I have always admired Michigan Athletics’ social media presence from afar. They rock great graphics, their accounts have a consistent look and they clearly understand brand voice. Aside from that, I love that they have chosen to go against the grain and not create an overarching presence for their athletic department. Instead, they focus on each sport. Too often we follow everyone else’s lead in social media instead of evaluating what makes the most sense for our company. I admire their boldness. Jordan Maleh, the Director for Digital for Michigan Athletics, took some time to explain the why behind this move, their team structure, how they measure success and more.

I hope you enjoy the extremely valuable and detailed information from Jordan. It will give you a great picture of how Michigan Athletics has set out to create a rocking social media presence.

Can you give me a brief introduction about yourself, your background and how you got to Michigan?

My first stop after graduating from the University of Connecticut (B.S. Sport Management ’06, M.A. Sport Management and Sociology ’08) was Madison Square Garden (MSG) as the Marketing Coordinator of MSG Sports Properties (i.e. college basketball, boxing, tennis, wrestling). Soon thereafter I transitioned to Marketing Coordinator for the New York Knicks, and ultimately Marketing Manager responsible for overseeing the Knicks digital brand assets. This lead me to my current position of Director of Digital Marketing for the University of Michigan Athletic Department – directing Michigan Athletics email marketing, social media, online advertising, and mobile solutions across 31 varsity sports.

Can you explain your structure at Michigan (how many people are on your team, what everyone is responsible for, etc.)?

As of two years ago my current role was not present within the Michigan Athletic Department. This role was introduced and driven by Athletic Director Dave Brandon, alongside Chief Marketing Officer Hunter Lochmann, another position that was not present prior to Dave Brandon’s tenure at the start of 2010.

The “digital” team today extends across a team of four full-time team members with responsibilities aligned with email/database marketing (in partnership with FanOne marketing solutions), digital advertising (in partnership with media agency, Crossmedia), mobile solutions (in partnership with Vibes mobile marketing solutions), branding/creative aligned with digital initiatives, analytics (across ticket sales, email marketing, digital advertising, social media, video production), digital sponsorship opportunity/solutions (in partnership with IMG) and social media (in partnership with Public and Media Relations) across 31 varsity sports. 

You all have taken a unique approach to your social media platforms, doing away with Facebook and Twitter pages for the athletic department itself, and instead, focusing on each sport. How did you all come to this decision and why do you think it has been so successful?

The notion of not instituting a dedicated Michigan Athletics social media presence was certainly questioned (at first), but we have always taken into consideration the fan affinity for each of our 31 teams.  It’s certainly not fair to assume (and analysis suggests) that a fan of the Michigan Field Hockey Facebook page also reflects the same fan affinity towards the Michigan Men’s Soccer Facebook page, and thus, why pursue a strategy (of an over-arching Michigan Athletics social media presence) if fans may not be interested in potentially engaging with Michigan Field Hockey or Men’s Soccer or even Softball and Baseball within their respective News Feed or Timeline on a daily basis? We have afforded the option for our fans to make this decision — not overtake their News Feed or Timeline with Michigan Athletics “noise” that they would rather not read based on their fan preferences.

The same model is reflected within email marketing as well. For example, delivering a campaign aligned with Michigan Women’s Basketball (only) would not be delivered to an overall database that includes Season Ticket Holders and individual ticket purchasers (across Michigan Athletics 13 ticketed sports) that do not strongly correlate with Michigan Women’s Basketball — recipients not interested in Michigan Women’s Basketball would simply delete such an email or even worse, unsubscribe from Michigan Athletics email communication.  The social media strategy of respective team platforms (versus an all-encompassing social media outreach) decreases the risk of fans un-following or un-liking accounts and lead to a more engaging fan base on a sport-by-sport basis.

Who is responsible for the management of the sport accounts?

We have up to 11 team members that manage (25) Facebook and (22) Twitter accounts across 31 varsity sports, in addition to more specific oversight from the digital team (as described above) for Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, and Vine.  The social media support, invested interest and consistent content delivered across team members from Marketing and Public and Media Relations is vital to the overall Michigan Athletics social media strategy. 

What is the key to keeping all the accounts consistent with the Michigan brand, while allowing the communities to appeal to their specific audience?

As described above, there are definitely a number of voices that live across the Michigan Athletics social media community.  The unique approach of offering specific sport accounts allows the opportunity for community managers to deliver their respective “voice” and essentially a “team brand” based on each respective audience, while aligning with the Michigan brand as a whole.  Each community manager has an understanding of the Michigan brand and values, but also has the creative freedom to deliver messaging on a daily basis as personalities are unique for each sport.

In addition to understanding and recognizing the Michigan brand through each respective “voice”, the Michigan brand is represented and extremely consistent through creative as well, including Twitter backgrounds and avatars as well as Facebook cover photos and profile pictures.  Although our respective social media accounts unfortunately do not proudly wear the “verified blue checkmark”, the brand consistency through account naming and creative leave little doubt for fans to find the official Michigan Athletics social media accounts.

Michigan Athletics has an impressively large footprint online, from Facebook to Vine to Tumblr.  First, what’s your philosophy on adopting new platforms? Second, how do you keep up?

If there is no goal, or the only relative goal of adopting a new social platform is to simply stay ahead of other collegiate properties, then we are certainly not ready to move forward with such social adoption.  We definitely don’t want to pursue new platforms just to “keep up”, but rather work towards finding and potentially implementing new platforms starting with a strategic outlook.  Also, we take into consideration resources to ensure new platforms can be responsibly managed.  By focusing on a long term outlook (versus short term decision making), this preparation allows us to maintain a consistent presence for adopting new platforms across digital properties.

Share your best performing moment in social and why you think it was so successful. 

I will lean towards the #GoBlueVIP campaign, which was aligned with the Michigan Football Twitter handle  (@umichfootball).  The social media stunt, which it certainly was, followed the success of Major League Baseball turning @MLB private for a specific period time.  Expectations were relatively modest when first launched after benchmarking against the @MLB success story of going private.

The timing of the stunt (Tuesday, July 2) took place essentially during a low-volume news period for Michigan Football, as there were no expectations for breaking news (etc.) related to Michigan Football to take place during the time of the stunt (or even during the week window of promotion).

The objective of the #GoBlueVIP campaign was not data acquisition based, rather more geared towards follower acquisition, to promote a sense of exclusivity (for followers) and jealousy/envy (for non-followers (or those that were too late to follow by the time the account went private), and as a means to drive Michigan Football conversation (to bring top of mind) leading into the Michigan Football “Countdown to Kickoff” (social media) platform which would commence on August 1.  At the time of the stunt, it would have been hard to imagine #GoBlueVIP or #BeatOhio to trend on a summer Tuesday leading into the extended July 4^th weekend, barring no mention of Michigan Football breaking news.

Here’s a detailed look back at the #GoBlueVIP campaign:

Tuesday, July 2 / 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.:

• #GoBlueVIP mentioned 16,719 times / @umichfootball mentioned 13,794 times

Follower Snapshot:

• Promotional Launch (June 25): 139,932 followers
• Private (July 2 @ 10 a.m.): 148,726 followers
• Public (July 2 @ 6 p.m.): 148,024
• (+) Delta: 8,092 followers

Hashtag / Twitter Followers

• #GoBlueVIP yielded an 849% week-over-week increase in @umichfootball followers (over its off-season average)
• #GoBlueVIP trended in the United States within :17 minutes of turning private
• #GoBlueVIP trended Worldwide within :32 minutes of turning private
• #GoBlueVIP was tweeted from 49 countries, ranging from Indonesia to Croatia
• #BeatOhio was mentioned 4,391 times; trended in the United States
• #BeatOhio trended for a total of 4 hours and :15 minutes in Detroit on Tuesday, July 2
• #GoBlueVIP trended for a total of 6 hours and :30 minutes in Detroit on Tuesday, July 2
• 771 follower requests made during the time @umichfootball was private.

How do you all measure success in the social and digital space? What metrics do you look at?

Measuring success and defining metrics within the social media space is always a fun question as there are no true holistic measurements widely agreed upon across social media analytics.  There is certainly a number of engagement insights starting to be measured consistently within social media, as it seems simply tracking respective number of followers or likes is no longer the only accepted means of data.

As it relates to Michigan Athletics, social media reporting takes place monthly and on a quarterly basis including the following metrics:

• Total Social Population
• Month-Over-Month & Quarterly Change (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Vine)
• Talking About (Facebook)
• Reach (Facebook)
• Reach Per Update (Facebook)
• Number of Updates (Facebook)
• Total Tweets, Retweets, Favorites (Twitter)
• Retweets Per Tweet (Twitter)
• Favorites Per Tweet (Twitter)
• Ticket Revenue (Directly Attributed Through Facebook or Twitter)
• Referral Traffic (Facebook, Twitter)

In addition, this past Michigan Football season, partnering with Social Guide allowed our team to identify, capture, and analyze conversation on Twitter about every Michigan football game across TV networks including the following metrics for each game of the season:

• Nielsen Twitter TV Rating across all network types
• TV Sports – Hashtag Tweets (i.e. #GoBlue)
• TV Sports – Team/Event Account Mentions (i.e. @umichfootball)
• Top Team/Athlete Accounts
• Real-time uniques, uniques share, tweets, tweet share, tweets/minutes
• Notable “Tweeters/Influencers”

Moving forward, a key metric that will need to be further vetted and influenced is the notion of sentiment across social media, a metric that we have yet to be able to tap into on a continued and accepted basis.

I would like to give a huge thanks to Jordan Maleh for taking the time to give such thoughtful, thorough answers. Please give Jordan and the rest of the Michigan crew a follow on social media.

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