This video was put together by one of the players following the 2009-2010 hockey season.  There really is nothing like the bond that is created between teammates…..no matter what sport you play!  This video does a great job of showing the passion behind the Iowa State Cyclone hockey program and really exemplifies the experience of playing college athletics.

Great job guys! If you’d like to check out the Cyclone Hockey program, you can find out more at http://cyclonehockey.com and their new social site http://cyclonehockeyconnect.com

Off the ice, we are getting ready for the Central States Collegiate Hockey League (CSCHL) Tournament in Ames the 19^th-21^st, where the top 8 teams in the CSCHL will compete for the conference title. During the tournament we will also raffle off a Power Skater from PoweringAthletics, raising money for the Cyclone Hockey program.

Facebook

These past couple of weeks we have increased our fan base from 1,287 to 1,316 fans, an increase of 29.  We focused this past two weeks to make our live Facebook updates for our away series more in-depth and useful for our fans.  During our updates we accumulated 25 “likes” from our status updates for the Illini weekend.  We feel that it shows that our fan base likes and wants to keep tabs on Cyclone Hockey and we plan on continuing this during the ACHA nationals in March.  We are also promoting our Power Skater Raffle which was mentioned on our last update heavily on Facebook to direct them to our “bitly” link to our promotion page in our Blog.

Twitter

Our Twitter account is doing well as we increased to 133 followers.  Our Facebook account is linked with our Twitter account so whenever we update our Facebook account, it automatically updates our Twitter account.  This gives multiple benefits, it allows for our fans who do not have a Facebook account to see what we are posting; it also decreases errors in information while posting in multiple locations.

YouTube

Regrettably, our YouTube account has been neglected with our focus on our other accounts but we seek to upload new videos from the Al Murdoch Show, a local television show featuring the coach of Cyclone hockey program Al Murdoch, in order to give our fans a behind the scenes look at the Cyclones.

Flickr

Our Flickr accounts are coming along nicely as we are collecting photos every weekend to upload to our site.  We also hope to integrate a running slide show on our new website that is in development right now.   Doing this, it will allow fans to check out the team as well as our activities at the game from our Fan Flickr account.

Blogs

Our player blogs have been our biggest focus of the last couple weeks.  As we mentioned in our last update, Cyclone Hockey is raffling a Power Skater from PoweringAthletics to raise money for the Cyclone Hockey program. For more information about the PowerSkater raffle, please check out the “Promotions” page on our blog.  You do not have to be from Ames, IA to buy raffle tickets, anyone can participate.  Tickets can also be purchased online using a credit card here.

In order to promote this we are finding hockey blogs, fan pages, etc. in order to promote our Power Skater online sales.  We have created a “Google Document” so everyone on our marketing staff can see what sites have been visited and posted on.  That way, we can re-visit each site and see if anyone replied to our posts and follow up in any way we can to encourage sales.

Summary

Overall, we tried to take a more narrowed approach to our social media and some of our accounts suffered in response.  This did show us a more detailed view into what our fans like during our games.  As we continue to promote our Power Skater Raffle as well as continuing with our game updates, we will improve our other accounts to increase the value to our fans.

The Cyclone Hockey team took on our instate rivals, The University of Iowa Hawkeyes in a weekend series (December 11 and 12) before the holiday break. On December 11, we hosted Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) night. Fans had the opportunity to bid on their favorite Cyclone Hockey player’s jersey, and all proceeds- over $4,000- went to the MDA. We promoted the Cyclone-Hawkeye series and MDA night through our social media. It ended up being a great weekend, as the Cyclones came out with a series sweep and the games offered plenty of excitement!

The team traveled to Western Michigan University for a weekend series January 8-9 in which we split the series. We took on the University of Michigan Dearborn at home on January 15 and 16. We held “Greek Night” during the January 15 game where we offered members of the Greek community to wear their fraternity/sorority letters and receive a discounted ticket price. We advertised this event through Facebook and Twitter and saw a great showing of more than 60 people from the Greek community.

We have seen an increase in social media response from fans and followers of Cyclone Hockey, and will continue to advertise events through these media. We will be hosting the Central States Collegiate Hockey League (CSCHL) tournament from February 19-21, and are also raffling off a PowerSkater.

Fundraising Raffle

PowerSkater

The PowerSkater was donated by PoweringAthletics to help in supporting their program. We are also raffling off a SkinnerShooter and an autographed Iowa State Cyclone hockey jersey.  Our goal is to raise $5,000 in ticket sales and promote the raffle nationwide through hockey blogs and to the Ames community. All proceeds from the raffle will help Cyclone Hockey buy equipment and help with travel expenses. Both of these events will be promoted through social media. For more information about the PowerSkater raffle, please check out the “Promotions” page on our blog.  You do not have to be from Ames, IA to buy raffle tickets, anyone can participate.  Tickets can also be purchased online using a credit card.

We promote many different events through our social media accounts, and this practice seems to be working quite well. Social media is proving to be a great way to get information about Cyclone Hockey out to the public. We have seen a great response to our social media efforts, and hope to continue to improve upon what we are currently doing.

Facebook

We have seen a substantial increase over the last few weeks in the number of Facebook fans we have. On December 8, we had 1,090 Facebook fans, and on January 21, we have 1,287 fans, meaning that over the last six weeks, we have a fan increase of 197 people. Considering the university’s three week long holiday break and a few away series, this increase is quite impressive.

We continue to post game updates, such as the starting lineup and goals scored, on Facebook. Over the last few weeks, we have noticed an increase in the amount of response we receive on these posts. We received 19 likes and 5 comments on a single post about the Cyclones sweeping the Hawkeyes. We have noticed a great response to these posts and our fans that are unable to make it to the games seem to appreciate these updates. We have also started mentioning individual players in our posts. For instance, we have a post from the Western Michigan series that states, “Cyclones win 6-3!!! Third period goals scored by David Kurbatsky, Brian Spring, and Pete Majkozak!” This post alone got 13 “likes” and 3 comments. We will continue to use our players’ names in our Facebook posts for we get a great response from the fans when we do so.

We have also started linking articles from the Iowa State Daily, the campus newspaper, onto our Facebook page. We have noticed that a few of our hockey articles are some of the most viewed on www.iowastatedaily.com. Overall, we are happy with the response that we have gotten from our Facebook page and feel that it is working to our benefit by getting information to our fans.

Twitter

Our Twitter following has grown from 111 to 127 followers over the period of December 8 – January 21. We have our Facebook and Twitter accounts linked together, so every comment we make on our Facebook page is also posted on our Twitter page. We are also mentioning other Iowa State University sports and showing our support for them. We hope that mentioning other ISU sports will increase our fan base, but at this time, it is too early to tell if this action has had any effect.

YouTube

We have not posted any new videos in the last few weeks, but we do plan on uploading game highlights in the near future. Although we have not uploaded any new videos recently, we have seen a great increase in the number of video views. From December 8 to January 21, we recorded an increase of 511 video views. This shows us that people are interested in the videos we post, which gives us more of an incentive to upload more.

Flickr

We have two Flickr accounts, one for the staff to post more “professional” photos such as team pictures, and another account specifically for our fans to post pictures they took during the games. We have seen very little to no response in our Flickr accounts, but see this as a challenge and a great opportunity. We need to develop a way to get the word about our Fan Flickr page out to more fans so they begin to utilize it. This is an area that we can improve upon and we will continue to work on getting the word of our Flickr accounts out to our fans.

Blogs

We have been working on improving our blogs and thinking of more information to place on the site. We have decided to post our “Player of the Week” and press releases from the games on our blog, as we think that posting more information on the site will be great in getting information out to our fans. The PowerSkater will be raffled off of our blog as well. We will continue to monitor the response to our new posts to make our blog as useful and informative as possible.

Summary

Overall, we are pleased with the progress we have made with our social media accounts, and hope to continue to provide information that our fans will enjoy and find useful. We will continue to monitor our accounts and make any necessary changes to make our social media as effective as possible. We have a couple home series and the CSCHL tournament coming up, and we will continue to use the benefits of social media to inform and update our fans of these events.

Facebook

Our Facebook numbers are looking better than ever increasing our fan base every day.  From the past two weeks we have increased our fans from 912 fans to 968 fans, an increase of 56 fans.  We also had some breakthroughs that we are really excited about.  During the Sun Devil series we started posting game updates through Facebook.  On those game updates, we found that our fans are reacting to these posts by commenting on the post and liking the post as well.  On a single post, we found two comments and 11 likes; our best reaction to a post since the application of our fan page.  By receiving comments and “likes” on our posts we get added publicity. Each comment or “like” gets recorded on the fan’s “wall” for every friend that they have to see friends of the fan could possibly become fans themselves.

For our away series we also advertised on our fan page that our game for the Arizona State series would be broadcast on our TeamLine (online play-by-play) as well as on FASTHOCKEY (a televised webcast of the game).  We do not know how many fans tuned in to each broadcast, but we were able to see that one fan did comment about the post; showing that these services are ones that we want to continue.

Twitter

Our Twitter account saw improvement over the last couple of weeks, but not as much as we wanted to see.  From our last update we grew from 101 followers to 110 followers; whether or not this was a direct impact from our lack of home series or another factor we will continue to monitor this closely.  We are also using our “@ mentions” to support other sports here at Iowa State University; the effect of these at mentions on our fan base is unknown but we feel that it can only help in the long run.

You Tube

Unfortunately, our video has not changed from last updates count of 15, but our viewer ship is up 360 video views.  This is a decrease from last updates increase however we are trying to change that. We hope to upload later this week and will let our fans know through our Facebook fan page.

Flickr

Every strategy is not always a good one as we found out over the last couple of weeks.  A while ago we held a photo contest for our fans to boost ratings for our Flickr page.  We have not received a fan submission yet and it does not seem like we are going to be receiving any in the future.  We are going to find a way to incorporate this into a different strategy.

Blogs

We spent the last couple of weeks improving our blog site with minor adjustments to make it more functional.  Even when found that fans were still visiting our numerous blog entries. In one day there was 67 new views which increased our viewership to 144 and blog view to 3,623. Once we finish updating our blogs we will continue to publish new entries.

Summary

Overall, we found that even though having two consecutive away series slowed our progress, it did not stop it.  Social Media is such that it is versatile as long as the methods are constantly improving and problems fixed quickly.  With two back-to-back home series this month, we will have to think up new strategies for our remaining games to get our fans more involved in all aspects of Cyclone Hockey.

On November 13th and 14th, the Cyclone Hockey team took on Central Oklahoma. On Saturday the 14th, we held our Military Night which was advertised through our social media. We also had the Ames Minor Hockey Tykes attend our Saturday game. We advertised that the Tykes players get in free and that their parents would receive $1 off admission. The Tykes had the opportunity to play during an intermission. That same night, members of Dance Marathon and their Miracle Children performed their Morale Dance. The children had the opportunity to meet our players and a good time was had by all!

We have been keeping our fans updated through our social media, and have received some useful feedback through our monitoring of these media outlets.

Facebook

Our Facebook fan numbers have been increasing steadily throughout the season and during the two week period of November 4 – November 18, we have increased our fan count from 793 to 912 fans. We are using our Facebook page to advertise games and to make our fans aware of any game promotions.

We have run a few game promotions during the last two weeks that we have advertised on Facebook. On Saturday, November 7, the Cyclone Hockey team took on Robert Morris University, and we decided to have a “Gold Night”. Fans received $1 off of an admission ticket if they wore gold clothing. We also we ran a promotion for fans to bring in their football tickets from the game earlier in the day to receive $1 off of a hockey admission ticket. We ran a weekend series promotion that we entitled “Guaranteed Win Night”. We advertised that the Cyclone Hockey team would win their game on Friday night, and if they were to lose, all the fans in attendance at Friday’s game would get in free to Saturday’s game. (The Cyclones won that series with a sweep!)

The next weekend, the Cyclone Hockey team took on Central Oklahoma. On Friday we held our “Military Night”. We asked that members of the military wear their uniform to receive free admission or to show their military ID to receive $1 off admission. Our promotional posts are receiving great feedback from our fans, as we are noticing an increase in responses to our posts.

We are continuing to provide links to any news source that mentions Cyclone Hockey, such as the university newspaper, Iowa State Daily. We also post any YouTube videos that we upload and provide a link so that our fans can view all of our YouTube videos. Overall, we use our Facebook page as an outlet to notify our fans of games and game promotions, as well as to share videos and Cyclone Hockey news.

Twitter

Our Twitter account has received a few new followers over the last couple of weeks. Between November 3 and November 18, we have seen accumulated 14 new followers. We update our followers during the games by posting the game starters and any points scored. We find that updating our followers through our Twitter page offers a good alternative for fans that are unable to attend the match.

YouTube

We currently have 15 videos posted to our YouTube account. Our videos include game highlights, penalty kill questions, and a fun, quirky Halloween video. Between a two week period spanning from November 4 – November 18, we have seen an increase of 583 video views, which takes our total views from 1,358 to 1,957. The increased amount of videos we have seen shows us that our videos are getting to our fans and that they are being well-received. We hope to continue posting videos and making them readily available to our fans by providing links to YouTube on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Flickr

During the last two weeks, we have added a new Flickr account specifically for our fans to upload personal Cyclone Hockey photos from games and other activities. We currently have photos of a group from Dance Marathon, as well as photos from the Tykes game and Military night. Our fan Flickr seems to be off to a pretty good start as we have 14 uploaded photos. At the last two weekend series we handed our fans a small card that advertised our social media, including our new Flickr account. We hope to continue advertising our newest Flickr page and hopefully see an increase in the amount of uploads we receive.

Blogs

We have been working on creating a more user-friendly and attractive player blog over the last couple of weeks. We have made more topic categories for easy access and created a more appealing layout. We have also included links to our Cyclone Hockey website, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr accounts for our fans to follow.  We still have some work to do with our player blog, and will continue to make changes that make the website more accessible to our fans.

Summary

We have implemented a lot of game promotions throughout the last two weeks and have seen success in getting the word of these promotions to our fans through our social media. Our Facebook fans are responding well to the posts we make to our page and our fan numbers are increasing every day. Facebook has proven to be a very effective tool for getting information to our fans. Our Twitter page is also working well as it gives us the opportunity to post play-by-play updates during our games. We are still making changes to our YouTube, Flickr, and Player Blog, but feel that these outlets will be a good way for us to connect with our fans.

We will continue to advertise and provide information through our social media accounts to create a strong relationship with our fans. We feel that our social media can be a very effective way to reach our fans, and we will continue to monitor our fan response and make changes accordingly.

Facebook

Cyclone Hockey Facebook Fan Page

Our Facebook awareness is growing as our blast promotions are coming each week.  Since we have started tracking our fan base, a little over a month ago, we have increased our Facebook fans by 101 to 819 fans.  We are also motioning any Cyclone Hockey mentions in the news, whether it be our school newspaper to the much more proliferated DesMoines Register, and posting the links on our Facebook page for our fans to enjoy.  We also made sure to share each YouTube upload that we have, including highlights, player interviews, or fun videos that we have made.  Overall, we make sure that our Facebook fans know everything about Cyclone Hockey from our fan page.

YouTube

Cyclone Hockey YouTube Channel

Until recently, our YouTube account has not had many videos; two to be exact.  We have since uploaded 13 additional videos.  As for our original videos, we have a combined view total increase of over 200 views over the period of two weeks. That shows our videos are getting to our fans and our new videos will only grow our fan base. These videos however, are very recent and we have not had time to track the effectiveness of each video but we foresee great utilization of these videos from our fans.  We also have made some fun videos to show that Cyclone Hockey is not all business and to give our fans some laughs.

Flickr

Cyclone Hockey Flickr Photos

Our Flickr account is up and running but unfortunately has not had much traffic yet.  We are changing that with the formation of a second Flickr account to accommodate our fans.  We will still keep our original account for our game photos and more professional pictures, but we are making another account for our fans to upload their own photos of Cyclone Hockey spirit and we will integrate that into our Cyclone Hockey Blog.

Twitter

Cyclone Hockey Twitter Account

Since we began tracking our Twitter account in late October, we have increased our followers from 81 to 94 in a two week period. The Cyclone Hockey Twitter account is basically our pooling source.  We have all of our sites linked up to our Twitter so when something is updated on one of our other sites, it automatically updates on Twitter.  Whether it be from Facebook, Blogs, or Flicker, our Twitter has a post and a link to the site.  We also keep our live score updates during each game on our Twitter account so fans who cannot watch the game can remain connected.

Summary

For the past couple of weeks, we have focused on not only improving our social media (Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and our Blogs), but also letting our fans know about our social media.   Not necessarily just letting our fans know online but also letting our fans, who may not have a social media account,  know about our sites our and getting more fans involved with our social media blasts, photo contests, game handouts, and website recognition.

Over the past two weeks we decided to implement a couple of strategies to see how much our fans use our social media resources.  One new strategy that we implemented for our Halloween series was a fun social media blast.  Our blast was a last minute promotion to wear a Halloween costume during the game and receive discounted admission as long as you mentioned our social media promotion.   We found that the blast did make a small impact in our ticket sales but we also found that a number of our season ticket holders arrived in costumes showing that our message did get across.

We also have implemented a photo contest for our fans to show their Cyclone Hockey spirit and submit their photos to our Flickr for a chance to win Cyclone Hockey merchandise.  For the contest we are encouraging fans to submit photos to our Flickr for a chance to win Cyclone Hockey merchandise.  We have just initiated our contest so we are not aware of the effects to our social media sites.

Providing links to our social media outlets on our website (cyclonehockey.com) creates an easy way for fans to access our sites from one location.  It allows the fans that do not have accounts on each social media site to gain access and fully utilize each site. Our game handouts have all of our site addresses on them so every fan that attends our games receives one of the handouts promoting our social media.

As we continue with our blast promotions, contests, game handouts, website recognition and various events, we will track our fan response and adjust our social media strategies accordingly.

There will be regular interviews, statistics and insights offered on ways they are using social media to build their fan base, recruit players, increase revenues through ticket and merchandise sales as well as insights offered on how they will use social media to open up new revenue streams for the team.

The coaches, players, staff and marketing interns with Cyclone Hockey will all contribute to this case study to help others learn from their experience.

Contributors

The following people will be contributing bi-weekly to this case study.  Feel free to contact them directly if you have any questions about how they are using social media and the results they are seeing.  Or, touch base with Trevor Turnbull (trevor.turnbull@sportfanconnect.com) and he can help answer your questions.

Michelle Nickels
Assistant Business Manager – Cyclone Hockey
Assistant Researcher – USA Hockey
mlnickels@gmail.com
Office: (515) 294-0410
Twitter: @mlnickels
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/michelle-nickels/12/754/932

Kaitlyn Hammel
Marketing and Promotions
hammel.kaitlyn@gmail.com
Twitter: @kaithammel
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/kaitlyn-hammel/17/549/70a

CJ Hollestelle
Marketing Intern
cjhollestelle@gmail.com
Twitter: @cjhollestelle
Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/corneliushollestell

Reed Taylor
Director of Group Sales
reed.a.taylor@gmail.com
Twitter: @reed_taylor
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/reedtaylor