Every high school in the country, save for a few that garner national attention, face the same issues. Parents can’t make it to the game because they are out of town and have no way to follow the game. Alumni and donors want to stay involved, but don’t live in the area anymore and feel disconnected from the community. Newspapers are starting to make cuts to their high school divisions and can’t maintain a high level of coverage.
The value of using Scorebook Live is immediately apparent; you can keep alumni, fans, and parents engaged with your athletic programs no matter their location. Out of town during the game? Here is a live gamecast with drive breakdowns and a game tracker. Live on the other side of the country? Here is a link to live box scores and postgame recaps.
But how do you know how many people are watching your Scorebook Live gamecasts? How can you spread the word that this is a service that is available to them?
The goal of this post is to walk you through the different engagement tools we provide, and to map out some best practices your school can use to maximize the audience you reach while using Scorebook Live.
TRACKING FOLLOWERS
During a game, the number of people visiting the game hub is tracked live under the game details section. For this specific game, 33 followers have come to the game page and watched.
Now, how do we get from 33 followers, which is a decent number, to 700+ live game followers like the game below? Keep in mind, these numbers are from the same team during the same season.
SECTION 1: ENGAGEMENT TOOLS
Prior to a game being scored, the pregame hub will show you this standard screen. From here, anyone can use the Twitter and Facebook share buttons, circled in the image above, to promote the game link. The same sharing buttons will be shown during the live game too.
1a. Link your mobile device or computer to your Twitter account. If it is linked, you will see the screen on the left.
1b. If your account is not linked, you will see the screen on the right prompting you to login. Entering your login information will bring you to the tweet screen.
2. Before you send out your tweet, you can add comments before or after the automatically generated URL.
3. The graphic above is generated once you send out your tweet. It will show the score, both teams and their logos, and stat leaders for both teams. Any comments you add will be shown above the graphic.
1a. Link your mobile device or computer to your Facebook account. If it is linked, you will see the screen on the left.
1b. If your account is not linked, you will see the screen on the right prompting you to login. Entering your login information will bring you to the post screen.
2. Before you send out your post, you can add comments before the automatically generated graphic.
3. The graphic above is generated once you send out your post. It will show the score, both teams and their logos, and stat leaders for both team. Any comments you add will be shown above the graphic.
SECTION 2: SCOREBOOK LIVE WEEKLY PROMOTIONS
Every week, we at Scorebook Live choose players and a team of the week from the last week’s games, and we promote a game of the week for the current week. We choose these at our own prerogative and promote them through our social media accounts.We also include these awards in our weekly newsletters that we send out to each region.
If you think that we missed a deserving player from your game, team, or league for that week, let us know. We want to help you engage your fans and the weekly promotions are a great way to do that. Plus, the players love it.
That’s comprehensive for an online app. More sports and activities should benefit from your application.