December 2014 - Page 2 of 3

You Don’t Always Have to Play By the Rules

By Guest On December 9, 2014 In Best Practices, Lessons Learned

As a social media manager, I’m sure you are use to questions like this: What is the optimal video length, when is the best time to post, etc.? People love to have data to back up their decisions. And while I love studies and data that can help guide decisions, there is one thing I’ve learned:

Social media studies and analytics that aren’t tied to your team, league or brand are merely just a guide. They aren’t rules to live by. Test and see what works best for your audience. It’s all in the context.

Brad Harrison, the social media manager at Atlanta Motor Speedway, sent me a great example that speaks to this. A few weeks ago the Atlanta Motor Speedway and City of Hampton welcomed big rigs to the city streets for its Hampton Hauler Parade. This year, for the first time, the haulers actually paraded through downtown Hampton. It presented a golden opportunity to get their audience engaged. Here’s how the team decided to cover it on Facebook, according to Harrison:

“When it came to posting a video of the parade, we kept it simple: Instead of limiting the video length to two to three minutes, we opted to run the full length (which was 11:24 long).

By rule, we tend to limit our video’s length. But in this case, we decided that those parameters, while a good rule to follow, at times need flexibility. The move paid off in a large way: NASCAR fans are passionate and posting content where they would see their favorite driver’s transporter resonated strongly.

The post itself had the highest engagements of any post within the past year on our Facebook channel. It had an organic reach of 512,768 and was viewed by 95,136 people (our Facebook page has just more than 113,000 fans currently).”

We all know most studies would say an 11-minute video is way too long for social. In this case though, it worked for AMS.

The lesson is simple here: Pay attention to your fans and what works for you. Industry standards and rules are meant to be broken if you have a grasp on the why.

Do you have any examples of when you broke “the rules” in social and it worked well? If so, share your example below!

As always, thanks for reading!

Lessons from Baylor’s College Football Playoff Campaign

By Guest On December 8, 2014 In College Athletics, Lessons Learned

When Baylor found themselves on the bubble of the College Football Playoffs, they launched a PR campaign (even hiring a PR firm). Content and communications ramped up. They leveraged the hashtag #SettledOnTheField, created great social media content and rallied ambassadors. The results were pretty good:

As I took a look at their Facebook and Twitter accounts, I couldn’t help but to wonder: Why don’t teams take this approach year round? This was more than just a PR campaign for a spot in the playoffs. It was a rallying point for fans, a way to generate engagement, content for recruiting and so much more.

Here’s the thing: Schools, teams and leagues should focus on making a splash through content year round. It should not take a national stage to think, “hey, we need to promote the heck out of our program”. After all, even in sports, content is king. Baylor’s campaign proves this.

Bowl Game Annoucement Tweets

By Guest On December 7, 2014 In Uncategorized with 1 Comment

For all of you that love graphics, I’ve compiled screenshots of the bowl game announcement tweets from each top 25 football team. Most teams opted for graphics, but a few just sent out tweets with copy. As you’ll see, visuals resonate much more than copy alone:

Which ones stand out to you? Why? Feel free to share your comments below.

As always, thanks for reading!

Snapchat in Social Media + Sports

By Guest On December 5, 2014 In Best Practices, Social Media with 2 Comments

Snapchat came onto the social scene in September 2011, and while it’s been around for quite some time, I’ve neglected it on this blog. I don’t have a problem with Snapchat, I’m just cautious about jumping on a new platform for the sake of doing so. I wanted to take time to understand Snapchat and how consumers use it.

After a couple recent updates though, and stats that are hard to ignore, I decided it was time to take a good, hard look at the platform. Here are the platform stats:

So let’s start at the beginning. If you aren’t familiar with the platform, Snapchat prides itself on being a “fast and easy mobile conversation”. It’s a mobile messaging app where users can take pictures, add their own text and art and then set them to expire in one to 10 seconds.

The app started off without a lot of bells and whistles: Send a photo to a friend that will eventually disappear. It’s easy to understand why it was hard for teams to grasp where they could play on such an intimate (no pun intended, sorry) platform. Since October of 2013 though, Snapchat has been making brand-friendly changes. Let’s walk through some of the changes you should know about:

October 2013- Stories

Snapchat Stories are a way to add Snaps together to create a narrative. Think flipbook. When you add a Snap to your Story, it lives for 24 hours under “Recent Updates” where friends can explore it at their leisure before it disappears. This is the key for brands: Instead of having to send a Snap to every Snapchat friend individually (and spamming them), users and brands can now add a Snap to their Story that lives for 24 hours for their entire Snapchat audience to consume.

Brands and teams can now reach the masses on Snapchat and not worry about one-on-one messaging. This update eliminates tedious work for brands, opens the door for long-form content and allows teams to push out content without annoying their fans (since fans decide if they want to view it). Here’s what a Story looks like from a team: