February 26, 2009 Great Example of Using Social Media
On Tuesday, February 24, 2009, The Honolulu Advertiser held “The Warrior Beat,” an online sports talk show, with hosts Stephen Tsai and the lovely Leila Wai. They’ve been doing this show for the past few weeks now, and this was a golden opportunity that I’m glad the Hawaii Athletics Department took advantage of. The special guest this week was UH Athletics Director Jim Donovan and he spent some time answering questions from the public.
The community could ask questions via the “Cover it Live,”box and I outlined a question that was asked during the show.
When Jim Donovan came on, there were close to 1000 people watching this live show, asking questions and hearing him talk about what’s going on with the Athletics Department, and there were some issues worth hearing about. He’s also done something like this in the past via Stephen Tsai’s blog where he answered questions from the community.
While I spent a lot of time talking about Twitter and how they aren’t able to communicate with public because of NCAA rules, this is a GREAT example of using a social application to connect with the community, and I have to give a standing-O to Jim Donovan and also the Honolulu Advertiser for hosting the show. 
Jim Donovan clearly gets the importance of connecting with the community and being on this type of media proves it.
Does anyone else have an example of a college athletics program using social media? If so I would love to learn about it.
Tags: college athletics, Honolulu Advertiser, Jim Donovan, Social Media, The Warrior Beat
- 2 comments
- Posted under Social Media
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Yoda808
said
Dave,
I totally agree with you that Donovan being on the show is a step in the right direction–a big step when compared with Fraiser. Hearing him for that amount of time as compared to a sound bite on the news in conjunction with him fielding questions from actual fans is taking the department in the right direction.
However, I do have one big comment about this. It seems to me that this is another case of the department being “reactive” instead of “proactive.” This is a Honolulu Advertiser initiative that UH has realized that they should embrace. How can you tell? Where is the video hosted? Which site was traffic driven to? Are there any story mentions of it or links to it on HawaiiAthletics.com? Was anything regarding this posted in their Twitterfeed? Look at the background for the broadcast, is it the UH press conference background with their logo? To me this says that while it might be good PR/publicity/fan acknowledgment on UH’s part, this is did not come from the department’s own actions.
Now I’m not going to stand here and say that they shouldn’t do this, because I think it is a good move–high publicity and reach with probably minimal to no cost. BUT–I think developing things from within the department will be more meaningful than latching onto something someone else did.
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David Onoue
said
Well…the Sports Information Director/Media Relations Director, Derek Inouchi, had a good talk with me and acknowledged that they are a little behind but they need to investigate the usage of social media because there is a fine line that they have to walk. I can’t spill the beans but they have two things they will be launching which is going to be exciting (especially one of them). And lets just say that your buddy Jay Metzger is going to be really busy.
To solve this problem, my initial thoughts would be to have someone outside the department handle the social media and be the link from the public to the department. So they won’t have this issue of them possibly speaking to prospective student athletes because the person is not an employee. But I’m not certain on this.