A winning athletics program is a shop window for higher education institutions, giving social media marketers an invaluable tool for engaging past, present, and future students.

To illustrate our point, at the time of writing, the Ohio State Buckeyes football team had generated more search activity over the previous 12 months than the university itself:

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But while having a winning athletics team is a potential asset, you still need to get your social media strategy right if you’re going to turn all that on-field success into measurable marketing results.

To help you, we’ve rounded up 10 of our favorite university athletics social media accounts and explored what makes each so effective.

Let’s get into it.

1. Ohio State University

When it comes to identifying the most popular university athletics programs on social media, there’s one clear winner: Ohio State. One analysis discovered that the school’s primary athletics account has a combined 2.89 million followers across Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, and YouTube — that’s 25% more than the second-placed University of Oregon:

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Of course, in the world of higher ed social media, follower count isn’t necessarily a sign of content quality. Two factors certainly contribute to the social media success of Ohio State athletics — the program’s on-field performance, including 32 NCAA team titles (to date), and a comparative lack of competition elsewhere in Ohio.

Still, the Buckeyes get plenty right.

We particularly like how they lift the lid on what’s going on behind the scenes, helping fans build a real connection with their team — even outside of competitive fixtures:

👉 Learn more: How to Create a Brand Community: A Step-by-Step Process

2. University of Notre Dame

Given the popularity of university athletics, it’s easy to forget that college athletes are students as well as sports stars.

Sure, you want to showcase their sporting prowess. But remember: most students aren’t part of your sports program. So, if you’re planning to leverage the success of your school’s sports teams to reach more prospective students, you need to demonstrate that athletes have lives (and passions) beyond the sporting world.

The University of Notre Dame does this better than most.

For instance, the official Instagram account for Notre Dame Lacrosse takes the time to celebrate players’ off-field achievements, like when two recent graduates traveled to Honduras to volunteer with healthcare non-profit One World Surgery:

 

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A post shared by Notre Dame Lacrosse (@ndlacrosse)

This content is just as inspiring to higher ed social media audiences as posts focusing on the team’s on-field results.

3. University of Iowa

For the fifth year in a row, in 2023, analytics platform Rival IQ ranked the University of Iowa as the top-performing D1 higher ed institution on social media:

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This achievement wasn’t solely down to the school’s athletics account, but they certainly played a key part.

While the University has dozens of sports programs, we’re going to focus on the Instagram account for its women’s basketball team, which finished second in the 2024 NCAA Division 1 championship.

Clearly, the Hawkeyes are fortunate to have one of America’s best-known college athletes in 2024 ESPY winner Caitlyn Clark.

 

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A post shared by Iowa Women’s Basketball (@iowawbb)

However, this account does a great job of showcasing the whole squad, helping followers learn more about each player’s off-court qualities.

 

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A post shared by Iowa Women’s Basketball (@iowawbb)

Because the better you know individual players, the stronger your connection to the team.

4. University of Florida

Per Athletic Director U, the University of Florida has the most engaged following of any university athletics social media account.

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So what are the Gators getting right?

Lots of things. But we were especially impressed with the school’s commitment to video-based posts — even on less visual platforms like X/Twitter:

Accessing regular, high-quality video is a constant challenge for higher ed social media marketers.

That’s one of the reasons why a strong athletics program can be such a major benefit. From training sessions to fan footage to match-day highlights, the sporting world gives you a ton of opportunities to capture engaging video content.

👉 Learn more: Top Video Marketing Trends of 2024

5. Colgate University

As we noted, follower count doesn’t always correlate with content quality.

Institutions with huge student bodies are always likely to have higher social media follower numbers. But that doesn’t mean we should overlook smaller schools, many of which are leading the way in social media strategy.

For instance, Colgate University had the highest proportion of engagement on Instagram and X/Twitter compared to its actual following, so it’s doing something right.

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We felt Colgate deserved particular praise for applauding the academic and sporting achievements of its student athletes.

For instance, the school regularly shares its performance based on NCAA Academic Progress Rate data — a term-based metric designed to hold institutions accountable for the academic progress of student-athletes:

Colgate is another university that understands sporting prowess isn’t everything when it comes to reaching and engaging social media audiences.

6. University of Tennessee

High-profile alumni play a key role in any successful higher education social media strategy, and university athletics is no different.

If a former student has made it big in their chosen sporting field, you’ll definitely want to shout about it. Not only is it fantastic for building awareness among general audiences, but it also proves to future college athletes that your school has the sporting chops to help them achieve their dreams.

But what, exactly, does “shouting about it” look like?

One approach is to focus on the human side of student-athlete success, just like the University of Tennessee did in this mini-documentary on YouTube:

Telling Lakers star Dalton Knecht’s story from the perspective of his parents makes his journey more relatable, which helps generate more engagements, views, and comments. It clearly works because this video notched up close to 40,000 views in just one month.

👉 Learn more: 10 YouTube Shorts Examples To Inspire You

7. Oklahoma State University

We’ve discussed the importance of celebrating non-sporting results. But, of course, you should also applaud the athletic achievements of teams and individual student-athletes.

One way to do this is to let your followers know when a school record has been broken, just like in this example from Oklahoma State University’s (OSU’s) Cross-Country and Track-and-Field account:

 

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A post shared by Oklahoma State XC/T&F (@run4okstate)

OSU posts whenever a team or athlete sets a new record. This is an effective way to celebrate individual or team-level performance while also demonstrating your athletics program’s commitment to constant improvement.

8. Auburn University

Creating aesthetically pleasing content is a crucial step in any social media strategy. But it’s arguably even more important in the sporting realm, where visual elements — images, videos, graphics — help to bring your followers closer to the action.

Auburn University creates some of the most consistently engaging and recognizable graphics of all the athletics accounts we analyzed. They retain the same styling elements (like fonts, shapes, and color schemes) whenever they create a new custom visual.

For instance, look at the common characteristics between this post, celebrating the performance of the men’s golf team…

 

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A post shared by Auburn Men’s Golf (@auburnmgolf)

… and at this one, focusing on the performance of an individual golfer in a specific tournament:

 

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A post shared by Auburn Men’s Golf (@auburnmgolf)

Those are two different post types, but the consistent branding means they’re clearly from the same account.

👉 Learn more: 10 Tips For Creating Branded Social Graphics

9. Stanford University

By its very nature, athletics is a highly competitive world. You should undoubtedly be celebrating sporting wins via social media — but don’t forget to overlook the fun side of student athletics.

Stanford University gets it right.

Sure, just like all the other accounts in this article, it spends plenty of time applauding the achievements of its highly talented student athletes. But it also showcases social events, such as the gymnastics team’s annual banquet:

This helps to humanize Stanford’s gymnasts, making the school’s sporting content more engaging and relatable.

10. Clemson University

One of the biggest challenges of running a university athletics social media account is generating new content ideas after the season—and the academic year—ends.

Clemson University does an excellent job of keeping its audience engaged when there are no results or upcoming events to shout about by asking regular questions:

The school also builds excitement ahead of the new season by sharing exclusive content, such as the first look at its latest soccer uniform:

All of which gives fans a reason to keep following.

Want to learn best practices for social media marketing from top colleges and universities? Book your place at one of our higher ed-themed social media strategy summits.

Featured image by Pixabay.

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