Takeaways from the 2014 Digital Sports Fan Engagement Conference

This is a guest post from Russell Houghtaling, the Director of Digital Media at Oklahoma. 

I spent the early part of last week at the 2014 Digital Sports Fan Engagement Conference in Dallas, hosted by Q1 Productions. Some heavy-hitters in the world were at the plate, including folks from the NFL, NASCAR, NBA, MLB, WWE and lots more. Here are three of my key takeaways from the event.

Facts Are Just Kick-Off

A digital conversation popped up early in the conference about whether the person who first reports a fact “owns it.” Practically, it was a question about sourcing.

Greg Cosell, senior producer for NFL Films, made that question moot. He says we need to “go beyond what people can instantaneously pull up” on their devices to create gripping content.

The implication behind Cosell’s statement is this: the fundamental facts of a story are now instantly ubiquitous. Thirty seconds after someone breaks a story, the “what” of that story is everywhere (so is the who and where).

So what value can you add to the conversation, if the primary facts are taken? Cosell says to “go beyond” simple facts.

The questions that lie behind who, what and where are these: how? why? what does it mean? If you can effectively answer even one of those questions, you are in the red zone and ready to score great content.

Hidden ROI

Rob Bernstein, WWE’s VP and Editorial Director of Digital and Print, says WWE doesn’t block its content posted by fans on YouTube. This is despite the fact that WWE could get much higher CPM on its owned platform.

At first glance, this seems counterintuitive. Return on investment is ‘King of the Ring,’ right? And, video is WWE’s most valuable content. When I asked for his reasoning, Rob counter punched with this:

“We want fans to get hooked on our product.”

Boom. Bernstein is seeking long-term ROI, the stuff you really find out about months or years down the road and often can’t trace back to any single moment or campaign.

Tangible return on investment is needed in digital. But when done correctly, digital is more about storytelling and building affinity than it is about a hard sell. Fans that love your organization will buy its products, whether you advertise to them or not. Fans that are apathetic won’t, no matter how hard you push it at them.

Get your fans “hooked” on your product, and it will sell itself.

Analytics Is a Long-Term Investment

The world of digital happens fast. I want answers to how my team’s content is performing right now. So I turn to immediate measurements – click-thru rates, impressions, time on site, likes, retweets, favorites, replies, comments and so on until I find one I like. Then I pat myself on the back, tell my team “good job” and move on.

But without context, these measurements mean nothing. Who is to say 100 retweets is a success, or 1,000? To measure effectively, we must measure against ourselves. We do this by establishing baselines for content.

Kenton Olson of the Seattle Seahawks is addressing this with his team’s social content with simple algorithms created in-house (for Twitter, his is simply retweets + favorites +replies). We have started doing something similar for written pieces on SoonerSports.com, combining unique visitors with time spent on page.

Over time, these formulas will help us find your “normals”.  In sports, it may take a year or more because of the inherent seasonality. But, once we know our own channels’ average performance we will know when we are over- and under- performing.

So for me, now it’s time to hurry-up and wait.

I want to give a big thanks to Russell for the valuable insight. This guy is sharp, so be sure to give him a follow on Twitter (@digital_russ) and check out out his work here.

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