How would you describe the content strategy for VT’s Athletic Department?
We designed the content strategy to enhance engagement with fans, athletes, alumni, and the broader community here in Blacksburg. We aim to create, curate, and distribute high-quality, compelling content that tells the story of our student-athletes, highlights the excitement of our games, and promotes the values and spirit of Virginia Tech.
Do you have any specific content goals?
Sure, we have goals specific to our department and also some things we’re working towards that are reflective of the university and the alumni base. For example:
Fostering a sense of community and tradition: Content is really an incredibly powerful tool. By sharing through nostalgic footage and historical highlights (i.e relieving the Miracle in Morgantown on its anniversary each year), we can really connect with all Hokie fans.
Increasing fan engagement: Highlights, behind-the-scenes footage, and player interviews are key for us. We’re living and breathing content all year long, and we’d like to increase engagement especially in our sports that typically get less of the spotlight.
Driving revenue opportunities: That could mean we’re collaborating with sponsors to create branded content, promoting merchandise, or driving ticket sales through targeted campaigns and engaging gameday content.
Showcasing our athletes’ successes: It’s our job to shine the spotlight on our student-athletes, whether that’s on-the field records, academic achievements, or community involvement. Telling deeper stories creates more meaningful connections with our fans, AKA Hokie Nation.
How have NIL rules impacted Virginia Tech’s media team and athletes?
Virginia was actually the first state to allow NIL (name, image, and likeness), so at this point we know a lot about how it all works.
We’ve seen a huge increase in brand partnerships involving our student-athletes. As a media team it’s our responsibility to help them navigate these opportunities, so we’ve developed a strong support system to help our athletes understand what’s being presented to them and get the most from each opportunity.
What are the biggest challenges your team faces in today’s media landscape? And how have you addressed them?
Yeah, there’s definitely a lot happening all the time, so there’s a lot to keep track of—the demand for more highlights and sports content is just one such example. Here are some of the challenges and solutions that are top of mind:
Serving fans on multiple platforms at once: Audiences on different social media platforms have different expectations of what content should look like. So for example, on TikTok, the audience prefers more raw and personal content, while on Instagram they want more curated and professional-looking content. Younger fans want things to be shorter and appreciate more interactive experiences, like quizzes and polls. Our content team is divided up into smaller specialized teams, each responsible for a different platform to make sure we’re posting optimal content for each one.
Dealing with losing streaks: Whenever one of our teams is on a losing streak we sometimes get a lot of negative comments from our more-passionate fans. Hey, that’s sports! We have a crisis communication plan that’s in place to help manage such situations. If a team is on a losing streak, or having a poor season overall, we often scale back our posting or target other areas of the student-athlete experience within our program.
Limited staff: We are not a big team, and rely heavily on student assistance, often inviting students studying communications and media onto our team. It’s a win-win—they get experience on a professional media team, and we get some much-needed assistance in running our operations. We’ve also begun investing in AI automation tools, particularly WSC Sports, to increase our media output.
How does WSC Sports help Virginia Tech create sports content?
It’s been a game-changing tool for our department. We simply would not be able to deliver the same amount of content to our fans without it. These are the three main ways the platform serves us:
Automatic highlight creation: We use WSC to capture and cut highlights from any game, and it only takes a few clicks. For us, it eliminates the need to have a team of editors sitting at a computer for hours on end to create a highlight package, instead, WSC Sports does that for us in seconds. This allows our team to focus their energy on other tasks, like capturing interviews, shooting behind-the-scenes content, and brainstorming new and creative ways to engage with Hokie Nation on social media.
Editing for platform requirements: Every platform that we post to has a different set of requirements when it comes to video size and length. For example, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts require the videos to be vertical, while Facebook and YouTube videos are horizontal. Before using the WSC platform, every time we wanted to post to TikTok or YouTube Shorts, an editor had to manually edit the highlight to fit that format. WSC Sports now does that for us instantly and it’s incredible.
Scalability: With the automations we get from the platform we can scale our output without increasing our headcount significantly. This scalability has allowed us to cover a wider range of our sports events, broadening our reach and keeping Hokie Nation involved year-round.
What type of content have you found resonated the most with fans?
Career milestone accomplishments always perform well, and of course game-winning moments like the big win below over our rivals UVA!
What more can Hokie Nation expect to see in 2025 and beyond?
Overall, fans can look forward to a more dynamic, interactive, and personalized experience that keeps them closer to the action and everything happening with Virginia Tech athletics.
In terms of content, with WSC Sports taking care of monotonous content creation tasks, our team has been able to fully focus on coming up with innovative ideas. One thing we came up with is having a player react postgame to their highlights, with a split screen of the reaction and the highlight. We’ve already implemented this idea during our men’s soccer games, and fans love it!
We can’t wait to show Hokie Nation what we have in store for this season.
