ENGAGEMENT STATS

AUGUST 19 – NOVEMBER 17
Built from the ground up in just 91 days, the 740 Zone quickly became a prominent source for southeast Ohio football coverage among players, scouts, and families:

TWITTER: 1,081 followers, 32k profile visits, 844k impressions | Daily Averages: 11.9 followers, 352 profile visits, 9.3k impressions
FACEBOOK: 937 followers, 25k video views, 137k people reached | Daily Averages: 10.3 followers, 275 video views, 1.5k people reached
YOUTUBE: 181 subscribers, 17k video views, 761 hours watched | Daily Averages: 2 subscribers, 187 video views, 502 minutes watched

COVERAGE

The 740 Zone covered about eight games each week. Our list of featured matchups would be posted on Friday mornings to generate excitement for that night’s games. We felt that had we posted any earlier, we would’ve been forgotten about — but we still wanted to post before the school day was over. About an hour before kickoff, we would post the list of reporters attending each game with live updates, and link their accounts in the caption. All reporters tweeted using #740Zone to promote the brand and cast a wide net of coverage every Friday night. As soon as each game went final, we posted the list of scores from said games to all of our feeds.

In the hours following each game, reporters would begin assembling videos covering the game they attended. For the games closest to the university, students were expected to return home and produce a one-minute highlight video to be posted that same night. We only assigned “740 Highlights” to games which we could reasonably expect content from before 11:59 p.m. Friday, after which our follower activity saw a steep drop off. Then, every game would receive a two-minute game recap. About half were posted directly to social media the next morning or early afternoon, while the other half (our best games) were held back for the show to encourage viewership. Clips of those games were then posted on Sunday and Monday along with the link to the episode to drive further viewership. Full episodes were posted Saturday evenings during hours of peak activity, and promoted in the hours leading up.

CAMPAIGNS

ALL-740 TEAM
To honor the talented football rosters occupying southeast Ohio, the 740 Zone selected 50 players from all parts of the region to comprise the All-740 Team. The team featured athletes at each position on the field, created with the idea of an “All-Star” roster in mind. We gave “first-team” recognition to 11 offensive and 11 defensive players, and created starting lineup graphics for both. We shared this roster in the form of a forty-minute episode, spotlighting the season stats and career accolades of all fifty players.

To maximize engagement, we wanted to ensure that a variety of teams were represented, even if there was a good argument that another player on an already included team was better. These graphics were a great reason for every one of the fifty players, their teams, and their families to share our content. Thus, these were among our best performing posts at the end of the year. We also cut the episode up by position group and shared clips of each on our social media platforms with a link to the full episode. The episode’s view count continued to grow for weeks to come, and ultimately received more than triple the views of any traditional episode. The team was published more than a week after the football season ended, and yet it was the period in which we saw our largest growth.

T-SHIRT GIVEAWAY
We reached 1000 Twitter followers shortly after the publication of the All-740 Team. To keep the engagement and growth going, and as a sign of gratitude for our fans, we gave away the remainder of our 740 Zone t-shirts to fans who liked our tweet and/or replied to it. The tweet garnered more than 80 likes and 20 replies, proving to be one of our highest engaged posts of the season.