How does your institution or conference handle the "content slump" that happens during the summer? If you would like to share your ideas, please send your information/best practice examples to Barb Kowal, CoSIDA Director of External Affairs, at barbkowal@cosida.com and they will be published here.
See more from Syme, a presenter at #cosida14 in Orlando and former CoSIDA New Media Committee chair, via
cksyme.org where this blog post first appeared. You can also follow Syme on
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For schools, universities, and sports teams, the livin’ might be easy in the summer, but keeping the social media fans engaged can be a challenge. Sports teams often publish a “year in review” feature at the beginning of summer to give fans a chance to relive the great moments of the year. But at the University of Wisconsin, the fun lasts all summer long.
For the Badgers, the summer social media content dilemma is solved by basing their content calendar on a popular year-end feature, The Year in Review on www.uw.badgers.com.
Tam Flarup, Director of Website Services for uwbadgers.com, explains that they continually add to their year in review feature for several weeks with multiple categories of highlights to keeps fans engaged. The initial page on the website is accompanied by the editorial calendar for the summer. It is built to highlight each piece of the feature and designates who is responsible for the content. The calendar runs seven days a week through the middle of July when the full hype of football season grabs their fans’ attention:
Flarup said that new categories are constantly explored, some asked for by fans. This year, the Badgers added a Freshman of the Year category. “We also added a ‘Badgers Say Thanks’ segment where we will have a video created by staff and athletes saying thanks, and then feature some of our donors and contributions to athletic facilities,” she said.
The feature has become a fan favorite, keeping the Badger faithful glued to the department’s website and social media to relive the great sports moments of the year.
The Badger’s Year in Review is an excellent example of how you can take a multi-layered feature like a season or year review and create fresh content that spans the slow news times. How are you handling the summer content slump?