Sport-Fan Connect

Iowa State Cyclone Hockey – Social Media (Dec 8-Jan 21)

Posted on 22. Jan, 2010 by cyclonehockey in Social Accounts

The Iowa State Cyclone Hockey team has had a very busy month and a half, and the marketing team has been quite busy as well. The university was closed from December 21 through January 11, but the marketing team is back and ready to tackle some big upcoming projects and events that we will advertise through social media outlets.

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.

Tags: CSCHL, Facebook, Flickr, Iowa State Cyclone Blog, Iowa State Cyclones, ISU Cyclone hockey, PowerSkater, PowerSkater raffle, Twitter, YouTube