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#cosida12 hashtag activity before, during and after the June 23-26 Convention ... thanks to all participants and the great activity which got #cosida12 trending twice during the week!
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Blogs from the Convention
PANEL SESSION: Sourcing
How to Source--The Media Take: #CoSIDA12
by Chris Syme, New Media/Technology Committee Chair
On June 23, the afternoon docket of panels at the 2012 CoSIDA convention in St. Louis kicked off with a lively session on sourcing. John Paquette moderated the panel of four journalists that included Joe Schad, ESPN; Kirk Wessler, Peoria Journal-Star; Pat Coleman, D3Sports.com; and Bryan Burwell, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The panelists agreed that the rules of sourcing and fact checking have not changed—just the speed. High profile fails, including the premature announcing of Joe Paterno’s death by CBS, show the need to maintain consistent standards of fact checking. Athletic communicators and journalists were encouraged to maintain professional standards of fact checking that include talking to the source of the story and not relying on hearsay or “what they said” re-posting on social media.
The use of Twitter as a news gathering tool was the subject of some discussion and even disagreement by panelists. The emotional and chatty nature of social media causes some media members to view the channels as a waste of time for gathering proper news information. However, panelists disagreed saying that reliable sources of information exist on social media, and journalists should use the channels to find potential real-time sources.
Members of the panel reminded the audience that sometimes they need to circumvent the system when it comes to contacting student-athletes. Athletic communicators that put up walls around their institution may find media bypassing traditional communication practices to get information on a story. The session was a good reminder that athletic communicators and journalists are sometimes at odds, but good relationships need to be built to make the system work. The final takeaway: make someone available to talk to the media when there is a news event. Be proactive about getting information to the press. Even though we are trying to “be our own media,” it’s important to remember we still have to source the traditional media as well.
PANEL SESSION:
Social media 2.0: Content Engagement: What your audience wants, what is working today and what's trending
by Ben Taylor, Illinois Assistant SID/New Media/Technology Committee
This is the second year in a row that I have sat in on a panel session on social media led by the NCAA's Ronnie Ramos and the second time that I have wished the session was twice as long. (Ramos is the NCAA Managing Director of Digital Communications and a former newspaper writer and editor). Along with Dana Thomas, social media strategist from the NCAA, Jeff Rubin, President of SIDEARM and a Syracuse University professor and Spencer Kitley from CoveritLive, Ronnie led a very informative, interesting panel that gave some great tips and also shared some best practices.
Ronnie started the session with some great insights on utilizing analytics from Google and Facebook. He recommended that we understand where traffic to our institutional websites is coming from and also how many likes, tweets and (Google) +1s are stories on our sites generating. He also encouraged using short links from services such as
bit.ly and
ow.ly because those sites provide free hit counts and analytics with those links.
At Illinois, we have started utilizing
bit.ly links in emailed releases as well as in the synopsis field of releases on our website, where we place links to live stats, Tournament Central pages, video links and other sites. By using short links there, we can see how many people use a feature that we think is helpful. And that lets us really see if it's worth our time.
A great example of using Facebook insights came from the NCAA's Dana Thomas, who showed how the NCAA used them to see that most of the audience on their NCAA Volleyball Facebook page was young girls and women, who they assumed were likely volleyball players. So they asked what volleyball skills these girls wanted to improve and, when the resounding answer was passing, they worked with the AVCA to produce some short skills videos that were posted on the Facebook page. I really appreciated this use of insights to tailor the page's content to what the page's fans wanted.
Another interesting case study was from Syracuse, where they hired a group of students to run the social media channels for the athletic department. Each week, the students would be given a list of athletic events, and they were simply told to cover the teams in an interesting manner. Using the Klout ranking service, Syracuse measured that they went from the high 20s in national ranking to #1 over the course of the school year.
Finally, a couple of tips that I appreciated were the idea of using certain content primarily on social media channels and using your social networks to humanize your student-athletes. An example of producing content for social media was a video from Kentucky of Coach John Calipari's pregame locker room speech to the team. That's the type of inside-access feature that fans love and it's relatively easy to do. And another example of humanizing your student-athletes through your social channels is Stanford's YouTube page.
Kentucky video:
http://www.coachcal.com/10852/2012/02/along-for-the-ride-behind-the-scenes-of-lsu-road-trip-part-two/
Stanford YouTube:
http://youtu.be/ogUVoCHJXNA
Other St. Louis Convention blogs/commentaries
July 16: Impact of new and social media on college athletic communications, by Derrick Dockett, Missouri Valley Conference Director of New Media & Technology and panelist
July 6: College Sports & Social Media: #cosida12, by Derrick Dockett, Missouri Valley Conference Director of New Media & Technology and panelist
July 1: CoSIDA12 Recap, by Kevin DeShazo, Fieldhouse Media & convention presenter
June 28: Lessons Learned from the Capital One Special Awards Gala and the Dick Enberg Award Presentation, by Jay Paterno
June 27: Follow up to CoSIDA Convention Crisis Communication Presentation: How a Crisis PC Should Look, by Dr. Bill Smith, Northwestern State
June 26: Real-time Crisis Communications: CoSIDA Convention Presentation, by Chris Syme, CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee Chair
June 25: CoSIDA Convention Presentation: Paperless Game Notes, by Chris Yandle, Baylor University