Quiz Bowl, Outreach, and Social Media

NAQT has recently received a number of suggestions, questions, and concerns related to quiz bowl, outreach, and social media. We are grateful for the feedback and have the following comments and responses:

Video and audio production

We want quality audio/video complete with subtitles/videos with the text of the question, commentary, and high production quality (much better audio/video than we have now, multiple cameras, etc)

The last few rounds at the 2019 High School National Championship Tournament will be recorded and livestreamed with multiple cameras. Captions will be added after the fact for the 2019 High School National Championship Tournament, 2019 Middle School National Championship Tournament, and 2019 Small School National Championship Tournament.

There was a miscommunication about who was recording what at the 2019 Intercollegiate Championship Tournament and 2019 Individual Player National Championship Tournament. NAQT determined that it would be better to have some video than none, so we posted videos that were not great. The videos from the remaining 2019 national championships should have better sound. Captions will be added after championship season is over.

For the 2019 HSNCT, we are hiring a videographer (the same one who produced the videos from the 2018 HSNCT). This is very expensive, even given that the videographer was a former quiz bowler and former HSNCT staff member who gave us a special rate, so we are not able to do it for all of our national championships.

Brand ambassadors

NAQT should use “celebrities” like Ken Jennings, Larissa Kelly, and Matt Jackson as brand ambassadors?

On many occasions, Ken and Larissa have talked to media about what quiz bowl is and what it means to them. As a result, we’ve already gotten some exposure in prominent outlets, and we’re open to ideas for how we can do more to build on that.

Over the last few months, we’ve had NAQT’s logo appear on national TV, and gotten substantive write-ups in the kind of publications likely to be read by our customer base.

Examples: Ken’s Slate Article, Ken and Larissa’s parts of this New York Times article, and the segment that aired in Jeopardy! promos and during the All-Star Games

Reactivity on social media

NAQT should have better social media “game”—more reactive tweeting when people tweet about quiz bowl, more emphasis on human-interest stories, more interviews, more things accessible to people not in quizbowl (family members, etc.), rather than an emphasis on statistics.

On a typical day, we find 250 to 300 new search results about quiz bowl-related search terms. While a majority of these are the same Twitter threads being retweeted and liked, this is still a lot to dig through. If you see a news article or public social media post about quiz bowl, let us know! If you see something we should see, tag us! The internet is a vast place and we can’t see everything as quickly as we want to.

LetterOne’s sponsorship has supported outreach to media and gathering of quiz bowl stories via their publicity firm (WEST). WEST wants to get interesting stories about quiz bowlers that go beyond the game, beyond buzzing speed and knowledge. WEST emailed all HSNCT participants in February asking for stories.

If you have stories you’d like us to tell before the HSNCT, write to social@naqt.com.

Social media at national championships

Our social media team will be doing more than just statistics updates at the 2019 SSNCT, MSNCT, and HSNCT.

We sent out/will send out hundreds of press releases before and after the 2019 SSNCT and MSNCT. HSNCT press will go out soon as well; if there’s a newspaper contact we should be sending news to, let us know (via your team’s registration form)! We are sending articles to the sources coaches/chaperones/club presidents provide for us, but we will always take more information.

Interviews and contact with quiz bowl programs

For the six weeks or so between the 2019 HSNCT field opening and Christmas, we tweeted at each school, principal, and quiz bowl team congratulating them on qualifying for the HSNCT. We received a few dozen likes and a handful of responses, but the time it took to track these down was not worth the brevity of the responses from the actual schools.

The 20for20 interviews leading up to the 2018 HSNCT wasn’t nearly as successful as we hoped in terms of social media response, so we don’t currently plan to do anything similar again.

Team and Player of the Week

Every week, we send emails to tournament directors asking them to highlight players who play well and are role models in the community. This has produced useful results three times in 25 weeks. Often we do not get responses to emails to coaches about honoring their players.

We try to choose teams we haven’t chosen before, with geographic diversity among the honorees chosen each week and overall.

Depending on the tournaments occurring, depth of results, responsiveness of hosts and potential honorees, and other factors, we are not able to choose a full slate of four honorees (middle school team and player, high school team and player) each week.

In general, responses have been muted outside honorees’ immediate communities.

Multiple people have suggested “interesting stories”, but haven’t gone into further detail. We are interested in hearing what sorts of stories interest you all, as our paths in quiz bowl are all different.

Some of the stories we’ve featured this year are a player who broke three records in a tournament, a player who participates in quiz bowl while also being the lead in a school play, a player who has played quiz bowl on multiple continents, and a player who also lettered in football and track.

How can the quiz bowl community help?

You’re here because you love quiz bowl. Talk about it. Tell more people about it. Share quiz bowl accounts’ posts with your newsfeed. Like. Subscribe.

If you have an interest in a particular avenue of tournament work that we haven’t considered yet, tell us! We are always looking for new ways to make our tournaments better.

Message us. Email us. Tag us in some posts, mention us in others. The internet is a broad place; we need your help if we’re all going to expand quiz bowl, together.

Thanks for your support! Feel free to contact us at naqt@naqt.com any time with suggestions.