I don’t often write about social media software and companies. This is mainly because there are so many of them out there that do one or two things well, but nothing really extraordinary. But when Neil Crist, CEO of Valuevine, reached out to me recently to chat about their new location-based analytics platform, Valuevine Connect, I was intrigued. After Neil walked me through their approach and dashboard, I had to write about it.

Valuevine provides social media marketing software for multi-location franchises and retailers. Since launching in 2009, they have focused on helping multi-location companies publish and manage social media content from a single dashboard. For example, if you oversee marketing for a chain of hardware stores across 10 states, Valuevine’s platform would make it easier for you to work with local store owners to ensure that the overall brand message is consistent and to execute social media promotions at the local level.

From talking to clients, Valuevine realized that these businesses wanted a little more. They wanted more information the level of activity and reviews around each store on third-party local review sites, such as Yelp, MerchantCircle and Foursquare. Many people use reviews in the decision-making process for where to go/shop/eat. Business owners also may want to look at how marketing campaigns and social media efforts affect these reviews. For example, maybe you’re doing a promotion across 40 stores and want to see how this has affected the number of reviews people are leaving on these sites and the sentiment of these reviews. It can be difficult to monitor all these sites, and many social media analytics platforms overlook them.

If you’re interested in this kind of information, keeping track of everything is about to get a lot easier. Valuevine Connect (launching today) helps multi-location companies drill down into location-based analytics and keep up with the social footprint of each store across multiple sites. The platform lets companies add their store locations and see activity as a whole and for each location.  Click on the thumbnail below to see the screenshot of the main Valuevine Connect dashboard and continue reading to see some of the features I found interesting.

The Valuevine Connect Dashboard

I really like the look/feel of the overall dashboard. A drop down menu at the top lets you see location-based activity by location, ownership or region. The dashboard includes charts for most active channels, overall positive and negative sentiment trends, location-based trend charts, and information on fans, critics and most vocal people.

Sentiment Trending

The dashboard has charts to show overall sentiment trends, as well as sentiment by individual location. You can also see the locations with the highest and lowest sentiment and the locations with the largest recent sentiment change. While no sentiment-tracking system is perfect, this is still valuable information.

Actionable Data

The thing I like most about Valuevine Connect is that it gives businesses access to actionable data. This data can be used to proactively identify staffing and/or operational issues, and maybe help understand why a certain store is performing better or worse than others. Is one store location suddenly receiving a lot more negative complaints than usual? You can easily drill down to see what’s going on. Maybe it’s because the fries are always cold. Or maybe it’s because one waitress is very unfriendly. Instead of only looking at sales as an indicator of local success, you can use this activity-based data to quickly identify problems and successes.

The other actionable data businesses have access to is the ability to easily identify their biggest fans, critics and most vocal reviewers. You may want to reach out and thank or reward people who are your biggest advocates. Or you may want to reach out to your critics to let them know that you’re listening and will do your best to give them a better experience next time. Or you may even find information that shows you probably shouldn’t reach out to someone (for example, if he/she is a troll and giving everyone terrible reviews).

Pricing

Pricing for Valuevine Connect starts at $299 per month for unlimited users and locations. Very reasonable, if you ask me. If you’re interested in this stuff, you can get a free location-based social footprint report at socialfootprintreport.com

The Bottom Line

As you can probably tell, I’m pretty psyched about this platform and looking forward to seeing what businesses do with this kind of data. It’s going to be interesting to have a better understanding of this stuff in evaluating the success/failures of specific locations and crafting local programs that can be tailored to each location. For example, if sentiment is low around one location, you may want to run a different promotion/campaign than if you were just trying to raise awareness about that location.

Also, I’m hoping to do some digging to look at location-based activity and sentiment around some pro sports arenas and venues. It would be interesting to compare the data to things like win-loss records and fan attendance.

What do you think about location-based analytics and its future in business?

But how do you actually know if your social engagement efforts are successful?

Some have argued that it’s silly to ask for ROI or to measure things; after all you wouldn’t ask what the ROI of answering the phone is, would you? Or maybe you would.

My philosophy is that you have to be where your fans and enthusiasts are (if it fits with your goals and objectives). If people are talking about you and you’re not listening, responding and engaging with them, that’s bad business. But if you’re running specific programs, promotions and initiatives that require time, money and resources, you need to be measuring what’s working and what’s not working. Before you do that you need to set goals and look at how social media can support them by mapping metrics to these goals.

Ultimately, I believe in looking at a bigger picture (social, search and email factors and trends) to understand your online recognition and reputation and their impact on your business. It is kind of silly to look at things in silos, as social, search and email all are connected and can affect each other. But this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also look at what your specific social media initiatives are doing for you. While your company should create a customized measurement program that is based on real goals, here are six overall buckets to examine.

Business Metrics

There are tools out there that can help you link specific social media efforts to business outcomes. These are things such as leads, new email subscribers, sales and donations. I use a tool called Argyle Social for this. You can create campaigns and see which links/posts to social sites are driving the most conversions.

Depending on your goals, you may also want to be tracking other things (assign a value to them first), such as number of calls to customer service over time, number of new ideas submitted or the number of times people have given feedback on your products or services. Keep track of these things and look at how your social engagement has affected them.

Share of Voice and Sentiment

In social media, share of voice refers to the number of conversations about your brand vs. your competitors/market. To do this, you’ll want to use a monitoring program that can help you keep track of all conversations about your brand and your competitors over a given time period. When looking at all these mentions you’ll want to make sure to track which ones are positive, negative and neutral, so you can assign a weight to each of these categories and calculate your average sentiment. To get share of voice, you divide the number of conversations about your brand by the total number of conversations about brands in your market. Jay Baer has a great beginner’s guide to share of voice on his blog, and some useful spreadsheets to help you get started.

It’s good to keep track of share of voice and sentiment over time, so you can see how your social engagement and promotions are affecting your overall trends and use this information to make smarter marketing decisions. Also, if your sentiment/share of voice jumps or drops suddenly, then you’ll want to dig deeper to understand why.

Awareness

Building awareness may be one of your goals or jobs as a marketer. A few things that may help signal online awareness include:

• Amount of website traffic/site visits/page views
• Number of searches for brand terms
• Video and content views

Engagement

Engagement is the extent to which people interact with you and your content. Some signs of engagement include:

• Likes (of a Facebook page and of your content)
• Shares
• Mentions (positive, negative, neutral)
• Blog comments
• Ratings
• Retweets
• Email opens and clicks, complaints, etc. Don’t forget about email, as your participation on social sites can have a positive (or negative, if you’re doing it wrong) impact on your numbers here.

Influence

Influence is the likelihood that what you’re doing inspires action. Some signals of influence may include:

• Number of (and quality of) inbound links to your content
• Likelihood that emails drive actions
• Likelihood that Twitter links are retweeted or commented on
• Likelihood that Facebook posts will be commented on and liked
• Likelihood that content will be shared/liked (and to what extent)

Popularity

Online popularity is essentially just the number of people subscribed to your content. Some people always say it’s all about the quality of your following, not the quantity. That’s true to some extent; however if you’re looking for advertisers or sponsors to partner with on social programs, having 10,000 followers on Twitter looks a lot better than having 500. Some examples of  online popularity signals include:

• Number of email subscribers
• Number of followers on Twitter
• Number of members of a LinkedIn group
• Number of people who like your Facebook page

I hope these buckets serve as helpful starting points for you. Before starting a new program, make sure you understand your current numbers for this so you can see how things change over time.

What do YOU think about these buckets as starting points for social media measurement?

If you’d ever like help measuring your social engagement efforts, please feel free to email me (jason at ewaydirect dot com) or drop me a line on Twitter. At eWayDirect (where I work), we’ve developed something we call eMindshare, which helps you benchmark your online awareness and sentiment vs. your competitors and keep track of how you’re doing. If you’d like to know more, let me know.

Social Media is not magic.

You can’t assume it will work wonders for you. Being on Twitter will not automatically increase your sales. Starting a Facebook page is not a strategy. Just being involved is not enough; it’s about what you do with it and why you’re doing it.

It takes commitment, creativity,  and strategery. And, as Cody Swann pointed out, it takes patience.

But some brands and people will still get it wrong. Avoid the tactics below or else you’ll also see how it feels to strike out with social media.

Not setting goals – Brands and people need to figure out what they’re trying to achieve by being involved with social media. Not setting or having goals is a sure fire way to strike out.

Not listening – Not listening to what people are saying about you before/during participating in conversations and creating new programs will land you a seat at the end of the bench. Not reading/listening to bloggers before pitching them stories is another great way to fail. Please remember that different communities and websites each have their own culture and jargon. Pay attention to details.

Trying to exert too much control – People will think/say/blog/tweet what they want. Brands can influence the conversation and direct it, but trying to exert too much control will earn you a one-way ticket to the minor leagues. Nestle, unfortunately, gives us a good example of what not to do (trying to cover-up/delete negative comments).

Being Fake – Authenticity is a key fundamental of social media. Pretending to be someone you’re not or hiring someone to act as you is a great way to fail. Dishonesty=disaster. Remember the Walmart FAIL from 2006?

Not balancing participation and promotion – When you’re engaging people, you need to focus on being helpful and participating the right way more than promoting your own products and services. If you’re only there to promote yourself, people will notice right away and you’ll be destined to strikeout in social media until you change your ways.

Not committing adequate resources - Depending on your goals, you’ll need to invest time, employees, education and money into being successful. Not dedicating proper resources will hurt any chance you may have at success.

What other tactics for social media strikeouts would you add to this list?

Next time, I’ll share some tactics for social media home runs. If you want to share a few sentences/tips for this next post, send me an email (jpeck at hwy24 dot com) and I’ll make sure to include your ideas. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

*image credit – artolog on Flickr

If you’d like to see my notes from each panel, you can see them here. While the event and speakers focused on more than just sports, I did get some interesting sports insights. For example, I learned that MLB teams don’t have full control over their Facebook pages. The league can post things they want, which may or may not fit with what the team has in mind for its fans on Facebook. This isn’t good…teams need to have full control over their social media strategy and outreach. There has to be a balance between engagement and promotion. Teams know their fans best, so they should control this.

Enough about that. I want to share a few video interviews that I did at Social Fresh. I asked 4 guys – Marc Meyer (Director of Search and Social at Digital Response Marketing Group), Chris Barger (Director of Social Media at GM), Jeremy Hilton (VP  of Media and Technology at Mindcomet) and Chris Moody (Social Media Marketing Manager at Bandwidth) – to share their thoughts about the future of online metrics and measurement.

Check out the videos below to see what they think:

Do you think the term “sponsorships” is outdated and everything should be called partnerships? just an idea I’ve been thinking about…

It was really just an idea I’ve briefly thought about on occasion. A lot of times the terms “sponsorships” and “partnerships” are thrown around and used interchangeably to describe deals between entertainment and sports properties and brands. But does the wording that properties/brands use reflect how they actually see their relationships? Should we be moving towards the use of partnerships (which imply that both sides benefit) and away from sponsorships (which unfortunately has not been very well explained to the general public)?

Your Responses

After I posted that message on Twitter, I got some great responses. Thanks to all who contributed the thoughts below (earliest responses posted first):

rscibetti@JasonPeck I definitely see a mix of both terms. Definitely tells you something about how the entity views the relationships

MJMunson@JasonPeck No, people just need to know what it means. Look up the latin roots for sponsor and you’ll see it is a perfect word for its use.

BizballMaury@JasonPeck It’s moving more & more toward partnerships as deals are multi-pronged. See my NY Post article on Yankees/Audi http://ow.ly/hoef

jpbrunelle@JasonPeck I think it depends on the context, but ‘sponsorships’ will remain in play for the foreseeable future. Bigwigs want to sponsor.

MJPatzwaldt@jasonpeck i still think there’s a difference between sponsorships and partnerships…those sponsored tend to have longer term benefits

jeffmard@JasonPeck partnership implys 2-way street, sponsorship implys other “partners” exist. Which is more true? then u have advertiser…

Play3r_VP@JasonPeck sponsorships is out. partnerships are in. it’s about relationships + alliances… NOT about hand outs.

mmahoney13@JasonPeck I think the Sponsor should be emphasized more in many cases, esp PGA Tournaments and even teams. they enable us to do more

sponsorpitch@JasonPeck IMO, not outdated & no need to hide from the term + lots of different types of biz ‘partnerships’.. something more narrow needed

EmilyRCampbell1@JasonPeck There r still true mktg sponsorships out there even tho’ some local partnerships may lean more toward philanthropy.

briangainorRT @JasonPeck poses a great question – thoughts on “partnerships” vs. “sponsorships”? How do you see your relationship with partners?

Darren_Heitner@JasonPeck I love the idea of banning the word “sponsorship”, all successful “sponsorships” are partnerships. Both sides should win.

Sponsorships vs. Partnerships – My Thoughts

Let’s see how Wikipedia defines the terms.

“A partnership is a type of business entity in which partners (owners) share with each other the profits or losses of the business.”

“To sponsor something is to support an event, activity, person, or organization financially or through the provision of products or services.”

The partnership definition that Wikipedia gives isn’t completely relevant to this conversation–which is about using the term sponsorship vs. partnership when describing deals between sports/entertainment properties and brands. In most cases, no brand is going to be willing to equally share in the losses of the property’s business–unless it’s a special deal where the brand is actually able to share in the profits, too. I’m not aware of this happening very often.

The sponsor definition is interesting as it emphasizes giving support. In my opinion, this “giving support” aspect has not been emphasized nearly enough in discussions and articles about sponsorship. For example, all we heard about for awhile was that since Wachovia wasn’t doing well, they shouldn’t be wasting money on sponsoring their golf tournament (and they actually removed their name from it, even though it was paid for). Or that Northern Trust shouldn’t have had a party for their best executives at their tournament. People hear that, instead of hearing about how much money from each PGA TOUR event goes to charity or that the money spent on parties/events provides jobs for cooks, caterers and others. But I’m getting off subject here.

My thinking about this sponsorships vs. partnerships issue is that it’s more of a reflection on how each side sees the other and how they approach relationships. My feeling is that it starts with properties. Do you want a sponsor (someone who supports you via money or services) or do you want (can you get?) a partner (someone who has a greater stake in your success)? While some smaller properties may be happy just finding sponsors, some of the most prestigious properties can be more selective and seek partners who have very strong brands and who must commit more than just money to the relationship.

What do the big leagues/events call these relationships?

Let’s check out some websites to see what wording some of the major pro leagues and premier sports events use when publicly describing their relationships with brands.

• AVP – sponsors (listed on bottom of home page)
• MLB – sponsors (here’s the link)
• NBA – not clear from their website
• NFL – not clear from their website
• PGA TOUR – title sponsors for tournaments and huge list of marketing partners
• USGA – partners (logos listed on bottom right of their home page and here)
• The Masters – no official wording but relationships with IBM, AT&T and Exxon Mobile
• US Open (Tennis) – sponsors (list is here)
• Breeders’ Cup – partners (list is here)

The funny thing is, for some of these properties (and many teams as well), it’s hard to even tell who their sponsors are by looking at their websites! Or they hide them and make you really look around. That would not make me happy I was a sponsor/partner-no matter what the relationship is called. It definitely didn’t make me happy when I used to spend a lot of time researching that stuff.

As consumers’ attention becomes even harder to get (because we have more choices now than ever), my feeling is that the term “partnerships” will be used more often. Properties who used to sell out every event and may have been content just getting money are now in the same boat as brands–they need eyeballs and attention, too. Now both sides are asking each other for access to market to their customers, and the best relationships will be those where both sides help each other. Sponsorships certainly aren’t dying–I just think the word “partnerships” may be more beneficial in describing these relationships and ensuring that both sides are getting what they want and working to help each other succeed.

But maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe the words should be used interchangeably and there isn’t really much difference between them. Maybe good sponsors are essentially partners. What do you think?

Thanks to Tim for having me on the call yesterday and thanks to everyone else for taking time out of your day to listen. I hope it was beneficial and please feel free to contact me with any more questions you may have. If you’re from one of the organizations from the call, thanks for checking out my blog. For everyone else. here are some points I shared today about social media marketing and six main principles.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media marketing is a huge buzz word these days, but what does it really mean? I think it really boils down to this (and I’m definitely not the only one who has said this before): Social media marketing is when companies take a human approach to marketing by participating in conversations with their audiences. It’s about engaging audiences in an authentic way to provide helpful information, solve problems and build relationships to achieve business goals and gain a leg up on the competition. In the past this was difficult (and it’s still not easy), but the tools and platforms that are available now have made this a more viable option…and a necessity in many cases, depending on your audience and goals.

6 Principles

Here are 6 principles of social media marketing that I shared with the group. These weren’t meant to be how-tos or steps to take to create a strategy, so measurement and setting goals weren’t included (though I did include those pieces in another part of the presentation). These principles are more about the actions that an organization’s audience will notice and appreciate.

1) Listen

It’s been said before but I will say it again. Research your audience first.  Figure out where they are and what they’re saying about you, your category and your competitors before attempting to insert yourself in conversations online. Spend a month and make notes of the types of conversations about you and what percentage are positive and negative. Listen. Learn the various unspoken rules, guideines and dos and don’ts of the communities you’re thinking about joining. When you do start participating, listen to your audience and figure out what they like. Involve them in idea generation and product creation. Use social media platforms and tools to provide customer service on steroids. It’s about them, not you.

2) Engage

This has a dual-meaning. Part of social media marketing is engaging your audience on their own turf. Your goal may be to get people to come to your website, but what really should matter is engaging people (they way they want to be reached) to build relationships. The other part of this is providing and creating content that is engaging. If it’s not interesting or helpful or entertaining, people aren’t going to care or pay attention to your efforts. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Is whatever content you’re producing something that is interesting and good enough to share? If not, then you should re-evaluate your efforts.

3) Enable

Based on your research and listening, you can probably identify some people who are already talking about your organization. These people are great to involve in your efforts, so you should empower them and give them the tools and content to become an even bigger advocate for you. This also includes enabling people to share your content with their friends on various websites, and maybe letting people take your content and create new content from it in the form of remixes, mashups, and videos. Give people ways to feel ownership of your brand and they’ll get closer to it. Lastly, empower and enable your employees to get involved in your efforts.

4) Share

Share interesting articles, pictures, videos, links about you and your industry. Give to get. Give some more. Give and share your time, attention, expertise, questions and insight with your audience. The more you do this, the more relationships and trust you will build. Your audience will appreciate this, and that’s good for business.

5) Reward

If people are taking the time to interact with you online, why not reward them (and in some cases, you may have to reward them). Reward your loyal and passionate fans and followers with exclusive content, access, discounts and promotions. There’s also an opportunity to involve sponsors in this piece to give your fans something of value.

6) Participate

Participate, don’t promote. If all you do is say, “Look how great I am, look how awesome my product is” people will get tired of it really quickly and stop listening. The whole point of social media marketing is to participate in conversations with your audience, not just talk at them. You don’t have to start with a huge splash; this invites a lot more scrutiny and criticism from people who might not like what you’re doing. If you start slow, there are still a lot of things you can do and learn from. Participation is the key.

Thoughts?

Photo credits:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/niclindh/1389750548/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/wooandy/220929743/

Ideally, teams, athletes and agencies should be taking a serious look at social media and discovering how they can leverage it (internally and/or externally) to achieve their goals, such as building new conversation streams, authority, trust and recognition, extending sponsor and ticket promotions, or simply improving the way they communicate and tell their stories. And that means dedicating some money/time/resources to this, and possibly hiring a community manager, if you’re a team.

But if you can’t afford to spend any money right now, here are some quick tips to engage people through free social media tools. These aren’t full-blown recommendations or necessarily the best ways to go about getting involved in social media, but if you’re looking for FREE you can’t beat this stuff. Remember, PARTICIPATE, don’t just promote.

1) Create online identities and protect your brand

Create identities on websites where your audience is and take control of your online brand. Get on Twitter, create Facebook and LinkedIn pages for your company, and if you’re a team or athlete, get a MySpace page, too. Whether you’re an athlete, team or agency, you need to make sure you have control of your name online so people know they’re getting accurate information from an official source. I’ve heard that the main reason Shaq got on Twitter at first was to take control of his name after he realized that someone was tweeting from a fake Shaq account. These online identities are places for you to tell your story and connect with people who share your interests. Plus, you can reach people through these tools that might not usually visit your website.

2) Start a blog

Doing a blog the best way requires planning and effort. But if we’re talking about free tools to save money then you can still participate. WordPress is my choice of platform, and you can get a hosted blog on WordPress.com or free software so you can host it yourself. Obviously, you need to decide what to share/not share based on your organization’s comfort level, but I bet you can still find something interesting to write about. After all, you’ll do whatever it takes to survive in this economy, right?

3) Reach out to sports bloggers

Do you know how many sports bloggers would kill to receive even more information about their favorite athlete or team? A LOT of them. Let them know you’ve started a blog and tell them you’d appreciate any help they can offer in getting the word out. Better yet, let them use your official blog as an outlet for their opinions and involve them in the content creation process. Save money and time by empowering others and letting them write about you. If you’re an agency, reach out to a university’s sports marketing program and see if anyone wants a blogger internship. I bet they do.

4) Put your videos on YouTube and your pictures on Flickr

I’m sure you have highlight clips, promotional videos and commercials that are just sitting around collecting dust. Put them on YouTube! Put your pictures on Flickr! Every picture, video and other piece of content is an opportunity for your brand to make an impression on someone online.

5) Promote these online identities and link to them

Link to your main website on each of your profiles and link to your profiles somewhere on your website, so people know you’re out there and can find you. Sign up for Friendfeed and pull all your pictures, blog posts, videos into your profile there. You can also get tools that make it easy to update these profiles. Twitterfeed broadcasts your recent blog posts to your audience on Twitter. The Facebook Twitter App pulls your Twitter updates into your status message there for your entire network to see and comment on. This is very powerful stuff.

6) Join groups on Facebook and LinkedIn

Joining groups is a great way to find people who might be interested in your product/service/team/athletes. It’s free, too. Another way to find people to connect with is..

7) Use Twitter search

Do a search for your name and keywords to see what people are saying about you and connect with them! To search for multiple keywords at the same time, use a service like TweetGrid. Last night, I did a search for “Lakers tickets,” and found that someone needs tickets for the game. Wouldn’t that be a great opportunity to delight and surprise someone and turn them into a stronger fan/customer?

Involve your employees

Encourage your employees to create profiles on these sites and use these social media tools. A variety of perspectives can be interesting. Set guidelines for how to use these tools, but be flexible. You don’t want them to have to come to you for approval every time they want to update their Twitter accounts. Just tell them not to be stupid. Remember, your biggest concern (for the purposes of this article) is generating free coverage/influence/relationships.

9) Participate, comment and respond

Spend a few minutes each day interacting with your fans and influencers via these tools and by leaving comments on their blogs. This shows that you care and are serious about building a relationship with them, instead of just out there to promote yourself. If someone writes something about you, thank them for it. Think of social media as customer service on steroids. Extraordinary customer service will bring results. Just look at what Zappos has done.

Like I said earlier, this isn’t meant to be a comprehensive guide or the only or exact things you should be doing. Putting that kind of plan together takes a lot more than a few minutes of writing. But if you’re strapped for cash, these are some things you an pretty easily implement that can have an impact on your business. If you put in the effort/time, this can definitely start bringing in results.

As with anything, you should desire how to measure this, whether that is attention (traffic/page views), authority (technorati rank, trackbacks/links to your content), participation metrics like comments or influence (the number of followers and subscribers you have). *These things come from Peter Kim’s framework for measuring social media.

How have you used free social media tools to connect with your fans and customers?

Check out the video below for some of my thoughts about participation marketing-what it is, why it matters and how teams can utilize social media to follow some of these principles. Some of these ideas are things that a lot pro teams are already doing, though I think there are some ways they can improve things.

Thanks for watching. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are for ways teams can get to know fans better, involve them in creating ticket packages/promotions  and make them feel like they have a stake in their success.

Super Bowl Ads

Russell Scibetti from the Business of Sports shares his picks for Super Bowl Ad winners and losers. Also, here’s an interesting post from a UNC business school senior about what makes a Super Bowl Ad super.

Michael Phelps

Caught by the camera for taking a bong hit, Phelps was suspended by USA Swimming for three months. CNBC’s Darren Rovell says this is a joke. Kellogg’s announced that it won’t renew his deal when it expires (but it might have decided that before this whole thing came out), and Sports Media Watch writes that his day’s as America’s golden boy are fading fast.

The Economy’s Effect on Sports

Dominic Perilli wrote a great article at SportsAgentBlog.com about the effect of the economy on sports. The outcome is that sports aren’t as recession-proof as you might think

NJ Nets Creative Promotions

Brian Gainor at Partnership Activation writes about an interesting promotion the NJ Nets are doing to give local CEOs a chance to win 2-months free sponsorship next season by participating in the Metropolitan Madness Basketball Challenge in March. Nets exec Brett Yormark is also teaming up with his brother Michael and the NHL panthers in a promotion to allow fans of either team to cash in unused season tickets for a seat at the other team’s games.

National Signing Day Thoughts

Marc Isenberg, author of Money Players (the book and the blog), provides some interesting thoughts on National Signing Day and how the process could be improved to better help/protect student-athletes.*Side note* I’m very pleased that the Tar Heels are ranked by Scout and Rivals as having a top 10 recruiting class. Big things are coming for UNC football.

Marriage of Live Nation and Ticketmaster?

The Wall Street Journal announced that Live Nation and Ticketmaster, two of the largest players in the sports and entertainment ticketing industry, are close to a merger. Russell Scibetti provides some thoughts about what this could mean for venues, teams and other ticketing companies.

A very simple solution to implement here is to create a brief screencast/tutorial video to walk people through the process of buying a ticket (or whatever it is that you want them to do).  This video should show people exactly what they’ll see on their computer screen and break down the process into simple steps. You can use free software such as Jing (I use this on my mac), or you can buy something like Camtasia Studio, which has some great additional features, but is only available for Windows at the moment.

These step-by-step tutorial videos can be a great tools in getting people to try something new or encourage them to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise. Maybe that’s buying a ticket online, or maybe it’s uploading a picture to their profile on your website. Sure, a lot of people know how to do these things, but you might as well provide help to people who don’t–there’s still probably more of these people than you think.

Sponsor Pitch, which launched in closed beta in early December, aims to connect sponsors, properties and agencies to improve the sponsorship discovery/pitch process for all parties. I first heard about the company from founder Kris Mathis on Sports Marketing 2.0 about a month ago, so I requested an invite to see what it was all about. According to the Sponsor Pitch blog, they recently had their 1,000th beta user sign up, so I thought this might be a good time to explore the site a little more and try to help them get the word out. I really like that they launched in beta and are soliciting feedback and involving their users in the development process.

First, a little more about Sponsor Pitch. The site lets properties to upload a video and add information to explain their pitch and what they are all about. Sponsors can search through pitches based on a variety of criteria to find something they’re interested in. The search criteria includes:

• Property Genre (arts & culture, sports, charity, etc)
• Location (city, state and/or zip)
• Timing
• Media assets
• Audience demographics (age, gender, HH income)

After I received my invite code, I signed up as a property so I could explore the site. I searched for sports properties and found that there were already 10+ results, such as the AVP Crocs Tour and The CollegeInsider.com Postseason Tournament. Each property has its own page, which includes a logo, description, who to contact, video, existing sponsors, and event location/s. I really liked this layout, which you can see on the AVP Crocs Tour page (and the picture below). Another added benefit here is that people can rate sponsor pitches, and the best ones appear on the “Hot Opps” section of the site. You can also share these pitches on Facebook, LinkedIn, Delicious and some other social sites.

Next, I decided to check out the “My SponsorPitch” section, where properties can enter details about themselves (and I assume sponsors can do the same here). I decided not to do this tonight, but the fields were very easy to navigate and it looked pretty easy to complete.

Other interesting parts of the site include areas for resources, recent news headlines and a place for service providers (agencies, media, etc) to add their own informational pitch.

Overall, I think Sponsor Pitch has a ton of potential and can help save marketers time by allowing them to more easily find and filter sponsorship opportunities according to the criteria that they’re looking for. Did I mention the site is free for both sponsors and properties?

Have you had a chance to look at Sponsor Pitch yet? If so, what are your thoughts?

One main theme of the day was access–giving fans exclusive content and making them feel like they’re getting something unique/special. Some sponsors/teams are already doing a good job of this, but others should think about this more. I took a decent amount of notes so I won’t make you read through all of them. But I do want to share some key points on widgets that I made note of.

Widgets can be a powerful way to reach people and spread content, though I think the majority of people still don’t know what one is, so it’s not easy to create a widget that spreads easily. People are lazy, and as content creators, we should think about ways to go to them, instead of asking them to come to us. The NBA has over 700 widgets (player stats, pictures, videos, etc) and monetizes by selling ads/sponsorship across units. The Washington Wizards Playoff widget was successful in generating ticket revenue last year.

Widget best practices
1) content needs to be exclusive
2) Individuality- let people take what they want and customize it

Thanks to Pat Coyle for organizing this conference. You can see some pictures from the event in the widget below.

Find more photos like this on Sports Marketing 2.0

Bottom line: sports websites will continue to grow and there is an opportunity for teams, leagues, sponsors and brands to take advantage of this and make money. There is an opportunity to connect fans via sites that have social networking features, provided that this is done in the right way. In my opinion this means:

• targeting a specific or niche group of fans (unless you can somehow come up with a great way to attract general fans and make it interesting for them)
• providing something (besides social networking features) that is valuable and will attract fans to the site
  • exclusive content, merchandise, stats, athlete blogs, etc.

Revenue and sponsorship opportunities are definitely there for sports sites and social networks that can build a good audience. Fans love buying team and player merchandise, so that is one way to generate revenue, besides the ad-supported model. Fans are also accustomed to seeing sponsors and brands in sports. Sponsors can even enhance the game experience for fans offline (e.g. Lexus providing free parking and VIP lounges for car owners at certain arena/stadiums) so why can’t they do the same online.

Pat Coyle from the Indianapolis Colts has been talking about the rise of sponsorship online for a while now. Basically it boils down to the fact that while you may be able to reach X people at a stadium, a sponsor can reach 10x or 100x people online.  For more of his thoughts about this topic, I suggest you read his post, “Look beyond the stadium to find MOST fans.”

If you have any questions or would like to discuss any ideas relating to sports and social media feel free to contact me and let me know.

Have a great weekend!

Anyways, what I wanted to talk about today was the Jr. NBA/Jr. WNBA Basketball camp that came to Raleigh’s Athens Drive High School. The camp’s official name is the Pledge to be a S.T.A.R (sportsmanship, teamwork, attitude, respect) Summer Camp. The goal of this event was for the NBA to teach about 250 boys and girls ages 9-13 basketball fundamentals, while emphasizing important values like listening, teamwork, etc.

I went out to the event this morning to check it out and meet up with a friend who works with the NBA in community relations. Olympians Katrina McClain and Teresa Edwards were there helping teach the kids and build enthusiasm, and Charlotte Bobcats player Sean May was scheduled to arrive later. The energy in the gym was great, and the staff had all the kids clapping, smiling and having fun. I tried to put together a quick video to show some of things that were going on (awesome editing skillz, i know). At the end the kids are screaming, “Teach me, coach! I wanna learn!”

The Jr. NBA/Jr. WNBA Basketball Camp is a great example of grassroots marketing and integrating a league sponsorship at a local level. Raleigh is not an NBA market (closest team is 2.5 hours away in Charlotte) so this was a good chance for the league to connect with people who may not be as likely to be fans. The NBA  will conduct 12 of these camps this summer in similar markets, but typically runs more than 100 grassroots events each year.

From a sponsorship standpoint, this was also a unique opportunity to reach an engaged audience. The event was sponsored by Singulair (an asthma medicine), which is made by Merck, an official league partner. Singulair was integrated into the event via banners and a nice brochure, which was created to help parents understand asthma and sports and how asthma controllers like Singulair can help.

Overall I’d say the JR. NBA/Jr. WNBA Basketball Camp and other events like it are great. The league reaches a new audience, sponsors are integrated at a local level, and most importantly, kids have fun and learn about basketball.

Flash forward to today when I was trying to come up with a post because it’s been too long since I last wrote on here. Somehow I thought back to Emotional Branding and started to think about how social networking sites and blogs can use some of these principles to grow their audience and interact with them.

Sports social networks and communities should especially be thinking about emotions. For many sports fans, there are few things that evoke as much emotion and passion than sports–intense feelings for a favorite team or player, or intense hatred for the rival player/team. There are different stages and types of emotion that hardcore sports fans experience. These range from the anticipation/excitement that is felt leading up to a big game, to the joy or sadness felt due to a big win/loss, which often affects people’s moods for days. Of course, there are many, many other emotions but the point is that sports (more than many other interests) is full of passion and emotion.

While it is pretty clear that sports social networks and online sponsorship will play a huge role in the future (see Pat Coyle’s “Think outside the stadium” post), there is no substitute for the game experience. There is nothing like the visual/sensory experience of being in a packed stadium or arena and cheering for your favorite team. While websites may be able to reach more people, one thing that is sometimes missing is the emotional factor.

In order to build community and increase engagement, teams/leagues/brands need to tap into the emotions (especially in sports). Just as food/beverage marketers have gotten us to think “it’s no longer about eating food; it’s about body management, refreshment, winning, etc.” social networks need to move beyond the tired notion of “connecting” and speak to what it really means for people. They should be thinking about taking some of the typical sports emotions and feelings–competitiveness, loyalty, pride, etc—and figuring out how to bring them online.

Some things to think about to get started with this might be:

• If my brand was a person, who would it be, how would he/she act, etc?
• What core emotions and beliefs does my audience have when engaging in the sport/activity/interest that my social network caters to?
• How can we brand our social network/community and integrate contests/promotions/ongoing elements that evoke these emotions?

Would love to know what your thoughts are about this stuff. I’m off to a concert, so I hope everyone has a great weekend.

1) Advertising supported - This is the main way social networks are trying to generate revenue. It’s good for the users as they get free access in exchange for seeing a few ads. This has the potential to be great for advertisers, too, as they can often target users based on various demographic info and interests. But here’s a dirty secret–click-through rates on social networks (especially Facebook) are horrible. Last I saw the CTR was about .04% …. This actually makes sense, because people go on social networks for specific purposes—they want to check out their friends profiles, pictures, videos, etc. Social network users aren’t in a shopping mindset and so aren’t likely to be looking for information about products or services. But, social networking is still a good option for increasing brand awareness as Disney found out with its MySpace page for “Step Up” and “Step Up 2 the Streets.”

It doesn’t look like ad spending on social networks will be decreasing any time soon. eMarketer says that about $2.1 billion will be spent on social networking advertising this year, with the number rising to $4.1 billion in 2011.

2) Subscription Model – This involves charging users a fee to use a site. Dating sites have been very successful with this model, but outside of this space, I’m not sure who’s operating this way. People are so used to getting things for free, that its hard to convince them to pay for social networking. There would seem to be an opportunity to offer free services and upsell people on something that includes exclusive content, access, etc…In a way, some of the college sports recruiting/news websites operate this way–gives some basic content for free and charge for premium content and message board access.

Something to think about is whether there will ever be other niche or local social networks that people will pay to be a part of…sort of like online country clubs, where membership is seen as a privilege and a status symbol. What do you think?

3) Data mining - This model involves collecting data about a group of people and selling it to an advertiser. So say Nike wants to learn more about what kind of music and movies guys 16-19 like, they would be able to purchase data from a social network that tells them what they need to know. I’m not sure if any sites are currently doing this, but it may be something to think about. Do you know any sites doing this?

4) Sponsorship – Instead of just having advertisers, it would seem to make more sense to have sponsors who are invested in helping the site grow and adding value. Sponsorship could be something as simple as giving Brand X complete ownership of a contest or section of the site, or a sponsor could take things further and partner with the site to bring users something unique and valuable.

5) Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is basically selling an outside party’s goods/services and getting a commission or fee for each sale that is made. In my opinion, this is an under-utilized method of monetization. Instead of putting up some Google ads that no one clicks on, why not offer a relevant product or service to your users? While we’ve seen that most people aren’t in a shopping mode when they’re social networking, it never hurts to test offers, especially on niche sites.
It would be pretty easy to add a “store” to the site and feature relevant products. A couple sites are currently utilizing this method:

• Go211- They are using their status as an Amazon Associate to sell products and get a commission off of each product sold in their “store.”
• SkiSpace – It looks like Bode Miller’s site has a partnership with Backcountry.com to sell items in the “gear” section of their website

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this stuff.

Have a great weekend. Hopefully the Heels can pull out the W against Kansas for a shot at the National Championship. Let’s go boys!

I’m going to go ahead and warn you that this post doesn’t really have a theme or singular focus.

Forbes has a great piece on Nike that discusses its evolution from mass marketing and organizing the company by products (shoes, shirts, hats, etc) to micromarketing, focusing on the consumer and organizing the company by sports. The article also talks about how Nike really focuses on testing and getting the details right, in addition to touching on its expansion into China (Nike is outfitting 22 of 28 Chinese Olympic teams for the Beijing Games). Definitely check out the article if you’re interested in sports business and one of the most popular brands in the industry.

Another thing the article briefly mentions is Nike+. From both a technology and community perspective, Nike+ is a great idea. The Nike+ system requires an iPod Nano and shoes with a special chip that allows runners to track their times, distance, and calories burned. Runners can upload their stats to the Nike+ website and compare them with other runners. The website takes advantage of runners’ competitive natures and allows people to join or issue challenges to their friends or other Nike+ runners. It’s also got a link to the Nike Running Blog, which features interviews, reasons to run, and other running content. Best of all, it’s regularly updated (though it’s not exactly a true “blog” because it doesn’t allow people to comment or discuss posts).

It still amazes me how ingrained Nike is in our sports culture–and just about every sport. Just a few years ago they didn’t have any presence in golf. Now they design shoes for Tiger Woods and sell them for $220. Spending $2 billion a year on marketing helps…

It will be interesting to see how Nike handles the Under Armour challenge. It seems they are both competing intensely for high school sports athletes–especially football players. Under Armour has Click-Clack and Nike has its Leave Nothing commercials. See the links below for a comparison.

Nike

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX_5tzwVz3I[/youtube]

vs.

Under Armor

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moPBR6os8Z0[/youtube]

Which commercial do you prefer?

Things should get even more interesting later this year when Under Armour releases its Prototype shoes, which I’m sure will be heavily promoted. Will UA’s new shoes be a hit with athletes? What do you think?

What are my thoughts about “what is a blog?” I consider them testing-grounds for new ideas, so they can be spontaneous and unfinished at times. I think blogs don’t necessarily have to be formal or well-thought out. Mainly I think blogs are thought-outlets which should promote conversation and interest among your readers.

This holds true whether you’re blogging about sports, real estate or money. If your blog isn’t interesting, it’s not going to attract readers, and without readers, there can be no conversation. I’ll be the first to confess that I don’t always have the most thought-provoking posts that promote conversation, but I think that should be the goal.

Ultimately, blogs should be authentic. This means being open and honest and transparent about the purpose of the blog. A company shouldn’t pay someone to pretend to be a brand advocate and blog about it, and try to play it off as an authentic blog. A CEO should not have an intern write a blog for him and pretend that it’s his.

So those are my rambling thoughts right now about “What is a blog?” What do you think?

Barry Bonds Honesty Day - Inspired by Barry’s repeated denials of knowingly using PEDs, fans can talk/write about a time they  got caught for something and kept denying it, even when all evidence pointed the opposite way. The best denial wins free seat upgrades and a lie-detector test in between innings to see if he/she was really telling the truth or not.

Scott Boras Exaggeration Day – The man obviously way over-valued A-Rod and exaggerated his worth. On this special night, select fans give interviews about their wife/husband and the best exaggerator wins…

Rain Dance Night – We had a big drought in the Southeast this summer. While this was a serious issue and water restrictions had to be put in place, why not add a little humor to the situation and stage rain dance contests in between innings. The winner gets a year’s supply of bottled water from whoever the water/beverage sponsor is.

That’s all for now. Trust me when I say the rest of my ideas should never see the light of day. Peanut Butter and Jelly Night anyone??

The NBA’s NJ Nets have rolled out a new marketing campaign themed, “More Than A Game.” The campaign reportedly will play up the fact that being a Nets fan and going to games is not just about basketball–it’s about access and entertainment. According to Brandweek.com, the campaign will debut in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and will replace the three-year old “Bring it” campaign.

The Nets have done a lot recently–announcing the move to Barclays Center in Brooklyn for the 2009-10 season, signing additional corporate partners last year, and now this. Led by Nets President and CEO Brett Yormark, they’ve also implemented new events designed to attract season ticket holders, hosting parties for existing and potential ticket holders at players and coaches’ homes. Other teams, such as the NHL Florida Panthers, have copied this novel approach.

If anyone can get people to see Nets’ games as “More than a game,” it’s these guys. After all, they must be damn good salesman–they sold the rights to present the Nets offseason (Nets Overtime) to Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit in a deal that sources pegged at six figures. Not sure how they pulled this off, but give them props for creating something valuable?? and generating additional revenue from it.