This guest blog post is by Russell Luna, Assistant Director of Athletic Communications at Middle 
Tennessee State (photo, right). Luna details Middle Tennessee's move from the Sun Belt Conference to Conference USA and discusses the innovative and engaging social media plan used to announce the realignment. The promotional effort involved numerous athletic staff members and close collaboration with other university officials.
The first day of July marked the beginning of change, as several universities around the country transitioned to new conference affiliations. Middle Tennessee State University was one of those institutions, as we shifted from the Sun Belt to Conference USA.
This meant for the third time in our history of intercollegiate athletics, our department would be switching conferences. Reaching C-USA was the goal of our athletic department since moving to the Football Bowl Subdivision level in 1999.
To capitalize on that excitement for July 1, our athletic department wanted to build a campaign that included a grass roots effort, along with social and traditional media. Since the initial announcement of our move on November 29, 2012, MT Director of Athletics Chris Massaro decided it was important to build a C-USA transitioning committee.
This committee included Massaro, assistant and associate ADs, as well as various other staff members. The purpose was to make sure there was a clear, consistent and impactful message that would reach the various mediums. It was also extremely important to involve the entire campus community so efforts to get in front of numerous organizations, Deans and professors were a premium.
Below is how the MT Athletic Communications department, along with marketing and communications handled the move.
1) Establishing a ‘slogan’
The message was simple. We wanted our fans and those in the community to ‘Make the Move with Us.’ The slogan had been quite effective in logos and other materials we prepared ahead of the transition to Conference USA. However, it became clear that the hashtag #makethemovewithus was too long and would be largely ineffective. There needed to be a hashtag that simply identified the university’s transition to the new conference. We settled on the hashtag #MT2CUSA. In order to make sure that our fans knew about this hashtag, we started to use this heavily on social media platforms in the weeks leading up to July 1.
Also, all graphics on the website and social media accounts encouraged fans reference 
#MT2CUSA in their posts. (The athletic department also developed an inaugural logo that was heavily used and will continue to be during this first year)
2) Saturating the traditional media outlets
Associate Athletic Director for Communications Mark Owens worked closely with Associate Vice President of Communications Andrew Oppmann to ensure the print and television media were well aware of the move. With a week prior to the move, MT bought full page spreads in the Murfreesboro Daily News Journal and The Tennessean thanking the Sun Belt Conference for all the memories.
On Sunday, June 30, MT again used a full page to talk about the transition to the new conference. The DNJ also featured several articles on that Sunday, which included a map graphic highlighting the 2013-14 C-USA membership, educating the fans on the new members, and what to expect out of the new league.
Additionally, radio interviews were lined up with Nashville’s two sports radio stations that saturated the morning, mid-day and evening listeners. Print and television media outlets were invited to a public luncheon on July 1 that included administrators, coaches and fans.
3) Reaching out to the community
The advertising and social media campaigns were important, but we also needed to reach out to the local community. Associate Athletic Director Marco Born, his staff, and Nelligan Sports Marketing coordinated with more than 50 businesses in the Murfreesboro area to wear MT inaugural season C-USA t-shirts. Several of the businesses hosted groups of athletes and coaches that handed out schedule cards, koozies, posters and other giveaway items promoting the move to Conference USA. A fire
truck placed an inaugural season logo banner on its side and moved to various locations throughout the day.
Also, an airplane took to the skies with a large banner and flew over Murfreesboro and Nashville indicating the move to Conference USA for more than five hours.
4) Capturing the excitement
Documenting the importance of the event was a crucial step in successfully implementing the plan. With a variety of events happening in different locations and at the same time, it was important to have staff members delegated with separate duties. This could have not been executed perfectly without the communication of the entire athletic communication office and marketing. Each person had specified duties in making sure the move went smoothly.
Mark Owens and Marco Born each went over the communications plan and made sure the rest of the staff knew what tasks needed to be completed. Leslie Wilhite scheduled interviews and gave her input on ideas that would help reach our social media audience. Nathan Wallach, our social media and multimedia coordinator, created all the #MT2CUSA graphics and worked with other staff members to make sure that the @MTAthletics twitter account didn’t overload our followers’ Twitter feed.
Nathan also took video for the day, which included capturing the airplane hoist the MT to Conference USA banner in the air. Russell Luna gave assignments to students in the office to take photos and send them to him so he could post on @MTAthletics. Luna was also in charge of re-tweeting fans posts throughout the day. Bradley Lambert helped transition the website from the Sun Belt to C-USA, while also adding photos from the various events across town.
Overall, there was definitely a sense of success. We had created a buzz that allowed our fans and locals in the community to realize the importance of the move to C-USA. The entire Nashville-area media covered our move, as we received substantial air time on the 6pm and 10pm news. Additionally, the hashtag #MT2CUSA was a major success. Fans tweeted throughout the day and we had eight of the top trending hashtags in the Murfreesboro area.
Now, we are looking to continue this excitement by having luncheons and events during the next few weeks. In order to build upon this momentum, you must carry it forward until the athletics season begins in August. None of this would have been possible without the communication effort from everyone in the athletics department and across campus.
Delivering a consistent and well-crafted message takes time to develop and can’t be executed without proper planning.