MANHATTAN, Kan. - In an effort to enhance storytelling and engagement, empower student-athletes to build their personal brands, and expose audiences to new content, K-State Athletics has partnered with content collaboration and distribution partner Greenfly, which fully automates the last-mile content workflow for social media.
Greenfly is a mobile app and online platform K-State student-athletes and staff will use to receive and publish content – photos, videos, graphics – to their social accounts from the communications staff. Greenfly, co-founded by former Los Angeles Dodger and two-time Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Shawn Green, helped MLB and its 30 clubs route over 600,000 pieces of content during the 2019 season. Likewise, in a little more than a month of access, K-State student-athletes have downloaded nearly 3,000 pieces of digital content for use on social media and have submitted content aiding in the expanded coverage of their teams.
"We've been delighted to work with K-State to introduce our enterprise solution to the college athletics space," said Daniel Kirschner, CEO of Greenfly. "It has been exciting to watch K-State get up and running so quickly, importing, organizing and distributing thousands of assets via our Greenfly Connect technology within days of launch. We look forward to helping the Wildcats continue to serve their fan community, and empower their student-athletes to build their own brands on social media."
The announcement continues K-State Athletics' commitment to digital fan engagement and storytelling and empowers more than 450 student-athletes to share and contribute visual content in a more efficient and powerful way. The platform connects seamlessly with K-State's digital asset management platform, Libris by Photoshelter, which contains nearly 300,000 images from the last four seasons of competition.
"The amount of visual content we're capturing has exploded and we needed a better tool to get those assets to and from more than 450 active storytellers we have outside our team accounts," Jay Moline, K-State's Director of Social Media and Digital Engagement said. "Part of K-State's commitment to supporting student-athlete success includes equipping each one to build a personal brand, which contributes to elevating the K-State brand. Partnering with Greenfly will extend our reach beyond team accounts and will ultimately help us tell better stories."
"There are a lot of great tools in the marketplace right now and our creative team explored a handful," Kevin McCarty, K-State Director of Creative Services, said. "At the end of the day, Greenfly was built by an athlete for athletes, and their partnership and direct integration with Libris by Photoshelter, one of our existing digital asset management tools, helps our communications team work most efficiently."
While K-State Athletics' main accounts and team accounts will still serve as the primary source for official news and information, the department aims to help student-athletes be more intentional with their own accounts and leverage followings that extend far beyond the team handle.
"We want to move from 'when convenient' to 'consistent' in terms of sharing content with our student-athletes, coaches, and alumni," Moline added. "We're telling the right stories and capturing excellent content, but we've got to work a little harder at delivering those assets on a multitude of, and the most impactful, platforms. Partnering with Greenfly opens new doors, or at the very least, clears hurdles for us to get those messages out."