Cathedral High School was the most popular site in VNN’s network this March with 31,259 page views earning them the title of VNN School of the Month! Congratulations to the Fighting Irish community and GoCathedralAthletics.com!
We talked with Athletic Director Jim McLinn and Webmaster Ray Sup to find out how their VNN site has kick-started their athletic department.
How has the popularity of your site in your community affected the athletic department?
Jim: One stop shopping for clear communication from one site on our school’s webpage for athletic information from last minute schedule changes on the “ALERT” bar to game summaries and feature stories. The number of views speaks to the popularity.
Ray: The biggest affect I have seen that has excited me the most was that each sport, no matter how big or how small, have been given the same tools and the same exposure and they can build upon each other. So when a bigger sport such as football, basketball or baseball do well, we also see more traffic to all the other sports. When our Cheer Team makes in onto ESPN and we post a story they aren’t just getting the Cheer web traffic, they get the exposure to all the traffic generated by the whole site and it creates even more excitement in the school and community.
You had over 30,000 page views this past month. Any advice for other schools who are just getting started?
Jim: Keep the schedules updated and correct on a daily basis. Empower your head coaches or their designee to be responsible for updating their sport’s site and to add feature stories, photographs whenever possible. Keep daily oversight on the content on the site by an administrator.
Ray: The advice I would give to other schools to achieve their highest potential would be to get people involved. Coaches, assistant coaches, students, parents, anyone who wants to help. The more content you can post, the more people will read. It is also important to promote your athletic site through all your communication channels, so for us that has meant the school’s Facebook site, Twitter accounts, emails to parents and students, and through our newsletters to donors, alumni, and prospective families.
Your website looks awesome! To what do you attribute your success?
Jim: Kudos for the ecstatic value of the site all go to Mr. Ray Sup. Our school webmaster. He is very gifted and makes the magic happen.
Ray: The content on our site is a school wide effort. We have had a number of coaches, assistant coaches, our sports information director, our marketing department and parents stepping up to make this site great. March was only our second full month with our VNN site being live and we are just scratching the surface.
Become VNN’s School of the Month! With the right content plan, your site can become the VNN Network High! Find out how!
New to VNN? Love Cathedral’s site? Contact us to supercharge your athletic department!
