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| Source: seufire.com |
I recently interviewed Donnie Smith. I’ve known
Donnie on a personal level for around 5 years. He is the Sports Information
Director at Southeastern University. SEU, with an enrollment of 3,000, has many
sports including volleyball, soccer, cross-country, basketball, baseball,
softball, and tennis. Football will debut during the 2014 school year.
What are your
responsibilities, and how do these responsibilities integrate with marketing
and business objectives for Southeastern University?
“My job is to promote our athletic program, our teams, and
our athletes. This is done through keeping and reporting stats, nominating for
conference and national awards, writing feature articles and press releases,
and also managing our electronic media; keeping our website up to date, and
providing content for our social media sites.
I feel my job is very integrated with marketing. My
department consults our marketing department quite a bit. When I first got
here, one of the first meetings I had was with marketing to develop a
social media strategy and to talk about branding and how to present our brand
in the digital world.
For a college, they're in the business of attracting
students. A college sports program is in the business of attracting athletes.
When one of our coaches starts recruiting a prospective athlete, that athlete
will begin doing research on the school, the team, and the coach. I want to
present our program online in an attractive way. I want to have the coach's bio
up to date with everything there is to know about him or her. I want all of our
athletes’ bios up to date so they can look and see what kind of athletes we
have here. I want to have feature stories on there that highlight our culture
and talk about some of the things our athletes and coaches do away from the
arena of competition. What it comes down to is to show Fire teams in a positive
light and make kids say, ‘That's where I want to go. I want to be a part of
that.’
Football is a very unique dynamic. I believe it was Vince
Lombardi who once said, ‘A school without football is in danger of deteriorating
into a medieval study hall.’ Even if you're just a student with zero athletic
ability, there's something about having a football team, and having football
games on campus that make a school standout and give their students a sense of
pride. So, I feel having football and promoting those players and coaches and
showing them in a positive light will even attract traditional students.
The mission of our department is to develop champions in
competition, in the classroom, and in life. If I can show that mission being
lived out, it makes those more than words, it shows it's a way of life and we
practice what we preach.”
What methods of
communications does Southeastern University use to reach their publics, and how
are they effective?
“I'm still an "old-school" newspaper, TV, radio
guy (traditional media, if you will), but over the last five years, the way you
get your message across has changed significantly. Whether you like it or not,
the game now is social media. Even e-mail newsletters are a thing of the past.
I'm trying to incorporate both. I still feel there is a significant enough
portion of the population that uses traditional media, so I want to make sure
they are aware of what we're doing here at Southeastern. However, those
traditional media platforms are continuing to survive because they've found
ways to adapt. They have additional platforms such as online content, video,
social accounts to get information out. Also, I can use our social media
channels to send out news in an instant. We just hired a linebackers coach last
week. First thing I did was post it on Twitter. That links to our Facebook
page. So in an instant, our 1,080 followers and 1,522 fans got the news. It
wasn't in the paper for another 10 hours, so in the age of immediacy, social
media is without question, a must.
Of the schools in The Sun Conference, Southeastern
University has the most followers on Twitter and the most fans on
Facebook of their athletic programs than anyone else. We would be
doing a huge disservice if we ignored this tool. This is over 1,000 people who
WANT to hear about us; they're asking to hear about us. Why wouldn't we
push content down this channel? I like looking at the analytics on Facebook to
see our popularity, increase in likes, who's talking about us, and on Twitter
to see the favorites and retweets. It kind of shows us our place online and how
we're fitting in.”
What are some
examples of communications strategies you have used to achieve success, and
what were the results?
“One of the things that came from our social media meeting
was trying to come up with a hashtag for the school year. We were looking for
something that our fans and our students could rally around; kind of like the University
of Miami has "full speed ahead" as their theme, we wanted to do
something that centered around our nickname. So the six of us came up with
about 10-15 ideas then cut that down to five. Instead of six people making the
decision, we decided to use our 1,000+ Twitter followers and 1,500+ Facebook
fans make the decision. So we asked those people to vote on which one they
liked best. On top of all of that, the university Twitter account re-tweeted it
to give even more attention. After all the votes were counted, we had our
winner- #FuelTheFire.
Another thing I did over the summer was a story about our
volleyball team. Last year they were 9-26. The coach didn't like the fact that
all the most recent stories on the volleyball page were articles about them
getting beaten all the time. We were trying to come up with something positive
to spur some excitement and develop a sense of pride with the team
and department and get some positive energy going into this season. It
turned out five of his girls and their assistant coach all went on
missions trips during the summer. I put together an article talking about the
impact these girls made in their trips to locations throughout Central
America and Africa. The coach loved it, the team loved it, the athletic department
loved it, and the school loved it. The national association tweeted the
story out as well. All of a sudden, what they did on the court last season
didn't matter.”
How has your public
relations practice affected the reputation of Southeastern University?
“My hope is that our practices have made a positive impact
on the thoughts and minds of people that have come across us. To go along with
the mission of the university, we want people to see Christ in what we do.
We're a Christian University and we need to make sure we're living that every
day. All of our athletes came on campus and went through orientation on
Thursday. On Friday morning, all of our athletes went out and did Christian
Service Projects. The football team went to a local middle school to move
textbooks, pull weeds, paint, and wash cars. I was there taking pictures to
document their service. What a great mission! This team hasn't played a
game-won't for another year, hasn't had a practice, and just got on campus.
What's the first thing they do? Serve their community. That's what I want
people to know most about our programs. We don't have a long tradition of
success yet having only given out athletic scholarships since 2009, but our
athletes are great students, great citizens, serve their community, and they
pursue Christ in all they do.”
For more information about Southeastern University Athletics, visit www.seufire.com
