Social Media Day at The U: What we learned, what is next
Date postedFebruary 23, 2011
College Sports Information Directors of America
Social Media Day: What We Learned, What Is Next is a blog entry from Chris Freet, Associate AD for Communications at the University of Miami, following UM's highly-successful "Social Media Day" on Friday, Feb. 18. Freet can be reached at c.freet@miami.eduor via his Twitter account: http://twitter.com/chrisfreet
As Freet writes, it's all about transparency.
Background: On Feb. 14, we announced that Miami would be the first college athletics program to ‘shutdown’ its official site and communicate solely through social media. We didn’t really ‘shutdown’ our site, as some worried, that was a marketing term … but we did not update a single thing on HurricaneSports.com on Friday, Feb. 18. The biggest initiative was 14 hours of live video chats that combined CoverItLive and UStream. This was a major puzzle to piece together with guests ranging from head football coach Al Golden to former mascot and Hall of Fame curator John Routh. We posted all press releases on Facebook.com/MiamiHurricanes, Tweeted all updates on @HurricaneSports and did everything in between on our blog network.
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So here is what we learned and what we see next.
After four days of promotion leading up to the first ever Social Media Day at the University of Miami, our entire communications team – staff and students - arrived at 7:30 a.m.
By 8:10 a.m. we had our first problem. Wildly-popular offensive line coach Art Kehoe, who as I tweeted was our ideal leadoff hitter, was in offensive staff meetings and already 10 minutes late for his scheduled 8 a.m. live video chat.
The alternative was Senior Associate AD Blake James, who was a great No. 2 guest but not the “ideal” opener. You see, James has taken the brunt of the complaints related to parking changes at our football games and was thought of as a scapegoat by many fans.
We told our fans that Coach Kehoe was detained in offensive staff meetings and that we hoped he could join us soon.
The response from a commenter logged in as Abel, “Its all good if he is late. Its all for a good cause.”
Score one win for transparency.
After 22 minutes of waiting, James stepped in front of the video camera as the pinch-hitter and we were off.
And quickly the scapegoat became a trusted figure as he announced through the live chat that we planned to open up a preferred tailgate lot at Sun Life Stadium during the 2011 season.
Score two wins for transparency.
Social Media can be a scary endeavor for some. As we announced our plans to ‘shut down’ our official website and communicate solely through Social Media platforms, we received lots of positive feedback, a few sneers and a couple, “you are opening a can of worms.”
The end result was very positive. Our numbers for the day were great (and I will share with any colleagues that are interested), but we have a decided advantage over many athletics departments. Our Director of Athletics and head football coach are very comfortable with Social Media and are willing to answer any question.
Both speak with candor. Neither shies away from uncomfortable subject matter. While we could not come anywhere close to answering the 1,500 or so questions that came through the live chat, we hit just about every subject area over the 65 minutes that AD Kirby Hocutt and football coach Al Golden were in the live video chat setting.
While we hopefully increased fan loyalty with The U, and also made a clear statement about our willingness to be transparent, open and honest with our fans, there were other positive byproducts.
What’s Next
- Our AD Kirby Hocutt texted me the next day and asked, “Any way we can do social media day every Thursday from Noon to 7 p.m. leading into our flagship radio show?” Now that is opening up a can of worms, but I would be lying if I hadn’t had similar ideas. It’s clear that our fans want direct access to players and coaches. Our challenge at UM is to provide that in the most authentic way and as often as possible.
- The lines between Communications and Marketing are becoming blurred more by the day. We chose Feb. 18 as Social Media Day because that was the day of our baseball season opener. It was an event to wrap another event around. We had a 3,800 fans at the baseball game and another 5,000-plus watching our first-ever three-camera live stream at Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field. How far away are we from counting our (virtual) attendance as 8,800?
- At about 3 p.m. in the afternoon on Social Media Day, UStream e-mailed me, said they had noticed our stream and asked for a meeting to create revenue streams, as well as Facebook integration. (We tried to reach UStream beforehand, but to no avail). Now that we have successfully launched an initiative, have some competition and real metrics, we will be able to provide this to multimedia rights holders and potential sponsors. I’m excited to see what doors this opens across all platforms.
- I knew this going in, but we need to fine-tune our efforts on Facebook and Twitter. We had a dramatic spike of new Facebook “likes” after Social Media Day, but not during it. I would put an educated guess that was because we flooded the timeline with updates of the next guests on the live video chat. Same goes for Twitter, which we have not seen a dramatic increase in new followers.
- One thing is for sure in the age in which we all work…Change. So what’s next is more change and hopefully that leads to innovation. We greatly appreciated the kind e-mails and tweets that we received from colleagues in the business leading up to and after Social Media Day, but we don’t want to stop there.
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