UCONN not doing so great in the number of twitter followers of athletic programs

[Rumrunner]

There's an article out about the top 25 twitter-followed ncaa programs by sport.

http://www.utsports.com/genrel/071113aad.html

UNC (128,000 followers), Michigan, Kentucky, MSU, Indiana lead the way for bb.

UConn's best showing by ranking is women's basketball, at number 6. Men's bb doesn't crack the top 25 with only 5,300 followers. The usual suspects are found atop the rankings for fb, soccer, baseball and bb.

Maybe it's a function of the banality of information tweeted, redundancy with individual' accounts, or lack of awareness, but if you're on this board and have twitter give the programs a follow. More followers, more likely the program will give out information.

Baseball
UConnBaseball-2,219 followers
Football
UConnFootball-7,381 followers
Soccer
UConnMSOC-1,344 followers
Basketball
UConnMBB-5,321 followers
Women's basketball
UConnWBB-6,002 followers

UConn athletics has 26.5k followers.
UConnHuskies

 

[kyle]

You'd be surprised at how many people outside of the Northeast have no idea what UConn is.

 

[CAHUSKY]

You'd be surprised at how many people outside of the Northeast have no idea what UConn is.

Bull$hit. I've lived my entire life on the west coast and everyone knows who UCONN is.

 

[Adios]

The problem might be that the vast majority of UConn fans/alumni have lives.

duckk Twitter. Facebook Lite.

 

[Hoophound]

The problem is that UCONN sucks with marketing and social media. You need to say important or interesting things to get a big following. You also need to be asking people to follow you everyday.

 

[kyle]

UConn, is that in Canada?

 

[mauconnfan]

WTF is twitter?

 

[Matt (Chicago)]

You'd be surprised at how many people outside of the Northeast have no idea what UConn is.

Have to agree with CA here. Been in the Midwest for 5+ years and same thing - everyone knows who UConn is. It's a national brand.

 

[8893]

You'd be surprised at how many people outside of the Northeast have no idea what UConn is.

You'd be surprised at how many people have no idea what Twitter is, much less how to use it.

I don't have Facebook or Twitter and have never been on either, nor has anyone in our family. I know what they are, but I don't use them and never have. I find that that's not that uncommon among many others aged 40+.

I occasionally encounter people who don't know what UConn is. They have all been women, mostly quite older, none of them sports fans in the least, and none from east of the Mississippi. Not too worried about that demographic.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

The problem is that UCONN sucks with marketing and social media. You need to say important or interesting things to get a big following. You also need to be asking people to follow you everyday.

Yeah, one needs to tell everyone that you farted in the library today.

 

[huskiesNhoos]

Its ok, I hear we're pretty good at winning NC's

 

[dsturdy5]

Given the flood of social media out there and the percentage of it used by college aged kids, it is almost unfathomable that a university the size of UConn does not have a better social media profile. How hard is it to find some intern(s) to effectively run the various social media outlets?

A co-worker's daughter spent last summer as an intern at a major company in Boston just watching their social media feeds. All she did all day was read twitter, facebook, tumblr, watch YouTube, etc and provide information to their social media department what was being said about them, what the competition was doing, etc. They used this to enhance their social media profile. A place with 30k students should be able to find a couple of kids who can do this.

As for what UConn puts out there now, it is just fluff pieces from their various sports and/or box scores with or without game stories. Most people will know where to find these in a more timely manner than UConn posts them. Lastly, the Twitter feed @UConnbuzzfeed collects all of the UConn info from the official site and from the local media and recruting sites and retweets them several times. I have found this follow to be more reasonable since I often miss the information when it first posts.

 

[Fang973]

You'd be surprised at how many people outside of the Northeast have no idea what UConn is.

I live in Kelowna, BC Canada and I am amazed at the amount of people I meet that not only know about UConn, but are fans. Mens and Women's teams. The NCAA tourney is also very popular here. But neither is as popular as Hockey or Curling ;-)

 

[SirHypeAlot]

As long as we keep winning NCs i dont give a duck how many damn twitter followers we have!

 

[Palatine]

Without twitter how would I know what Aston Kutcher is doing today?

 

[Hoophound]

Yeah, one needs to tell everyone that you farted in the library today.

Dinosaur.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

I'd want to see some demographic data of age of twitter users vs. size and age of each fanbase. I'd bet you would see a correlation.

 

[intlzncster]

You'd be surprised at how many people have no idea what Twitter is, much less how to use it.

I don't have Facebook or Twitter and have never been on either, nor has anyone in our family. I know what they are, but I don't use them and never have. I find that that's not that uncommon among many others aged 40+.

And yet, a bunch of hicks in Kentucky, Michigan and North Carolina seem to have it sussed out no problem at all. Plenty of college educated folks up our way...where's the uptake?

 

[Edge2017]

Yukon? Like the sled dogs?

 

[EricLA]

I think it's not surprising. Connecticut is a small state. UCONN is a small school #'s wise in comparison to IU, Kentucky, OSU, UNC, etc. The most rabid followers of college sports are Football, and Men's basketball. UCONN is a blip on the radar nationwide in football, and while both our hoops programs are national brands, we just don't have the alumni base of other programs. After all, how often do we sell out any of the football games or MCBB or even WCBB games? and our football stadium only seats 40,000 people, far less than the stadiums the big boys use.

We have a really good fan base, but not a great one. If we can't even sell out our most popular sports venues on a regular bases, it should not be surprising our fans aren't fanatical about following the Huskies on social media...

 

[Kitaman]

Bull$hit. I've lived my entire life on the west coast and everyone knows who UCONN is.

Perhaps he was referring to Chinatown out there.

 

[Yonick]

You'd be surprised at how many people outside of the Northeast have no idea what UConn is.

Yeah, that is B.S. It may have been the case 40 years ago. But, athetically/academically UConn is one of the best known schools in the country.

 

[Jerry1714]

Bull$hit. I've lived my entire life on the west coast and everyone knows who UCONN is.

I agree, having lived in the South everyone knew who UConn is.

Granted it was for their mens and womans basketball programs. Honestly, the majority of people (this was pre Fiesta bowl) did not know UConn had a football team.

 

[HooperScooper]

In 1989 when I went to Michigan for graduate school there were people who didn't know what UConn was. I remember one girl asking me if it was in Canada (Yukon). Now, everyone knows who UConn is. I've traveled all around the country and UConn is a known brand. Athletically and academically.

 

[Gurleyman]

I can't remember the last time I had any confusion mentioning "UConn" to anyone. Perhaps most people I speak to know sports, so my anecdotal research might be skewed.