
March Madness is upon us! And if one thing is certain, March Madness equals Marketing Madness.
To take an analytical look at the tournament’s digital marketing frenzy, we’re using our content marketing platform to track the March Madness content generated by all of this year’s championship contenders.
We are kicking off our 2015 March Madness coverage on the TrackMaven blog with insights into the teams’ performance on Twitter. First, here’s how the 64 teams stack up based on the size of their Twitter audiences.
By Twitter audience alone, UNC (grey) is the clear frontrunner with over 216,000 Twitter followers. After UNC’s solid lead, Kentucky (blue) and Duke (purple) follow, with 149,000 and 136,000 followers, respectively.
Interestingly enough, despite UNC’s massive lead in audience size, the team’s Twitter account is not the Twitter engagement leader. The graph below shows the total Twitter interactions for each NCAA team to date in March 2015.
At about 121,000 interactions, Duke (purple) is the most engaging Twitter account, with Kentucky (blue) and Wisconsin (green) trailing with 97,000 and 93,000 interactions, respectively. Even with its giant Twitter following, UNC landed in fourth place with 57,000 interactions.
Looking at total interactions, however, doesn’t always tell the whole story. In the graph below, we plotted the average interactions per tweet per 1,000 followers for all 64 teams. This measurement normalizes across differences in follower size, giving us a read on how engaged each team’s fan base really is.
Surprisingly, University at Albany currently leads the tournament teams with over 66 interactions per tweet per 1,000 followers, the best score by far. Despite having a smaller Twitter audience, this measure indicates that UAlbany’s Twitter followers are the most engaged of the pack!
How were the teams with leading Twitter accounts so successful? We used TrackMaven’s Activity Feed to take a look at Duke, UNC, and UAlbany’s best-performing content to figure out what types of tweets resonated with NCAA fans.
Here are 3 of the top-performing March Madness Twitter strategies:
1. Be Real Time, Every Time!
Each of these teams consistently found success by posting real-time score updates, which are exactly what fans come to expect from a well-maintained Twitter feed. Generally, the final score results performed best, especially during the games leading up to Selection Sunday.
UAlbany’s top tweet of the month, for example, was an enthusiastic real-time update on the game as the team pulled ahead with a buzzer-beating 3-point shot. The tweet below fetched 291 interactions, a full 28 times their average engagement on Twitter.
2. Offer A Behind-The-Scenes Look
Behind-the-scenes access is a powerful driver of Twitter engagement for NCAA teams. When the game isn’t going on, fans are still checking in on their favorite teams’ feeds.
Duke has been especially effective with this type of insider content. The tweet below depicting players Quinn Cook and Tyus Jones leaving the arena after a win, for example, saw 2,600 interactions, six times the team’s average.
Duke struck Twitter gold again by offering a preview of of the team’s newest jerseys. The tweet below saw 3,200 interactions, eight times the brand’s average!
3. Promote Player Prestige
Many of the leading NCAA teams also found Twitter success by singling out individual players’ accomplishments.
When UNC’s Marcus Paige won a prestigious Skip Prosser award, for example, the team made sure to let their Twitter audience know. The tweet below saw 14 times the team’s average engagement, with over 2,300 interactions.
UAlbany effectively employed this technique as well. Tweeting out this exciting shot of Richard Peters and the school’s pep band during a game and saw nine times their average interactions.
For more updates and insights from this year’s March Marketing Madness, subscribe to the TrackMaven Newsletter below!