.  Also, one thing Missouri is doing that I like is they are leveraging Twitter and Facebook to drive fans back to their website for in-depth practice reports, as you see here:


Maybe there’s a Periscope channel I just missed or something similar, but I’d like to see more content from Fall camp from Missouri’s channels.  Although, it may be a conscious choice by Coach Pinkel not to share content from Fall camp.  Many coaches are very protective of sharing what happens during fall practices (and rightly so).  In fact, I would wager that Georgia is also purposely not sharing content from Fall camp, as Coach Richt is notorious for limiting exposure to the facility and practices during the Fall.  In this case it can be a trade-off between giving your fans the content they want, and potentially giving opponents information about your team.  But with the level of control that each program has over the content it creates, I think they can edit it down so they share content from practice that doesn’t give away their secrets, but does excite their fans for the upcoming season.

So that’s it for this entry in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  We are down to our final week, next Tuesday we’ll cover how the Auburn Tigers and Arkansas Razorbacks are using social media to connect with their football fans (or maybe football recruits!).  See you then!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

Welcome back to the 4th week of the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  Each week leading up to the start of the college football season, I’ll be looking at how the SEC teams are leveraging social media to connect with their fans.  After today we’ll be over halfway through the SEC, with 2 more installments coming next Thursday, and then we’ll wrap up the SEC on September 1st and 3rd, as the season starts that night.  You can catch up on former entries in the SEC Social Media Fan Experience here.

Here’s the schedule for the series:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

Today: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

How The Texas A&M Aggies Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

The Aggies, like most other SEC teams, has dedicated football social media accounts on The Big Three; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  As we’ve been discussing, visual content: photos and videos, are a big hit with SEC fans, and most teams are smartly using Instagram to distribute visual content, then seeding that content through other main channels like Facebook and Twitter.  And the Aggies also have a YouTube account for the football program that’s giving a lot of video content around Fall camp, scrimmages, interviews with coaches, etc.  Fall camp is tailor made for diehard fans.  The average football fan may only follow his or her favorite team on Saturdays when they play, maybe they’ll read a few updates in the paper, but that’s about it.  But true Aggie fans want more access.  They want to delve into Fall camp, they want content that gives them daily updates on how each practice goes, which players are doing well, etc.  So the Aggies are doing a great job of giving their hardcore fans that Backstage Pass they want.

Now so far, there’s nothing earth-shattering about the social media mix that Texas A&M is utilizing.  It’s smart, but it’s also expected.  But the Aggies aren’t done.  Not only are they active on Periscope, it turns out the Aggies have been utilizing Periscope since at least March.  I would think that would have to make Texas A&M one of the first football programs in the country to utilize Periscope, and since they are in Texas I have to wonder if their social team found out about Periscope at SXSW.

Also, Texas A&M has a pretty cool smartphone app that does a nice job of being a sort of content dashboard for football fans:

AggiesApp

This is perfect for an Aggie fan as you have not only news but the latest social media content from Texas A&M right on your smartphone.  I do wish the app integrated Texas A&M’s Periscope feed, but that may not be possible with a smartphone app since Periscope is live-streamed content with a 24-hour lifespan.

But from a marketing/brand advocacy standpoint, consider this: What if your company had a smartphone app like this for your Brand Ambassador Program?  Perhaps the functionality could include options for you to create and share content directly with the brand, and also have options to contact the brand directly.  It would be possible to snap a photo of something happening in a retail location (good or bad) and share it directly with your brand contact.  Or your fans could even do an audio interview with a customer on the fly, then send you that video or audio content.  The possibilities are endless and a smartphone app for your brand ambassadors could be a wonderful idea.  Speaking of which, if you are involved in a brand ambassador program and the brand you work with utilizes a smartphone app for its ambassadors, please mention it in the comments!

Overall, I like what Texas A&M is doing with social media, they have a nice mix of content across several channels and I’m very impressed that they have been using Periscope for so long.  Plus the Aggie smartphone app is pretty cool, although to be fair I believe a few other SEC teams have similar apps.  Still, I think Texas A&M is probably making the best use of social media to give the fans the content they want than any of the SEC schools I’ve profiled so far, just ahead of Miss State and Tennessee.

How The Kentucky Wildcats Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

Once again, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are the main social media workhorses for distributing content to fans.  One of the almost disadvantages that a team like UK has now that we’re halfway through examining how the SEC teams use social media, is that by now I’m not looking at how each team uses social media as much as I’m looking for how they are using social media better than the other schools.  I’m looking for something that stands out, like with A&M it was the long history of Periscope usage and the smartphone app.  Given that, I’m not seeing a lot of ‘wow’ in UK’s social media efforts for its football program.  Which isn’t a bad thing, the Wildcats seem to be utilizing all the main channels which is what you want to see.  I did think the Wildcats Instagram content was a bit weak, I would have liked to have seen a few more videos and photos that highlighted individual star players.  For reference, I thought Miss State has an amazing IG page.

One thing that I thought was interesting is that UK promotes Head Coach Mark Stoops as its Twitter account for the football program.  Interesting approach to have the head coach be the face of the football program on Twitter, but it does make some sense.  Also, I noticed on Facebook that UK was sharing content and pointing fans back to its main website for detailed practice updates.  I like this approach, South Carolina does the same thing.  It’s always a good idea to move fans off of social media channels you don’t own and point them back to site that your school DOES own.

Also, UK posts video updates to YouTube on a regular basis, I think this is smart as well.  While Periscope is the hot new tool and likely more popular with younger fans, it is live-streaming, which means it’s gone after 24 hours.  YouTube videos stay up, so it makes sense to utilize both as well as Instagram for video content.

So that’s it for this week’s look at how the Wildcats and the Aggies are leveraging social media to deliver content to their fans.  We’re getting closer to the end of this series, and closer to the start of the college football season!  Next Thursday we’ll wrap up the Eastern Division with a stop in Athens to see how the Georgia Bulldogs are using social media to connect with their fans, then swing west to Columbia, Missouri, for a closer look at the Missouri Tigers’ social media efforts.  See you then!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The LSU Tigers and Miss State Bulldogs

Welcome back to the 3rd week of the SEC Social Media Fan Experience.  Each week leading up to the start of the college football season, I’ll be looking at how the SEC teams are leveraging social media to connect with their fans.  Two weeks ago we looked at how Florida and Vandy are using social media to connect with their fans, last week we looked at how Tennessee and South Carolina are doing this, and this week we’ll head to the West Division to take a closer look at how the LSU Tigers and Miss State Bulldogs leverage social media to connect with their fans.

How The LSU Tigers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

It’s becoming quickly apparent that most SEC teams are focusing on The Big Three for connecting with fans; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  LSU is no exception as they have a dedicated account on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for their football program.  Still a bit surprised that none of the SEC teams are jumping on the Ello bandwagon 🙂

Most SEC teams so far have been using their Instagram accounts to share the majority of their visual and video content, then seeding this content via Facebook and Twitter as well.  LSU is doing the same thing, though at a bit of a slower clip than I would have expected.  Right now there really needs to be a content push as we’re heading into Fall Camp, and at minimum daily updates on all channels.  LSU isn’t doing this, the last Facebook update is 2 days, the last Instagram update is 2 days ago and the last tweet is 2 days ago.  A great opportunity to create content is to share videos from Fall Camp.  The SEC teams typically start each practice with a ‘media viewing period’ of 20 minutes or so.  This would be a perfect time for to send a couple of students from the video production department down with a camera and shoot video for 15-20 mins.  Then go back and edit them down and you’ve got a ton of content available.  Ironically, this is exactly what pay sites do, they send a crew to the practices, they shoot videos and take pictures, then post this content on their site and charge subscribers typically anywhere from $5-10 a month to access the content.

LSU is doing some of this, here’s an Instagram video from 7 days ago shot during one of the practices:

The freshmen and selected veterans practice is underway in the indoor facility. ??

A video posted by LSU Football (@lsufootball) on

But there’s a big opportunity to create more content.  If I were working with LSU’s social media team, I would want to see at least one video like this from every practice.  Also, there’s an opportunity to focus on individual players that fans want to keep up with.  For example, running back Leonard Fournette is arguably the team’s best player, and a fan favorite.  It makes sense to create content and videos focused on LSU’s best and most popular players, because this is the content that fans want to see.  And there’s another potential benefit for LSU:  It could help kickstart a Heisman campaign.  A steady stream of video content showcasing how great Fournette is doing in practice would only build excitement for his season among fans, and that increased fan buzz could spill over into talk of Fournette winning the Heisman.  If enough fans start buzzing about Fournette being a Heisman contender, sites like ESPN could notice, and give him more exposure in their Heisman watches.  Just something to consider when these teams are thinking through their content strategies.

In addition to the Big Three, while checking the complete list of LSU’s social media channels, I noticed that most of LSU’s football coaching staff is also on Twitter.  And here’s a tip: Most coaches that use Twitter aren’t typically there to tweet, they are on Twitter so they can send and receive DMs from recruits.  It’s an NCAA violation for coaches to discuss recruits publicly before they sign their Letter of Intent with a school, so coaches use Twitter to talk to recruits privately.  However, that doesn’t mean that sometimes the coaches can’t have some fun, and who has more fun coaching than Les Miles?

How the Miss State Bulldogs Use Social Media to Connect With Their Fans

Once again, we have another SEC team that has dedicated social media accounts for the football program on the Big Three sites; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  It looks like Miss State is putting out a healthy dose of content via these channels.  One thing I noticed was that as some other SEC schools have done, Miss State is turning to social media to drive ticket sales, as you see here with this Facebook update:

FBMSU

When I looked at MSU’s Instagram account, I noticed something very interesting.  They are creating a lot of content there, averaging about 3 updates a day on IG.  But many of their videos feature the athletes as the stars of the video, such as this one which uses the players to encourage fans to attend MSU games this Fall:

LB @iam_jtgray has a message for the Bulldog family. #HailState

A video posted by MSU Football (@hailstatefb) on

And this one from a recent MSU practice:

Another day to get better.

A video posted by MSU Football (@hailstatefb) on


I think it’s a great idea to use the players themselves in the videos, and MSU is the first school in this series to use this approach. I like it, and MSU fans will too.

And just when I thought that was about it for MSU’s social media usage, it turns out that the Bulldogs are also on Periscope!  Here’s a screenshot of a Scope from yesterday with the players after practice:

IMG_0581I have to say, so far Miss State and Tennessee are a bit ahead of the other SEC teams when it comes to creating engaging social media content for their fans.  I think Tennessee is a bit better at photos and visual content, while I like what MSU is doing with Instagram videos and Periscope a bit better (UT uses Periscope too).  I still think there’s opportunities for improvement with YouTube videos as well, so it will be interesting to see if any other schools can improve on what these schools have accomplished so far.  There’s still plenty of SEC heavy-hitters left, including Texas A&M, Georgia and the Alabama Crimson Tide, so it will be fun to see what’s in store as we close in on the start of the SEC season on September 3rd.

If you’re new to this series, here’s the schedule for every SEC school:

July 30th: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

Today: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

 

See y’all next Thursday when we Gig Em Aggies and Go Big Blue Nation!

UPDATE: This comes from Kyle Niblett, the Social Media Coordinator for Miss State:

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina Gamecocks

Every week through the start of the college football season on September 5th, I will be profiling how SEC teams are leveraging social media channels to connect with its fans.  Last week I looked at how the Florida Gators and Vanderbilt Commodores are using social media, this week I’ll show you how the Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina Gamecocks are leveraging social media to connect with its fans.

How The Tennessee Volunteers Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

When looking at each SEC team, I start by seeing how many social media accounts each team has that are dedicated to just the football program, versus ones that are for the athletic program as a whole.  Tennessee has dedicated football accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It looks like these three platforms are going to be very popular with SEC schools as all three are great channels to share visual and video content that will be popular with fans.  Plus, the content itself can remind SEC fans of the calendar:

As I’m going through this series, I’ve decided to not look ahead on what the other SEC schools are doing.  This is purposeful because as I’m doing the series I am going to comment on what I’d like to see the remaining schools do with their social media efforts.  For example, last week I mentioned that moving forward, I was going to be paying close attention to whether or not the remaining SEC programs gave fans a backstage pass via its social media channels.  One way to do this would be to give fans access to Fall camps, which are starting right about now.  I was delighted to see that Tennessee is doing exactly this, by leveraging Periscope to give fans special access to the Vols’ Fall camp. IMG_0572 LOVE this!  Looks like the Vols are going to use Periscope to give fans coverage of Fall camp as well as the head coach’s press conferences after each practice.  The bar has been raised, if the other SEC schools aren’t doing something very similar to this, they should be. Tennessee is doing a great job of creating photos from Fall camp, and then using those photos on multiple channels.  Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, even using the photos via Exposure, which is a service I hadn’t heard of before this.  So kudos to the Vols for understanding how important visual content is to its fans!

Not a lot of video content (where are the hype videos?), but there’s such a feast of photos being created by the Tennessee social media accounts that it’s hard to quibble.  The Vols are doing a great job of leveraging Fall camp as a content stream for its social media platforms.  As we continue through the series it will be interesting to see if the other SEC teams can match or exceed what Tennessee is doing.

How the South Carolina Gamecocks Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

Now let’s venture to the Palmetto state and look at how the SC Gamecocks are using social media.  South Carolina has a dedicated Twitter and Instagram account for the football program according to its main site here.

South Carolina is creating a lot of photos from Fall camp just like Tennessee did, but I noticed they are also creating video content from Fall camp such as this video posted on Instagram:

29 days til kickoff! Day 2 of practice in the books, full recap on GamecocksOnline.com. #SCCamp15 #HereSC #Gamecocks

A video posted by Gamecock Football (@gamecockfb) on

Also, I noticed something interesting with this tweet, see if you notice what I did:

They are using the same video that was posted on Instagram, so they are re-sharing content among multiple channels.  But what I love about this tweet is notice they add a call to action that asks fans to go back to GamecocksOnline.com for the full recap.  I *love* that because they are leveraging social media to move traffic off Twitter back to their website.  This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is.  Once SC moves fans back to its website, then they can sell them merchandise and tickets.  Anytime you move traffic from sites you don’t own to sites you do, that’s a win and you can’t do that without that simple call to action.

South Carolina also has uploaded a ton of videos devoted to coverage of Fall camp from its main YouTube channel for its athletics programs.  These are great and easily shared via other channels like Twitter and Facebook.  You can see all the social media accounts related to the South Carolina athletic programs here.  Also notice that 3 of the football coaches have their own Twitter accounts listed, but unfortunately that doesn’t include the Ol’ Ball Coach, Steve Spurrier.

Even though South Carolina only has a Twitter and Instagram account dedicated to its football program, they are creating both visual and video content from Fall camp at a pretty healthy clip.  Again, this is ‘behind the scenes’ or backstage content that fans love.  I also love that they are sprinkling in calls to action to move fans back to GamecockOnline.com.  Very smart.

So that’s this week’s look at how the Tennessee Volunteers and South Carolina are leveraging social media to connect with its fans.  Last week we looked at Florida and Vandy, so that means we’ve covered 4 teams from the SEC’s Eastern division so far.  Next week we’ll move out West, and look at how the LSU Bengal Tigers and the Mississippi State Bulldogs are using social media to connect with their fans.  See you next Thursday!

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SEC Social Media Fan Experience: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

Over the next 6 weeks till the start of the college football season, I’ll be examining how the schools in the SEC are using social media to connect with their fans.  College football in the SEC is huge business, and the primary driver of revenue in the richest athletic conference in the nation.  Last year alone, the profit from Alabama’s athletic programs topped every NHL franchise and the majority of the NBA teams as well.

SEC football is huge business, and I wanted to take a closer look at how these programs are leveraging social media to better connect with their fans.  On the surface, this might not seem that important, because SEC football already has passionate fans in place, why is it so important to connect with them via social media?  There’s two big reasons why: Recruiting, and ratings.

Social media has become an incredibly valuable recruiting tool for college athletics.  And for the SEC, a dominance in recruiting has translated to on-field dominance over the last decade, so these programs have a vested interest in using every advantage they have when it comes to recruiting.  Social media is a powerful way to attract and keep the attention of potential recruits.  So while SEC programs are trying to connect with existing fans, they are also trying to appeal to potentially the next 5-star QB that could lead them to a National Championship in a few years.

Then there’s TV ratings.  Anyone that’s followed Twitter during a major TV finale knows that Twitter chatter drives ratings.  And ratings play a major role in where teams are slotted when it comes to television coverage.  It’s why the South Carolina – Vandy game will be on the SEC Network at 11 am, and the LSU – Alabama game will be on CBS primetime at 7 pm.  And having your program shown on a more high-profile network and timeslot means more exposure for your brand and a greater ability to connect with recruits.  It’s a very powerful recruiting tool, if a top high school running back is sitting at home and he sees that Texas A&M is being shown nationally as the Game of the Week on ESPN, it makes an impression on him, especially if he is considering other schools in Texas whose games aren’t getting national coverage.

So over the next 6 weeks I’ll cover the social media efforts of the football programs for each of the 14 teams of the Southeastern Conference.  Keep in mind as you read these posts that these programs are trying to connect with two main audiences: The fans that buy the tickets, and the recruits that help them win more games (which sell more tickets!).

Here’s the schedule for the series:

Today: The Florida Gators and The Vanderbilt Commodores

August 6th: The Tennessee Volunteers and The South Carolina Gamecocks

August 13th: The LSU Tigers and The Miss State Bulldogs

August 20th: The Texas A&M Aggies and The Kentucky Wildcats

August 27th: The Georgia Bulldogs and The Missouri Tigers

September 1st: The Auburn Tigers and The Arkansas Razorbacks

September 3rd: The Alabama Crimson Tide and The Ole Miss Rebels

 

How The Florida Gators Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans

One of the aspects of this series that will be interesting will be to see which teams have created social media channels that are dedicated to just the football program, and how many they use.  For example, Florida has accounts for the football program on Twitter, Instagram, and Vine.  The Vine account is a bit of a surprise, but it’s sparsely used, only one Vine so far this year.

I was also a bit surprised that there wasn’t a dedicated Facebook page for the football program, instead Florida has one for the athletics programs as a whole.  I will say, whoever mans the Florida Facebook page does a good job of engaging with fans and also has a pretty good sense of humor!

FloridaFB And custom graphical images featuring players like this from Florida’s Instagram account will be very popular with fans:

Gotta keep a lookout for these #Gators. All named to pre-season award watch lists this week.

A photo posted by Florida Gators Football (@gatorsfb) on

Also, remember that fans want a backstage pass.  They want to see content that goes behind scenes.  Show us how the facility upgrades are coming along.  Give us some videos of summer workouts.  This is the kind of content that the casual fan that doesn’t really follow football until the season starts might not care about, but the hardcore fans love to see what’s happening behind the scenes.   As I go through this series and look at the other 13 programs, I’ll be paying close attention to how well each school does at creating content that takes me backstage. Now to be fair, Florida’s Facebook page does a nice job of linking to media coverage that each sports program receives.  For example, SEC Media Days in Birmingham were earlier this month, and the Facebook page for the Florida athletics program has a nice stream of links to coverage from Media Days on Florida coach Jim McElwain and the attending players.  Given that Facebook is going to appeal to a more general audience, this type of content is a good idea. Also it’s worth noting that Florida has a very robust list of social media channels devoted to the athletics department as a whole, including the channels you would expect like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Google Plus, but also some surprises like SoundCloud and Storify.  Here’s a complete list of the social media channels Florida utilizes across all sports. How the Vanderbilt Commodores Use Social Media to Connect With Their Football Fans Vanderbilt, affectionately known as ‘The Harvard of the South’ is a University more known for its academic prowess than its athletic accomplishments.  Looking at how Vandy allocates social media usage, all major sports teams have a dedicated Twitter account, and a few, not including the football program, also have a Facebook page.  Vandy has a dedicated Twitter account for each sport, including the football team.  However, the athletic department as a whole has dedicated accounts on all the major platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and Pinterest. As with Florida, Vandy is currently putting a lot of promotion via social media for ticket sales for the upcoming football season.  I did see a few specially-designed images of football players to get fans excited for the upcoming season such as this one on Twitter:

Honestly, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen a lot more of these type of custom pictures/images from both Vandy and Florida.  Images such as these are very popular with fans, who often use them as wallpaper for their mobile devices or PCs. Without looking ahead, I am betting the remaining SEC schools will make good use of such images to hype fans for the upcoming season.

But remember that earlier I said it’s not just about the images for fans, it’s also about the video content.  Especially video content that gets fans excited for the upcoming season or ‘hype’ videos.  This one from Vandy’s YouTube channel is a great example of  the type of video content that fans will eat up as we’re just weeks from the start of the season:

Great video and note that the branding at the end reminds viewers of the value of the Vanderbilt degree. This is one area where Vandy has a real advantage vs most of the rest of the SEC schools, and it’s smart of VU to play off that.  What’s interesting to see from Vandy’s social media content is that they are really trying to appeal to prospective students as well as fans, again realizing the value of the Vandy degree.  Check out this blog post about a service trip to Cuba that some of the student-athletes took recently.

 

So that’s this week’s look at how the SEC is leveraging social media to connect with its football fans.  Next Thursday, we’ll do the same for the Tennessee Volunteers and the Kentucky Wildcats.  As we move into August, Fall camps will begin so it will be interesting to see if the profiled teams include any content from Fall practices as a way to give fans a backstage pass.

If any of you are Florida or Vandy fans, what do you like best about your team’s social media efforts?  Have you tried to engage with either Florida or Vandy via Twitter, Facebook or another channel?

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