Iowa State Cyclone Hockey – Social Media (Nov 4 – Nov 18)
Posted on 21. Nov, 2009 by Mike Olaski in Social Accounts
Cyclone Hockey had a busy couple of weeks with two home series in a row. We have been using our social media to promote our games and game promotions, as well as to inform our fans of any Cyclone Hockey news and Player of the Week updates.
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.
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.
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.
