NU Loss Gets Online Community Going

Posted by Whitney Mathews November 16, 2009 at 10:29 a.m.

Depressed. Fail. Sad. Terrible. Hate.

Those were some of the most popular words used to describe Kansas University football on the Web last weekend. There was one other four-letter f-word that was fairly popular as well...

How do I know that? The World Company subscribes to a few software tools that allow us to monitor specific topics on the Web. Because we cover it so often, we run continuous research on KU football. This means we can see all of the Web pages published that mention KU football and see various statistics about them, too.

The 31-17 home loss to Nebraska - on Senior Day - was the good guys' fifth in a row, and fans went to the Web to vent. This weekend saw the most online conversation about KU football than any other game in the 2009 season.

The pie chart below breaks down the specific types of URLs collected on Saturday (11/14) and Sunday (11/15) that mention KU football. A whopping 71 percent of all of the online content about the KU vs. NU game was user-generated. Over 51 percent of that chunk was on public social networks like Twitter.

KansasFootball_SiteTypeBreakdown.jpg

The only other game that compares with that percentage is KU's homecoming win over Iowa State at 59 percent, with 48.42 percent on social networks.

Compare this to the overall breakdown of online content since September 1, 2009. News coverage is the dominant single category, while user-generated content makes up nearly 52 percent. Only 23.53 percent of that is on social networks.

KansasFootball_SiteTypeBreakdown-1.jpg

Now I can hear you saying, "Wow, Whitney. That's cute and all, but why does that matter?" Well, this data tells us a few valuable things.

First, the amount of online Kansas fans looking to connect on game day is growing. At the beginning of the season, only 17 percent of online game day content was on social networks. That's a 34 percent increase!

Local businesses (bars, apparel shops, news organizations, etc.) can take advantage of that visibility. Try offering a game day special and advertise it on Twitter, Facebook or your blog. You'll be able to track the amount of sales generated from that special by having customers mention the discount when they purchase.

Second, you can use the #kufball hashtag to share anything with us at the Journal-World. From tailgate photos to parking problems, if you use that hashtag, we'll see it. We can use this content to look for anything newsworthy and follow live fan reaction to the game.

Third, it proves that KU fans (locally and nationally) are gaining a better understanding of sharing their fanaticism through social media. If you're a lonely Jayhawk in a non-KU community, you can get a piece of the action by logging on every game day.

Did I fry your brain? Leave me any questions or comments below.

Happy Monday!

~ Whitney

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ihatejohntravolta (anonymous) says…

Is there concern about local businesses dominating these discussions in the future? I like doing a search on that hashtag, for instance, because I am interested in KU football and people talking about the game. Since I don't live in Lawrence, seeing a beer special at, say, Quintons is not relevant to me. How can "we" balance actual conversation and promotions?
November 16, 2009 at 10:49 a.m.
wmathews (Whitney Mathews) says…

Laura - I don't see businesses trying to hijack the hashtag and fill it up with spammy behavior, and definitely don't encourage it. The community would eventually police something like that and turn against any account that tried to dominate the conversation with non-relevant information. We've seen that with local businesses before who have tried to hijack a TweetUp hashtag.

However, you can't keep local businesses from participating. So as we see the Lawrence online community grow, we may see more beer special-esque Tweeting. It's part of the game for non-local Jayhawks (+2 points for the obnoxious pun).
November 16, 2009 at 11:06 a.m.