UW Warriors: Scoring Big with Social Media

This season marks the 60^th Anniversary of varsity athletics at the University of Waterloo.  Sixty years have come and gone, and along with those years, so have the traditional posters and signs around campus advertising games and building team pride.  Today, social media marketing makes up approximately 75% of the department’s advertising efforts according to the department’s Social Media and Brand Manager, Steve Brooks.

 

Mr. Brooks has been with the marketing department of the UW Warriors for the last 19 years.  He has seen many changes, the most notable being the introduction of social media and digital marketing.  Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram are the department’s biggest source of fan engagement.  These platforms are popular with both university students as well as the school’s alumni, who like to stay current on their favourite teams.  Updates by the UW Warriors are made daily or weekly, depending on the platform:

• Facebook – Monday morning updates on the last week, other important info as it comes up
• Instagram – telling story through visuals as they happen
• YouTube – Monday mornings plays of the week, as well as fan engagement videos.
• Twitter – ongoing, daily, interacting with followers and other sports teams and organizations, live game updates

In additional to updating games scores on twitter, the department made the move from live radio game broadcasts to digital webcasts (oua.tv) in 2014 to keep their fans up-to-date and part of the action.  The introduction of digital video has allowed the marketing department to start sharing ‘real-time’ game highlights on their social media accounts.  These video clips are among the highest in the department when compared to others for customer engagement.

So, what strategies are the UW Warriors using to gain fan/customer engagement on their social media accounts?  When asked about the Warriors most successful social media campaign, this is what Mr. Brooks had to say about #MyWarriorSelfie:

 

Here are some links to the advertising produced with the images collected during the #MyWarriorSelfie campaign:

• Van wrap
• Facebook Cover Photo

Lessons for Others

Sports fans are just like traditional customers, they want to feel like they are part of the action.  Whether they are able to attend events or not, they want to feel like part of the team.  This means staying on top of new social media and evolving with your customers.  It’s important to know where and how your customers like to get their information and to be active on those platforms.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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