Background + Strategy

The Howard County Youth Hockey Club (HCYHC) or Howard Huskies, is a nonprofit youth hockey club started in 1971. The club offers both recreational and travel hockey, with over 400 girls and boys set to participate in the 2024-2025 season. 

MPR worked with the Huskies to update their social media strategy and branding, capture video and photo content for their owned channels, create graphics, animations, and videos, run paid social media advertising to encourage registrations, track competitors, and manage the day-to-day schedule of content. 

MPR focused on capturing high-quality content of the youth leagues, conducting a content shoot on and off the ice at the Huskies facilities. We developed a video content series titled “Why the Huskies?” which showcased coaches, players, and club officials discussing their experience with the club and what makes it so special, including highlighting the program’s offerings like all-inclusive travel fees and skills clinics. An emphasis was placed on showcasing the Lady Huskies program and increasing registrations (see results).

A strategic paid social media plan included creating and boosting engaging content from the Huskies Facebook and Instagram channels, and creating a series of advertisements to increase awareness and promote registrations. 

Additional tactics included:

• Creating a ShortStack submission form for parents, players, and staff to submit photos and videos for potential use on Huskies owned channels
• Recommending website content and edits to align with Huskies’ priorities 
• Tracking local competitors of the Club, making suggestions and executing on changes based on performance insights.
• Live content capture and updates from Hockey Day in Maryland 
• Executing social media giveaways on Instagram
• Diversifying social media content to include a strategic variety of animations, graphics, photos, and video

Results

The Huskies saw great success and growth in the first year of our partnership, April 2023- April 2024.

• Registrations increased for travel teams and rec, including enough to require a second Lady Huskies team for the first time in club history (12U and 14U).

• More potential players participated in 2024 supplemental tryouts than any year prior

• Overall engagement rate of 5.7% is above benchmark averages for each platform

• Impressions are up over 235% from the previous year, with over half a million impressions in total

• Engagements increased by 149.4% 

• Audience net growth increased over 106%, adding over 300 new followers

• Video views were up a staggering 5,000%