University of Texas Sports Program Gets Face Time on Facebook
The University of Texas’ burnt-orange Longhorn logo pops up all over the state—and all over the world, for that matter—on hats, shirts and loads of other merchandise.
So it’s somewhat surprising that the $130 million sports program at the country’s second largest university lacked an official presence on the biggest, baddest linebacker of social networking, Facebook, until just recently.
On Sept. 10, the UT athletics department debuted its Facebook page with a “soft launch.” So far, more than 262,000 fans have “liked” the page.
That compares with the nearly 8,600 people who like an unofficial UT football page on Facebook and more than 10,800 people who like an unofficial UT baseball page. The university’s official Facebook page has more than 182,000 fans.
Why did it take awhile for the powerhouse UT sports program to establish an official Facebook page, especially since various Longhorn sports teams already had their own Twitter pages?
“We studied, researched and observed how this tool could best serve the needs of the Texas Longhorn community,” said Nick Voinis, senior associate athletics director for communications. “We are very deliberate, and we insist on doing things right.”
Once the athletics department decided to pull the trigger on the official Facebook presence, it took about 48 hours to get the page up and running, Voinis said. The page represents yet another avenue for the UT sports program to communicate with fans and alumni, he said.
“It’s a new thing for us,” Voinis said. “We’re committed to it. We’re going to try some different things with it. Stay tuned.”
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