Using Social Media to Connect Current and Former Athletes
I recently read an interesting white paper from IBM called “The Corporate Newsletter Goes Social: IBM and Employee-Centered Media.” It’s a great read about how IBM is utilizing social media to improve connections between employees, increase productivity and leverage knowledge across the organization.
One thing that caught my attention was the company’s effort called “The Greater IBM Connection.” According to the white paper, the goal of this program is to “build a professional network for current and former IBMers to network, collaborate and leverage social computing inside and ouside the corporation.” Greater IBM has established a presence on multiple social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc) so people can choose how they want to stay connected to the organization. Since the days of having a job with one company for 50 years and then retiring are pretty much over, this is a great way for current and past employees to stay connected and share ideas.
I’m not sure if many other companies are doing something like this but I think it’s a great idea. I started thinking about how something like this could work in sports.
If they aren’t doing this already, I think it would make sense for leagues to start something similar (or bring the program online, if it already exists). Once you’re a professional athlete, it becomes part of who you are. This will always be part of your identity, even when you retire. For example, an NBA player should be part of the NBA family for life, and should want to give back to the game and help younger players succeed. Establishing a network like Greater IBM would be very beneficial for a number of reasons:
- Help former players stay in touch with each other so they can:
- share financial advice
- explore business opportunities
- talk about life after being a Pro
- Help connect former players with current players so they can help and give advice
- Help former players stay connected to the league so they can help in community service efforts and give something back to the game that gave them so much
I’d be willing to bet something like this already exists in some form for most leagues. But a program like this could be improved by taking advantage of social media tools to provide even more opportunities for connection.
What do you think?
June 27th, 2008 at 8:47 am
I’m not sure if I’m seeing this exactly as you are, but you could argue something like what you describe exists, For example, league player associations or college alum programs.
I have, however, seen the concept of TEAM “alum programs” brought up in the past, and believe its a great idea.
For corporations it makes sense because talent frequently returns, thus reducing the cost of finding talent.
For teams, it probably makes most sensein soccer or other professional sports that have developmental programs or leagues (perhaps baseball’s minor leagues or NBA’s D-league). It’s hard however for a club (or even a league) to justify initial investment in such an “HR” project, when perhaps the only added benefit would be in the long term: if a star is seeking to end his/her career at a small- or mid-tier team where they began, enter team operations, or give back financially. Even if players did return to work for a club/team/franchise, there would probably be little monetary goodwill by either side at that point. Thus, it would be hard to justify the initial and ongoing ROI past marketing and PR for a club, especially when its likely that players follow coaches more than ownership/managment, and they’ll have likely turned over ago.
June 27th, 2008 at 9:48 am
Peter,
Thanks for your comment. I guess the player associations and alumni associations fit the bill here, but I was thinking more about how to expand this concept online/through social media. Instead of having a group that meets once a year (or however often it really is) and sends out emails occasionally, why not let people be connected 24-7 to get as much out of this as possible…
This is somewhat of an HR project, but couldn’t it also be a way to generate incremental revenue? Leagues could build a site like this and extend sponsorships to it, or even get players to chip in to fund. I would think luxury brands and marketers would pay to have their message in front of wealthy current/former pro athletes. My vision was for something like this to be done at the league level, to involve/connect as many people as possible–instead of having separate efforts for each team.
Thanks for bringing up these interesting points, and thanks for commenting.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Agreed. Creating such a site for former athletes could be extremely valuable, but not necessarily monetarily. But I do like your advertising angle. I feel that in order to make this a worthwhile financial investment, I would suspect a 3rd party would have to create this for several leagues in order to get the reach/size for advertising revenue.
Still, perhaps the big 3 could go at it alone. This reminds me of some Harvard or HBS alums that decided to launch a separate alum magazine funded by luxury ad revenue. I don’t remember the details, but recall that it was quickly successful. Perhaps a league thinks its worthwhile beyond the $ incentives, however knowing how some of the leagues operate, I would also think there have more important HR/IT-related projects on their plates.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
To change the angle of this conversation a bit, I wanted to point out to you a site I have created with my partners called http://www.athlinked.net. While professional athletes are more than welcome to join the site, it is more targeted at alumni collegiate athletes in the business world. While I am sure the major professional sports leagues will continue to work to support their alumni, particularly in light of the recent backlash from the NFL alumni related to medical support, it is the athletes who “go pro in something else” who truly need a networking community. We are trying to connect people back to their programs, programs to their alumni, and sport specific alumni in different cities.