Iowa State Cyclone Hockey – Social Media (Oct 15 – Nov 1)
Posted on 16. Nov, 2009 by cyclonehockey in Social Accounts
Cyclone Hockey over the past couple of weeks has seen some fantastic games from the Halloween weekend series against the #2 ranked University of Illinois, whom we split with; to our most recent series against Robert Morris University, where the Cyclones swept the series with a shutout on Saturday. What was special about this game was that it was the Cyclones first shutout of the season.
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
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.
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.
