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There was a lot happening this week in the sports world, including drama over the Michael Phelps bong photo, discussions about which Super Bowl ads worked and which ones didn’t, National Signing Day and a potential Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger. Here are some interesting stories about these topics, in case you missed them earlier this week: (more…)

I was recently inspired by John Jantsch and Chris Brogan when they shared their individual systems for managing their social media activity. I thought this was a very good exercise to 1) evaluate where/how I’m spending most of my time these days and  2) force myself to see if I can become more efficient by sticking to an overall plan and improving time-management where possible. I, like John, had never really considered the full-scope of my social media “routine.” I’ve had a plan for awhile now for promoting certain articles I write, and I’ve thought about ways to become more efficient in individual areas, but I had never actually written EVERYTHING I do down. Well, here it goes. (thumbnail image from 5ones.com)

Main Tools

• Firefox – still the best browser around (even if it crashes sometimes), though I have used Flock some and am starting to like it
• Google tools – mainly Gmail, Reader, Calendar
• Delicious for bookmarking interesting content (though I use evernote occasionally for online receipts). Its integration with Firefox is great
• Twitter tools
  • Easy Tweets – enables me to efficiently manage multiple accounts
  • TweetGrid – Twitter search dashboard that updates in real-time

Workflow

Constant/Every Hour

• Monitor my Twitter accounts – Join interesting conversations, respond to comments, talk about my love for UNC Basketball, etc
• Check email on 3 accounts – yeah, I know, I need to cut back

Daily

• Check Facebook accounts and wish friends happy birthday. Unlike some other people, I keep my personal Facebook account for real-life friends only, and use a company account to network with people and find potential partners/customers. I’m not saying this is the right/only way to do it, but it works for me.
• Monitor important keywords on Twitter and seek out new followers
• Write blog posts and post to Twitter, Facebook and occasionally other news aggregation sites and communities.
  • Send notes to friends/bloggers if it makes sense
• Bookmark articles I like (or ones I want to read later) using Delicious
• Read articles and leave comments on sports news aggregation sites such as Ballhype and Yardbarker
• Leave comments on interesting blogs
• Check Google analytics to see what is going on with traffic (new visitors coming in from new keywords and links, unusually high or low traffic, etc.) and investigate if necessary

Twice Weekly/Almost Daily

• Participate in and read articles from other communities such as BallisLife, Sports Marketing 2.0 and Digg
• Scan/read articles in Google reader from a variety of blogs and topics, including feeds for mentions of my name, company names and competitor names
• Check Sports Biz Feed (disclosure: I created this site) for recent sports marketing/business headlines
• Check out Friendfeed and see what’s going on there
• Watch new videos from friends and subscriptions on YouTube and leave comments
• Sign into LinkedIn and scan updates (groups and friends). Lately, I’ve been trying to answer and ask more questions to get more value out of this site.
• Check out Facebook groups to see if there are any conversations worth participating in
• Update my status on my Facebook account

Needs Improvement

I’d like to work on building closer connections with my existing contacts. I DEFINITELY need to check email less, while I’d like to check Friendfeed more. I’d also like to spend more time on Flickr and upload/tag more pictures.

I may have left some things out here, but I think this covers most of it. What do you think about this system, if the goal is to build/monitor/make connections for my personal and company brands (while having a little fun and learning new things)?

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?

According to Mashable, Yahoo is testing a lifecasting service called Yahoo Live with its employees. According to Wikipedia, lifecasting is “is a continual broadcast of events in a person’s life through digital media.” As we’ve seen with blogs, social networking and YouTube, people love sharing their lives. Whether it’s for fame, fortune or just to be noticed, people are more and more willing to let others into their lives. With the rise of online video (and the number of laptops that are shipping with webcams), lifecasting should continue to become more popular with the younger crowd.

Lifecasting seems to have a few potential applications in the sports world. It’s really just an unfiltered blog (with video). What if teams provided an outlet for passionate fans to post videos of how dedicated they are. Offer an inside look at the life of a superfan, from what they do each day to keep up with their team, to how crazy they are on game days. This could be turned into a video series or show and teams could tie-in sponsors to generate more revenue.

A brand could sponsor a season-long lifecasting contest to identify the best superfan.

Teams could get players involved in lifecasting to offer an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like to be a professional athlete. This could be tested around a player’s All-Star game appearance and could be continued depending on the interest it generates.

These are just a few ideas. What do you think about lifecasting opportunities in sports?

Brian Clark over at Copyblogger recently wrote a post titled, “What’s a blog?” He says there are many “experts” who have blogging rules such as “blog posts should never be over 350 words,” and other rules that really don’t make any sense. His take on post length is that it depends– it depends on who the audience is, why you’re writing, what you want to accomplish, etc. He sums it up by saying, “You’re either writing something compelling that resonates with readers, or you’re not.”

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?

Many leagues and teams are probably wondering what all this social networking stuff means (or if they aren’t they should be). Where should we try to establish presence? What site/s should we place content on? Where can we best reach our fans? Of course, there’s Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Plaxo, YouTube, in addition to other niche social networking sites. But the issue of who owns the data on each of these networks, and whether companies must create something new for each one has long been a problem. How does a brand/team/league choose which site to utilize?

Well, with the recent announcement from the Data Portability Workgroup, the answers to these questions may get a lot more simple. Check out wikipedia for more on data portability. Google, Facebook and Plaxo are all on board with the initiative. A recent announcement from the group said:

“… Users will be able to access their friends and media across all the applications, social networking sites and widgets that implement the design into their systems …” (thanks for the quote, Mashable)

Essentially this makes it much easier for brands to port their applications/widgets/data from one network to another. Instead of developing a separate app for presence on each of these sites, only one app will likely be needed to accomplish the same thing on many platforms.

Similarly, fans will be able to take data from their favorite sports apps/widgets with them when they go from one network to the next. They’ll be able to share the same data with friends from different social networking sites. This is great for brands/leagues/teams as it enables fans to spread their content much more easily, and this enables fans and individuals to engage with content on their own terms.

Today’s fans already have more control than ever before—they can watch what they want, when they want, how they want. The Data Portability movement will give both brands and people more control over content online; and should reduce the cost of entry for brands to develop apps/widgets, since they won’t have to develop independent apps/widgets for each platform.

Would love to hear your thoughts on Data Portability and how it relates to sports, marketing, and/or advertising.