March Madness leads to Social Media Madness

March Madness is the most exciting time of year for 64 lucky college basketball teams. It’s also an exciting time of year for these college basketball team’s social media accounts. As teams move down the bracket, social media such as twitter, Instagram, and Facebook are utilized more to share hype videos, game stats and highlights, and pictures of loyal fans. Teams that perform well in the tournament perform well on social media. A good example of this is this years Cinderella team, The University of South Carolina.

Before South Carolina beat well known and stand out team Duke to advance to the sweet sixteen, no one really talked about USC’s basketball program or their players. But seconds after the final buzzer, South Carolina was trending on Twitter. The fact that this was the first time in school history that the men’s basketball team had reached the sweet sixteen was a big deal, as well as the fact that they beat number 2 seed Duke. South Carolina’s basketball team only continued to get attention on social media following their win against Baylor to advance to the Elite Eight, and their win against Florida to make it to the Final Four. South Carolina’s school president was tweeting about the success of the team, as well as students from the school sharing videos and posting Instagram photos of the town of Columbia celebrating.

Even teams that were expected to go to the Final Four are still getting a lot of social media attention. UNC’s basketball team has posted more Instagram stories and tweeted more to increase fan involvement and social media presence. We also can’t forget about Luke Maye’s legendary 2 point shot .03 seconds before the final buzzer in the game against Kentucky. Several videos were made with the footage of the game-winning shot that went viral. March Madness is not only an exciting time for these basketball teams, it’s also an exciting time for the people in charge of the social media content.