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On Wednesday at APCO Worldwide’s DC office, Social Media Club DC brought together a fantastic group of people who discussed sports and social media for its June event.

The panelists were:

• Sarah Braesch (moderator), Draft Day Suit, BlogHer, and Women Talk Sports Advisory Board Member (@goonsquadsarah / @draftdaysuit)
• Mike Schaffer, Social Media Manager at Io Studio, founder of #sportsprchat (@mikeschaffer)
• Anthony Caponiti, Partner at Activ8Social (@dcsportsguy)
• Liz Chang, Bloger at On Frozen Blog (@dcsportschick / @onfrozenblog)
• Patrick Wixted, Sports & Gaming Account Manager at New Media Strategies, former Redskins PR Director (@pwixted)
• Sarah Stanley – passionate ultra marathon runner, social media marketing specialist, health/fitness advocate and speaker (@sarahstanley)

Check out the videos below for parts 1 and 2 of the panel. These guys/ladies definitely know their stuff and they shared some great tips and examples. Thanks to Larissa Fair and the rest of the Social Media Club DC crew for getting everyone together for an awesome discussion!

Part 1

Part 2

With Facebook pushing 500 million users–and founder Mark Zuckerberg says 1 billion users is possible–there’s no way you can ignore this social networking giant if you’re looking for interesting ways to engage your audience. This goes for people and companies in just about every industry.

While there are a variety of ways marketers can use Facebook (ads, pages, games, applications, etc), Facebook pages for brands and companies are a no-brainer, assuming engaging people on Facebook fits with your overall goals. Facebook pages are free and easy to set up, can be customized relatively easily, can be used to easily test ideas and engage your audience/drive them to action.

Many big brands and plenty more smaller ones are already leveraging Facebook to achieve their goals. This goes for celebrities, athletes, businesses, musicians, etc. Some are doing a great job (NBA, Nike, Gatorade, Reggie Bush, Levi’s, Vitaminwater, etc), and many aren’t even scratching the surface on what is possible.

For fun, I recently asked my followers on Twitter what Facebook page(s) they would manage if they had their choice. Here are a few of the responses I got:

AshRead14 – Organisations would be @Thefadotcom or a chance to run one for Great Britain Basketball. Athlete’s would be Beckham or LeBron.

Shikhashikz - google ,facebook, twitter!!, nike, adidas, wimbeldon

JackieAdkins – Mine would probably be @soccerdotcom. Right up my alley with soccer (and it’s in NC!)

CubanaLAF – Packers. And I’d run SM for free.

Sheesidd – I wish I had something to do with @ussoccer, they do a great job of keeping us fan’s informed!

Which Facebook page/s would you like to manage? And to take it a step further, what would you do to improve on what they’re currently doing?

I had a great time yesterday at the 140 conference in Washington, DC. Check out the video to see some smart guys giving their perspective on sports teams and social media. These guys actually do social media/digital marketing for some of the area’s pro teams – Washington Wizards, Capitals and DC United.

The video features Andrew Rosen (Washington Wizards), Mark McClure (DC United), Sean Parker (Washington Capitals) and Steve Cobb (Activ8 Social). Hope you enjoy.

Sports Teams on Social Media – 140 Conference Video from Jason Peck on Vimeo.

I highly recommend you check out a 140 conference in your area if you get a chance. The events, put on by Jeff Pulver, are a great way to learn about “the state of now” and how real-time tools and technologies are affecting a variety of industries and businesses.

Social media is having a huge impact on all aspects of business- marketing, customer service, product management, and employee hiring to name a few.

As I’ve been saying for the past few years, sports and social media are a perfect match. Why? People are passionate about sports, and social media enables them to express their passion for sports and connect with others who share their passion.

Over the next month, I’m going to do a series on social media, sports and why we should care. While it may be obvious to many of you why people in sports should care, it’s still not obvious to everyone.

The “Why Should We Care” Series will look at social media and sports from a variety of perspectives and stakeholders. I’d like to cover:

• why fans should care
• why teams should care
• why athletes should care
• why agents should care
• why coaches should care
• why colleges should care
• why agencies should care
• why properties should care
• why sponsors should care
• and any other suggestions/ideas you have on who should care

I’d really like to involve anyone who wants to be a part of this series. Drop me a line here or send me a message (jpeck at hwy24 dot com) if you’d like to offer your perspective or would like to contribute your thoughts to any part of this series. Or, if you have any ideas on what you’d like to learn or see covered in this series, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Recently, I wrote about tactics for social media strikeouts, or things brands, teams and athletes should avoid doing.

Now, let’s talk about some tactics for social media home runs, or what you should be doing if you want to be successful with your social media efforts.

Understand your audience – As we know, people are out there on blogs, forums, and social networking sites talking about you. They’re also talking about themselves—what they’re doing, what they like and what they dislike. If you’re not listening to what your audience says about, you can’t possible know how to best engage them. There are many, many ways to find out what your audience cares about. You can utilize simple tools like Surveymonkey to poll your audience and get feedback. You can track mentions of your main keywords to see what people are saying. Or you can just start asking questions on Twitter (but please don’t start using Twitter until you have a strategy for what your goals are and how you’re going to utilize it). Understanding your audience should be an ongoing thing—not something that you do research on once then forget about.

Establish goals – Figure out what your business goals are and see how social media can plug in with them. When you’re talking about getting funding for specific social programs, initiatives and resources, you better have some goals to drive towards to determine what success means. Maybe your goal is to get 123 new ideas for fan promotions. Maybe it’s to provide better customer service and reduce complaints. Maybe it’s to fill some of those cheap seats you’re not selling. Maybe it’s to get 500 people talking about your charity program. Your goals
(and how you define how much they’re worth) should dictate how you approach things.

Participate don’t promote – Don’t act like you own the joint. Even if it is your own community, the community wouldn’t exist without the people who make it. Treat your community members like partners in the community.

Stay positive – At some point in time, you’ll encounter someone who is negative or critical of what you’re doing. If the person is offering criticism, thank them for taking the time to provide feedback. Don’t get into name-calling matches online or stoop to a troll’s level by engaging them. If you must engage a troll, consider doing it on the phone or in person. In some cases, it’s easier to have a real discussion when you can hear someone’s voice and understand their tone. Establish criteria to determine what comments receive a response and what don’t. When you do respond, stay positive.

Negative feedback is often one of the things brands are scared of. In many cases, the act of simply listening and showing people that you have a real human who is paying attention to what people are saying can lead to people leaving more positive criticism. If people feel like they know/can build a relationship with a real person, they’re often less likely to cry foul or leave nasty comments.

Give to get – Give people a reason to interact with you. This means you will probably have to dedicate some resources/time to producing interesting, valuable and entertaining content and you’ll have to spend some time actually talking to people, answering questions and helping them. As cool as your company’s widget may be, no one cares. They care about being helped, learning new things, getting their problems solved, being entertained and feeling appreciated. The more you give, the more you’ll receive. If you do this enough, you’ll build up a solid base of evangelists who will bring you followers, fans, community members and leads/sales.

Be honest – If you say your product can make people fly, and it really can’t, people will find out sooner or later. If you create fictional people and try to pass them off as real (Walmart did this a few years ago), this won’t fly. If you make a mistake, own up to it…quickly. People appreciate honesty and are willing to forgive companies that acknowledge their mistakes, instead of pretending they didn’t happen. Mistakes will happen. The sooner you apologize and fix things, the better people will feel about you and the sooner you can move on.

Commit adequate resources – In sports, success is often attributed to a coach, player or team. However, there are a lot of people behind the scenes (assistants, trainers, scouts, doctors, front office staff, etc) that play important roles in a team’s success. Don’t make the mistake of trying to launch a social media program or initiative and not committing the proper resources. Social media isn’t free. In many cases, one person can’t do everything. If you can’t dedicate proper resources to an initiative, it’s not going to be successful. Before starting something, it’s important to look at the resources you actually have and be realistic about what you can or can’t do.

Don’t fall in love with shiny objects – Think long term. Decide what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it, then pick the tools and platforms you may need. Don’t just use Facebook or Twitter because someone told you to. For example, if you have three customers, you may want to spend your time with them, instead of trying to get people to join a Facebook page.

Align with a cause – People on social media sites like to share things and get involved in cool projects. They especially like to share and get involved in things that benefit the world. I love what Dawn has done with their Everyday Wildlife Champions Facebook page. The page highlights interesting things people are doing to help wildlife and the environment and gives people some ways they can get involved. Would you rather join a page to talk about dish soap or join a higher cause that helps improve our world? Companies should align with a higher cause or mission and promote this through social media. It’s good for the world, and it’s good business.

Those are some thoughts and tactics for social media home runs. I’d love to hear what you’d add – in terms of tactics and if you have an examples of companies doing this well.

Life update – I recently spoke about Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn with Jeff Yaniga at the Florida Direct Marketing Association’s annual event. I really enjoyed meeting some smart folks and having some great discussions. If you’d like to see the slides we used, you can check them out on Slideshare.

Yesterday I was in New York for the 140 Conference, which brought together some amazing, smart people to talk the effects of the real-time web on people and businesses. Like some of the other conferences I’ve been to lately (such as Social Fresh), the content was stellar. But what I really enjoy about these types of conference is meeting new people and hanging out with other people I’ve met before.

Ok, on to the sports stuff. Here are my notes from a panel titled “How Social Media is Changing the Face of Golf.” Panelists included:

• Dennis Allen (@dennis_allen) – Golf Industry Veteran
• Kathleen Hessert (@kathleenhessert) – President, Sports Media Challenge
• Ryan Ballengee (@waggleroom) – Blogger
• Scott Gutterman (@PGATOUR_EP) – Executive Producer, PGATOUR.com

As you might be able to guess from the title, the panel focused on the intersection on how social media is changing golf. This topic is very interesting to me because I play golf  and watch the tournaments occasionally, but don’t really think of myself as an avid fan. I always root for Phil, since us left-handers have to stick together, but I don’t feel a strong connection with any one golfer.  Like baseball, golf is tough for me to watch live on TV, because it’s pretty slow. I think the more golf can utilize social media to help make the sport and golfers more accessible and interesting to casual fans, the more the game will grow.

Please see below for some of my notes and thoughts on the panel.

Why does social media matter?

Kathleen kicked off the panel by asking why social media matters in golf. A big plus is that information moves so quickly through social media compared to golf, in which things typically move slower. Kathleen highlighted an Arnold Palmer quote: “Watching golf on TV is like watching paint dry.”

Scott mentioned that social media is enabling an interesting thing to happen; fans who aren’t able to attend the tournaments in person are acting like an online gallery. They’re talking about the tournament and players as the action unfolds. And some moments (ex: Brian Davis calling a penalty on himself to give up a shot at his first TOUR win) generate a considerable amount of conversation on Twitter.

Kathleen revealed that she had posed a question on Twitter asking for people’s thoughts on the future of golf in a social media world. She shared on of the more interesting answers she received, which predicted the formation of virtual clubhouses. This is a very interesting concept. On one hand I really like the concept of exclusive communities; on the other hand, the exclusive/off-limits notion of golf that people have is a detriment to the game.

Here’s a half-example of a virtual clubhouse. American Express has its Members Clubhouse, a microsite which highlights the company’s golf-related sponsorships and gives cardmembers access to exclusive golf deals and discounts. The site is very well-done, but all good things can be improved, right? If I were them, I might take it a step further and integrate more social elements to turn it into more of a community where golfers/cardmembers can connect with each other, share travel and course reviews, talk about golf, and also learn more about how American Express can help people live the golf lifestyle to the fullest. American Express has done a great job with its OPEN FORUM, a resource/community for small business owners. Maybe they can do this with golf. What do you think?

Back to the panel. Dennis Allen shared the news that he’s starting a golf entertainment network called “The Back 9.” The network aims to make golf more accessible and interesting to average people. Golf by the fans, for the fans. If they can figure this out, I think it definitely has potential to shake up the golf world.

What will change about golf?

Kathleen wrapped up the panel by asking participants what will change about golf in the future. Ryan said that social media will enable fans to get to know golfers more and see more of their personalities. News will continue to spread faster, he added.

Scott said there will be more focus on getting people to interact with golf and the tournaments no matter where they are. I’m excited for this. One of the social media’s strengths is being able to compliment real-life events and extend their reach and interactivity.This should bring more fans to golf and more revenue opportunities for brands involved in the sport.

Dennis offered the final thought of the panel – that in the near future, more focus will be around developing golf programming based on fan feedback. From the  short chat I had with Dennis, it sounds like this is the approach they’ll be taking with “The Back 9.” I’m looking forward to seeing how this unfolds.

Thanks for reading my thoughts about the panel. What do you think about how social media will change golf?

On a side note, I was recently nominated for a Business of Sports Award (best Twitter account). There are a lot of other smart folks who have been nominated for awards there, too. If you’d like to support me, drop a comment on the  site. Either way, I’d encourage you to check out The Business of Sports. It’s a great resource!