Great Social Media Idea: Celebrating Victories

A few things first.

 1) Sorry for the lack of posts at the end of last week. Things got a bit cray cray for your intrepid (i.e. lazy) blog author.

2) Can we as higher ed social media managers agree to slow our roll just a touch when it comes to "National [Insert Something Random Here] Day" posts? In the past week, I'm pretty sure I've seen colleges celebrating National Taco, Do Something Nice, Pierogy, Bring Your Teddy Bear to School, Sausage Pizza, and Coming Out Days. I know we all have to dance the engagement dance on Facebook (I won't judge... too much, anyway), but let's all collectively agree to raise the bar a bit, OK? OK! Lecture time over.

Unsurprisingly, my Facebook wall absolutely blows up with college football posts on the weekends during this time of the year. I generally don't post too much about athletics on this blog (especially D1 college football... if your school has a big-time football program, it also likely has a veritable army of people working in social media), but what the hell - there's a first time for everything, right?

So check out this simple, and stunningly effective, post from Alabama Athletics. 

Roll Tide! Too bad your coach is such a... nevermind.  ;)

Yes, Alabama is the two-time defending national champion and currently ranked number one in the country. (Ranked number two? The Oregon Ducks! State pride, what what!!!) It's safe to say their fans are pretty fired up about all things Crimson Tide.

But I've seen a lot of schools doing more elaborate post-game infographics, and while they are cool, I feel like the more complicated they are with statistics, the less likely your average fan will feel compelled to engage with it and share it. I mean... just look at that example I linked to. Hard-core fans will love it, but everyone else? Meh. It's just sort of intimidating and confusing.

Which is why I really love the simplicity of this example from Alabama. It just shows the score (all most people really care about anyway) and encourages people to share it. Perfectly simple, and perfectly effective.

And the good news is that it's applicable even to schools that don't have a big football program. As long as you've got a game in any sport coming up that you know will be a big one - against a school rival, a playoff game, etc. - you can pre-build a template just like this one and just plug in the score right after the game. (Assuming you win, of course.) 

Celebrating sports victories always gets huge engagement rates (believe me - I see absolutely insane numbers of likes/comments/shares/RTs every Saturday during football season), and - hooray! - it actually has something to do with your school, unlike National Pierogi Day. Unless your school happens to be largely Polish and/or Ukrainian, in which case - celebrate those delicious dumplings to your heart's content!

Well done, Alabama Athletics! And thanks for keeping the #1 spot warm for Oregon.  ;)