Andy Pawlowski, a former college basketball player at Drake University who works in Nike's global digital area, writes a popular blog entitled Digital Hoops Blast: Best Practices in Digital and Social Media. Below is his post on Louisville and Ohio State - Division I men's basketball Final Four schools - and their use of Facebook Timeline to promote and publicize the Final Four appearances.

Schools can view these Timeline posts and gain ideas as they promote their sports.

In fact, on a recent Digital Hoops Facebook page, Pawlowski states "Ohio State Basketball Facebook & Twitter Pages have grown 26x faster than Athletics Pages in the tourney. Wow, wow, wow."

You can follow Pawlowski on Twitter and on Facebook.

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Facebook’s Timeline format is one that all pages will become the status quo, required for everyone on March 30. But many have begun to see this as a place where you can tell heroic stories for your program, in a way that grabs attention.

 

Coming out of this weekend’s Final Four bids, check out how two of the programs are using this layout to drive energy for their squads.

First, Louisville (here).  As you’ll see below, Louisville swapped the main Timeline image with a message + image congratulating the team.  It’s simple, but dropping this image at the top of the page completely resets the tone of the page — in a good way.
 

 

Now, Ohio State (here).  Ohio State takes a different approach, showing off 3 players in their post-Final Four celebration moments.  This approach also sets the tone, but it adds an extra degree of connection to the program through personal-feeling imagery.

Addition:  Thanks to a comment from Bob McKamey, we are also showcasing the Ohio State Athletics Facebook Page (here).  Wow quite a statement…  and different than the Hoops Facebook page.

I love both approaches, because it is this time of fan excitement that is going to bring more fans to each squad’s Facebook page…  and leveraging Timeline in a timely way fuels this excitement!  But as you see above, going all out for the right image makes an even bigger impact!