Comments on: What If Teams Were Using Social Media The Right Way?

By: Ankit Chhabra

Ankit Chhabra — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 17:03:02 +0000

Heyy Jason

I am damn interested in Social Media Marketing and love the way it is done, and your blog gives a great insight.
What I feel incase of sports marketing through social media is :
The objective is to engage your die hard fans even in the off-season. This engagement keeps their interests high and helps marketers to grab the attention of the prospects towards their other top of the line media campaigns.So, marketers get the perfect ROI for their yearly contracts !!

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:36:10 +0000

David – I think hiring a lot of people/or giving them benefits in exchange for their help building ticket sales is a great idea. Thanks for your comment!

Mariana – Thanks for your comment. I haven’t done much thinking about social media in the high school sports setting, except from a video perspective–certain highlight videos get shared rapidly, and this can definitely help players get additional exposure. I do think that high school athletes (actually all athletes in general) need to be better educated about the impact of social media and better equipped to take advantage of it so it helps, and not hurts, them.

By: Mariana

Mariana — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 04:16:38 +0000

Great insights! I’m constantly debating this issue in my classes, MS sports business management, and we can never find a solution for teams to monetize on social media. We mostly talk about how athletes can ruin their careers! I think one issue that prevents teams/organizations from taking advantage of social media and using it as a profit generator, is lack of qualified staff that understands and knows how to use all the tools available through social media. Things change so fast in today’s day and age and I’m sure we’ll see more social media managers positions being offered within sports organizations.
Have you thought about social media done right in high school or college athletics? There was an incident recently involving college football players that got suspended for twitting their opinion about the their coach. Do you think that schools/colleges should educate student-athletes about the benefits of using social media?

By: David

David — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:10:16 +0000

I thought your ideas of using social media as a research tool or a “fan-based focus group” are pretty good. Teams and organizations could most definitely use these “free” social networking avenues to help them improve the overall experience for fans, no doubt. And, your ideas on organizations hiring a social media marketing manager also has merit.

Generating revenue from social media will be the challenge however, as evident from the comment made by hoopstar. There’s of course, the viral aspects of social networking? Taking your idea of hiring loyal fans as community managers, why not hire the lot of them (maybe on a seasonal basis?) to help build ticket sales thru the networks? Or something to that effect. These folks can be paid, given items, whatever. Something along those lines, but I’m with you, teams/organizations need to find a way to capitalize from social media. I also think the Phoenix Suns will really be the pioneering force and role model for anything social media…

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:57:49 +0000

You’re absolutely correct–that anything people pay for should have value. Maybe my examples weren’t great but I think there are ways teams can utilize social concepts/platforms to provide value that is worth money. And not necessarily just in the form of a subscription fee, but can be monetized via advertising or sponsorship. Or by data mining to find out what fans really want/what content is really popular and interesting. The behavior and sales metrics available on popular social networks are lacking, compared to what teams could learn if they did some more things on their own sites, I think.

By: hoopstar

hoopstar — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:53:41 +0000

I’m a huge fan of several teams, but I’m not going to pay for that kind of content. In order to pay for something it has to provide value. Secondly, I don’t know many people that are going to pay for content via social networking. Wish we didn’t have so many people in marketing trying to use social networking for sales.