When Univ. of Arkansas Digital Strategist Taylor McGillis (@TaylorMcGillis) arrived from the Univ. of Miami in '14, he set out a plan to overhaul the school's athletics website. Relaunched in '15, the new site allowed Arkansas to do things not commonly found on athletic department digital outlets. McGillis: "For the most part, there are three or four major players for website providers for athletic departments. All of them provide a very similar solution, which is cookie cutter; you don’t have a lot of room to be flexible to do the kinds of things we wanted to do content-wise. When I was at Miami, we were working with Coral Gables-based digital content agency WMT on some smaller-scale projects, and the group here at Arkansaas decided that WMT would be the perfect provider for us to do something nontraditional, which was build something ourselves rather than have a provider worried about hundreds of other schools at the same time."
Standing out in the college space:
It was important to feel like we were picking the right audience for us. One area where schools can go wrong is trying to please everybody. We decided that content that recruits like is also content that our fans like, and that became our approach. We have started to do more fun and engaging pieces of content, a few more "listicle" type things you wouldn’t normally see from a traditional college website.
On creating the Sons of Baum microsite for the baseball team:
Baseball is incredibly popular here. We were just sitting around the office probably two years ago, and someone said, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could have a website where you could listen to all the players’ walkup music?” We then started to look at how to do it. That happened in January, and college baseball season starts in February. We thought it would be a really great way to get the fan base fired up. It’s an example of a piece of content that we wanted to have the ability to do that’s unique.
Using analytics to target specific segments of the school’s audience:
We’ve done some research on the length of a headline and how that correlates with page views. It’s not a total science, but the shorter the headline, the more page views. What’s interesting is looking at what types of content do well on the website and what does well in an email. It’s not always the same. With our email marketing, we know that since they are ticket buyers or donors, they are maybe looking for a higher level of content than what we always have on the website. So maybe what we will do is tailor the message in the email to be more sophisticated than it would be on the website.
Plans for SEC, NCAA Tournaments:
Tons and tons of live. I’m sure that comes as no surprise. We’ve gotten average views on our live videos throughout the season, but I know once the NCAA Tournament rolls around, that’s just going to skyrocket. People who are at work and are able to hop on Facebook Live after the game, that’s going to be a focal point for us -- anything that TV cannot get. We’re also trying to differentiate what we are doing on Instagram from what we are doing on Snapchat Stories. We’re going to try to take the approach that stories will be pre-produced content. Things on Snapchat will be raw content only captured from phones.
Content sharing with SEC Network:
It's something we're constantly trying to improve. Being more proactive in sending some of our best video and social media content with the network to use on television or social media is a point of emphasis for us this year.
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