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The University of South Carolina's Social Media Insights Lab uses HypeAuditor to measure how influential teams and athletes are on social media, and to power rankings published weekly in the Sports Business Journal.
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With HypeAuditor, the Lab turns raw social data into weekly team rankings in minutes instead of days
The Social Media Insights Lab at the University of South Carolina is building a name for itself in sports analytics. The team measures how effective teams and athletes are on social media — not just who has the most followers, but who has the most engaged, best-run presence.
The project began by measuring social media effectiveness in college football. As the methodology matured, it attracted interest from national sports media organizations. Fox Sports collaborated with the university on the College Sports Social Pulse™, while the Sports Business Journal published weekly Sports Social Pulse™ rankings during March Madness and the FIFA World Cup. Today, the initiative is evolving into the broader Sports Social Pulse™, providing sports intelligence for media companies, athletic departments, conferences, sponsors, and professional sports organizations.
How HypeAuditor helped the University of South Carolina:
Measured official team accounts for various languages and platforms
Provided the engagement, follower growth, reach, and audience-quality data behind the rankings
Let analysts pull a full report in minutes every Monday with no prior training
"Sports organizations have no shortage of data. What they need is intelligence. HypeAuditor helps us understand not just who has the largest audience, but which organizations are building the strongest and most influential digital communities."
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Clay Owen
Professor of Practice, University of South Carolina
- Business Challenges
Measuring teams that represent whole countries
College football is easy to track — a school, its coaches, its campus phrases. The World Cup is harder: when a team stands for an entire country, it's very difficult to separate fan reactions about “England” or “Argentina” from all the other national noise.
Comparing influence across languages and platforms
The Lab wanted to know which teams have the strongest digital presence across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and X — not who wins on the pitch. That needed consistent data on official team accounts in multiple languages, which its old platform couldn't provide.
- HypeAuditor as the Solution
The metrics that show real effectiveness
Anyone can buy followers, so the Lab focuses on engagement rate, follower growth, estimated reach, and audience quality — all of which HypeAuditor provides. Those metrics surfaced real stories: Canada had the highest follower growth of the tournament, and the U.S. climbed from 32nd to the top 10.
Fast, downloadable data
Once the dataset was built, an analyst could pull the numbers and deliver a report in minutes with no training. That speed made weekly rankings possible.
- The Result
A stronger method and a commercial product
By incorporating engagement, audience quality, follower growth, and cross-platform reach, the university developed a more comprehensive methodology than rankings based solely on follower counts.
HypeAuditor enabled the team to produce consistent, repeatable analyses across multiple sports and international competitions while dramatically reducing the time required to generate weekly reports.
As the Sports Social Pulse™ continues to expand, the University is building a historical dataset that supports longitudinal research, commercial applications, and new forms of sports intelligence.
“HypeAuditor was an incredible bargain. Your sales team came up with a plan we could implement quickly and afford. We believe this data will have long-term value — academically and commercially.”
Clay Owen
Professor of Practice, University of South Carolina
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