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Wednesday is traditionally the 'start of the week' when it comes to covering the Texans. With most of the main coverage revolving around Sunday's games, the normal flow of the week takes it cues from that day. In the digital world, Monday is a essentially an extension of Sunday, serving as a recap of everything that happened on the field (if you played that week).
From there, the rest of the week falls into a routine as the season rolls along. After Monday's recap, Tuesday is all about the community. Texans players are usually off on Tuesdays, which allows them to share in the organization's community outreach efforts around town. So we go from game coverage to community coverage, and that officially (kind of anyway) closes the door on the previous week's game. If you follow anything we do on our website or on social media, you know that Wednesday is the beginning of the trek to the next game, which in this case, is on Monday night against the Broncos.
We release our 'pumped up' hype video first thing Wednesday morning on social media, and from there, much of the day's coverage has to do with previewing the upcoming matchup. The centerpiece of that coverage is the coach and player press conferences, which take place in the early afternoon. You can watch the presser live on HoustonTexans.com and our app, read quotes on twitter and get full coverage throughout the day on all of our platforms. As routines go, you can count on that every Wednesday.
However, with so many social media platforms now the first touchpoint for our fans, we are constantly trying to figure out ways to expand not only our coverage to those mediums, but also customize the experience you get. That's where Snapchat comes in. Snapchat is our fastest growing platform, and it allows us to be more playful and raw with the coverage we provide on there. So, we've taken steps to take what we already know is going to happen (player/coach pressers) and repackage it for our fans following us on the ghost. As we thought through the execution of this, the central question became, what is it that fans can't do on this day that they'd like too? After sifting through a ton of good options, we settled on one.
Fans can't ask our players questions.
Enter Snapchat.
If you've followed us the past two weeks, you've seen the intergration of fan questions with the player interviews that occur. Below are a few examples of questions that came from fans via Snapchat, that we then turned around and asked the players themselves. The reactions have been fun and it has allowed us to have more playful during what is normally a serious and football heavy time. As always, the key is a good story. So, we set it up and let it run. Using our weekly television show Texans Buzz, we given an 'sneak peek' that actually uses fans to provide the content.
Once the stage is set, we introduce the fan questions.
Then, we get the player to answer. The cycle is complete.
One of the mainly objectives we try and provide to our fans is a customized experience every time they interact with the Texans. Here's to press conferences, and Snapchat, for making that happen.
You can follow the Texans on Snapchat at 'texansofficial', or by clicking here.
