Tag: social media sports

Capitalizing on History in Social Media + Sports

By Jessica Smith On February 23, 2015 In Social Media

Every team and league has history: Legacies, fond memories and moments of greatness tucked away in history vaults. And this history is a goldmine of content. People love nostalgia. Science proves it. So, are you capitalizing on it?

The other day the US Olympic social media team proved that the opportunities to unleash history are endless with a little creativity. In honor of the 35th anniversary of the Miracle On Ice, the @USOlympic account live tweeted the game as if Twitter existed 35 years ago. The event had januvia-sitagliptin.net, photos, score updates and more. Here’s a snippet of the coverage:

The results were stellar. @USOlympic tweeted 70 times, garnering more than 13,600 retweets (please note these numbers were compiled manually). The initiative is a great reminder that a little creativity and planning can go a long way in mixing up your content and coverage.

March Madness also did something similar this year to drum up excitement for the start of basketball season: They hosted #MMVault Watch Parties featuring classic title games. Fans could relive the magic on NCAA.com and follow @MarchMadness for game-action tweets. The Twitter coverage included video clips, photos, color commentary and more:

Unlike @USOlympic, @MarchMadness was not celebrating an anniversary; they were using content to drum up excitement for the season. It’s a good example of how content that focuses on history does not always have to take the “on this day” theme.

Both of these are a great example of how to leverage the stories in the history vault to create excitement and buzz. And, it got me thinking. How else can history be leveraged in social media + sports? Here are just a few ideas:

Photo Essays
Photo essays are a great way to recount the past. Focus on the story, letting pictures and strong copy tell it. Whether you use exposure.co or create a Facebook photo album that fans can flip through in sequence, a photo essay is a great way to tell the history of your team/league.

Radio Clips
Many teams have had golden “voices” over the years. And, hearing those voices again can evoke a strong sense of nostalgia for fans. How you can incorporate old radio clips into your content? Whether it’s the sound byte all by itself or mixed with photos, videos, etc., incorporating radio clips into your content strategy could be a powerful play.

Podcast Interviews
Celebrating the anniversary of title win or big milestone? Produce one or two podcasts featuring key team members from that team to recount the memories. Think about it as a fireside chat. Podcasts are all the rage right now, so I’m sure you’ll earn some extra points.

Quizzes/Trivia
Want to make the content a little more engaging? Take your facts and turn them into a quiz or trivia piece for fans to learn more. Below is a good example from the @NCAA.

 

 

Hosts a Contest
Take the engagement level up a notch and host a contest where fans can vote for their favorite all-time game, play, etc. This type of initiative would need a large digital presence where fans could replay video and read about the history, but the voting mechanism can be social. Just make sure you give fans a reason to engage!

Recreate the Moment
Photo recreations from 20+ years ago are so much fun. If you ever have a notable team together for a reunion, find a way to recreate an iconic team photo. Yes, something like this:

 

I hope these examples give you a few ideas on how to unlock history. As we saw with @USOlympic and @MarchMadness, it can be a powerful piece of your content strategy when done right. Take the time to figure out how you can leverage it creatively and strategically.

 

 

 

Have you seen any creative ways that teams/leagues have taken fans down memory lane? Share any examples you have below! 

Thanks for reading! 

The Value in Curating Tweets to Tell a Story

By Guest On December 11, 2014 In Best Practices, Twitter

There are certain times with other voices can help tell a story better than your voice alone. Think about moments for your team where the pulse of the community was buzzing. Yes, if you’re Tweetdeck is moving a million miles a minute, then you might have a story that could benefit from the perspective curated tweets can provide. Leverage them.

What does this look like? Well, this week Cam Newtown was in a bad two-car wreck in Charlotte. As the news unfolded on Twitter, many teammates and NFL players took to the platform to offer their support. Both the NFL and Panthers saw the tweets as an opportunity to paint a broader picture, so they curated them from players around the league who offered support to Cam. Here’s a look at the results:

Panthers

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User-Generated Content Has Its Place in Sports

By Guest On February 19, 2015 In Best Practices with 4 Comments

I recently wrote an article about how social media managers don’t have to take the content journey alone. For many who work in social media, one of the hardest tasks is creating content that adds value 365 days a year. If you work in sports though, thankfully, that is normally NOT the problem: The problem is having too much content.

While I was writing the article though, I naturally kept coming back to how user-generated content could be leveraged in the sports industry. Just like a lot of brands outside of sports, I normally see it used for contests. Quite simply, it’s vastly underutilized.

I think it’s time for teams and leagues to start thinking about how they can integrate consumer-generated content into their regular routine. Let’s start leveraging the power of fans on a regular basis. Here’s why I think it’s important in the sports industry:

  • It gives you more content, while being cost effective.
    It would be great to have an extra hand or two to help us capture content during games and events, but budgets don’t always allow for that. Leveraging user-generated content is a great way to get more content while not dipping into your budget.
  • It shows a different perspective.
    UGC could have a lot of leverage for teams and leagues on game days, providing unique perspective only fans can provide. Your social media team might not have the time to run around from tailgate to tailgate to capture content, but here’s the good news: They don’t have to.
  • It connects fans even more to the community.
    There are a lot of stats out there that demonstrate how consumers trust CGC, and while I don’t think trust is normally an issue in the sports industry, it does help your fans feel more connected to the online community. Additionally, people are more likely to share content they are a part of. Quite simply, it makes your community stronger and is an easy way to thank your fans.

Getting the content.

So are you convinced that user-generated content has value, but not sure exactly what that looks like? Let’s take the first step: How do you source user-generated content beyond contests? There are two key ways to gather user-generated content:

  • Leverage owned channels.
    Soliciting user-generated content on owned channels is common practice in the fashion industry. Many of my favorite brands allow consumers to upload photos of them in the item and leave a review on the product. Free People is a great example of it here.Teams and leagues can replicate this model from the fashion world and solicit user-generated photos on their owned channels year-round. It’s a great way to build a community on owned platforms, while also generating ways to create new content for social media. A win-win!If you want to solicit user-generated content on owned channels year-round, but are afraid it might get stale, think about setting themes of what you are looking for around seasons, sports, themes, etc. Don’t forget to thank your fans and surprise / delight them when they upload content.
  • Promote what you’re looking for.
    You don’t have to run contests just to ask for UGC. Let fans know what type of content you are looking for, give them hashtags to rally around, ask them to leave photos in the comments section of Facebook, etc. If you don’t ask, you won’t receive.
  • Actively seek it out.
    One of the many benefits of social media is the ability to listen, see and engage with your consumers in real-time. Take advantage of this opportunity and set up searches (any and every keyword / hashtag relevant to your team or league) to watch for good user-generated content. When you see something that strikes your fancy, just ask if you can use it.  Fans normally say “yes”, and in fact, are honored.

Have the content? Now make it your own.

One of the biggest mistakes made with user-generated content is simply retweeting, regramming, etc. or just uploading ALL the photos to Facebook albums by the masses. If you have permission to the use the content, then make it your own instead.

Take the time to repurpose the photos / videos with your team’s look and feel and craft copy that will appeal to your ENTIRE audience. This is the key to using UGC on a more regular basis and making sure it resonates with your community. Just be sure you always thank and call out the fans that helped to make the post come to life.

But, what does this look like?

Sometimes it helps to have examples to see the possibilities. So, let’s pretend I run social media for the Southeastern Conference. Being a one-person social media team, there is no way that I can be everywhere at once to cover all the schools. This is where user-generated content comes in to help!

In order to leverage it, I would first pick the type of content I’m looking for. How can UGC fit into the story we are trying to tell? While I don’t know the SEC’s objectives and goals across social, one story I believe the conference could tell is tradition.

Since it’s football season, I did a simple search of school’s hashtags or keywords and came across four photos (yes, only four for time’s sake) that highlight traditions in the SEC and created the image below. Obviously more work would need to be done to create the look / feel and thank the fans, but you get the idea (PLEASE NOTE: The graphics below are not from the SEC. I created them for demonstration purposes):

sectradition

Or, let’s pretend the SEC wants to feature some stadium sunsets:

sunset

What if the SEC wants to promote selfies (yeah, sorry):

selfie

If you want to think really big, you can use fan-generated video to create a compelling compilation like Baylor Athletics did (thanks for the find, Katie Cavendar) or UCF (the videos from Instagram were saved from InstaSave):

As you can see, the options are endless. Both teams and leagues can leverage user-generated content to tell the story of traditions, fan perspectives, in-stadium experience, view from the student section, spots around campus, selfies with mascots and so much more. Fans are already out there creating great content for teams and leagues: Now it’s up to you to empower them, find it, ask for it and leverage it.

Do you have any great examples of teams and leagues leveraging user-generated content? If so, share them below! 

Do Social Media Hubs Add Value?

By Guest On May 7, 2014 In Social Media with 6 Comments

I’ve never been one to embrace social hubs with open arms (and by hubs I don’t mean a social media directory, but a place on your site where you expect people to interact and consume content).  When you work so hard to build a community online, I’ve never really understood why you would want to pull people away from it. To me, hubs have always seemed to negate what our industry is really about… being social.

Every time I see someone tweet that a new hub is off and running, I ask the same questions over and over again- do they add value, what’s the goal, what makes the hub so special? Too often in social media we equate launching something as a success. We celebrate a team when they get on a new platform or we celebrate a brand that launches a social hub without really digging much deeper into the why.

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