High school scores Social Media touchdown

And Makes a new fan – one tweet at a time

Every year when my alma mater plays the kids’ school in football the family rivalry begins. They tell me how their team is going to beat mine and I threaten to go to the game wearing my old varsity jacket.

This time around Clarkston, the kids school, dominated the game winning 49-28 over Lake Orion, my school. On the scoreboard for – Social Media – Clarkston posted a second victory 1-0 and gained a new fan.

We live close enough to the school to hear the reverberations of the announcer, but never been able to get any kind of live reports on scoring.

Until this most recent game.

With the (still) growing popularity of Twitter (which is in the process of its first IPO) I decided to search Twitter for scores. A few keystrokes later and I’m following @ClarkstonWolves and there were the updates I’d been looking for.

Sweet!

Of course I figured if I was going to follow a Twitter feed I might as well be following a feed from MY team, right?

Only I couldn’t find one. Not only were there no Twitter search results, when I took the time to visit the team’s Web site I couldn’t find anything either.

Touch down Clarkston!

Live tweeting scores puts Clarkston on the first page of a Social Media playbook that could bring results I’m guessing even they never thought of.

Imagine being able to help tie your community closer to your teams, develop fan support and even reach alumni who may no longer live any place near the school – all while generating revenue to support your athletic department?

The question is, does @ClarkstonWolves know they’re sitting on a communications gold mine? If they’re listening to Twitter, as they should be, they’re about to find out.

Here’s what the rest of the game night playbook might look like:

• First, you have to make sure you have somebody qualified at the helm. No disrespect to the kids, but if you want it done right, don’t use one of your student. Too much room for error. If the quality or consistency of your live tweeting efforts is off – or if a mistake is made – you’re wasting your time.
• Actively promote to the local community that you will be doing live tweeting during games
• Have your boosters organization approach local business to let them know what you’re doing and offer them a chance to participate
• Create a rate card (or at least a suggested donation level) whereby businesses can make donations in exchange for promotions during the games. Do this right and you’ll be making both the businesses and the fans very happy
• Start including hash tags (#) supporting community businesses in your area. Plenty of eateries will offer discounts for post game dining. Use live casting to let fans know
• With just a little bit of graphic design help you can create coupons for local establishments (they always appreciate this kind of help) which can be included in the tweets and/or be prepared to point them to the businesses Web site.
• Use a scheduling tool to schedule all your promotional tweets so you don’t have to worry about that during the game.
• Start tweeting 30 minutes before the game and 30 minutes after the game.
• Include pictures when possible.

Once you get rolling the options are limitless

• Trivia contests that can be tweeted during the events.
• QR Code scavenger hunts for post game activities
• Best picture contests for pictures taken during the event

Any of these could include prizes supplied by local businesses or could just be used to engage the audience.

It’s your playbook. See what plays you can come up with.