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

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?

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.

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.

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!

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:

Sony Ericcson Twitter Cup

The Sony Ericcson Twitter Cup is a really interesting mashup of Twitter and the World Cup. It’s a well-known fact that sports fans like to show pride for their teams, and like to think that they have more pride/support than fans of other teams. And soccer fans are some of the most passionate fans in the world. Sony Ericcson has created the Twitter Cup interactive website as an interesting way for fans to compete with other fans to see which World Cup team has the most support.

The concept is simple. The more tweets a specific team receives, the farther that team goes in the Twitter Cup.  Fans can score points for their team in two ways.

1) Tweet team name and World Cup together (ex: England World Cup)

2) Tweet team name and World Cup with the Twitter Cup hashtag (ex: Serbia World Cup #twc)

The website includes a cool interactive stadium that automatically fills seats with fans of a given team based on the number of tweets that team receives. This is a nice effort from Sony Ericcson and one that I think fans will definitely be talking about.

Brand Bowl 2010

This one comes from Mullen and Radian6, a reputation monitoring SAAS company. According to The Lost Jacket, Mullen approached Radian6 with an idea- leverage the power of social media for one of the biggest sports events in the world.

Why do many people watch the Super Bowl? The ads.

The Brand Bowl 2010 was born from this. This site will leverage Twitter and the monitoring capabilities of Radian6 to show people what everyone is saying about each ad. In real-time. Fans will be able to see which ads are getting tweeted the most, what people are saying about them, and if it is positive or negative.

Instead of having to wait until Monday morning to see what traditional media outlets say are the “best” ads, you can follow things in real-time. Awesome.

—

I’m seeing more and more examples of Twitter+sports=really interesting content and initiatives. What do you think about these mashups? What other interesting mashups have you seen that you liked?

In other news, I wanted to give a quick shoutout to Dan Beeman and his company, Sponsorship Insights Group, which just relaunched their website. Dan is a good guy and has done a great job building his network/company through blogging and using his LinkedIn group to connect sponsorship professionals around the world.

Have a great night and rest of the week!

It is my pleasure to present the ebook, Sports and Social Media Predictions 2010, which features 16 smart people and thought-leaders who have graciously shared their opinions, thoughts and predictions for sports and social media in 2010.

Feel free to download this, read it, blog about it, and share with your friends and coworkers. I hope you find it interesting.
Sports Social Media Predictions 2010

Thank you all for your participation. It’s been great connecting with you this year!

Special thanks to Ash Read for helping with the design/layout of this.

Participation and engagement are the easy parts. What you do with it is the challenge.

The free social media platforms can be great for teams, but they each have their limitations. Let’s look at Facebook pages.

I’m not trying to say teams shouldn’t have a presence on Facebook. Clearly, teams must be there, so they can reach some of the 325 million+ people there now. I’m just saying that if you care about any of the above items, you shouldn’t make Facebook your home base. You should probably be thinking about taking things in-house and creating your own community website, like the Colts have done with MyColts.net.

This applies to brands outside of sports, too.

What do you think?

Hope yall are doing well. Now that the Tar Heels have started playing basketball and are still doing some exciting things in football, I couldn’t be happier as a sports fan.

I just wanted to let you know I’ll be speaking at the Triangle Social Media Club this week on Thursday night at Twine Interactive. If you live in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area and are even remotely interested in social media (who isn’t these days?) you should check out this club. The Triangle Social Media Club chapter was first launched in October 2007 by Ignite Social Media. As the chapter has expanded, it has partnered with other companies and individuals to continue hosting events in the Triangle, NC region.

I’m planning on talking about purpose-driven communities and maybe even discuss some ways companies can extend the reach and engagement of their existing loyalty programs by adding a community aspect. Karlie Justus, a PR office for the NC State Fair, will also be speaking about how she helped implement the Fair’s first social media campaign. I’m really looking forward to hearing about this, and I’m sure it will be very interesting.

If you’re interested in the event, you can RSVP here. Hope to see you there!

Since Group Story is an NC-based company and since I’ve known George for a little over a year now, I thought it’d be fun to do an interview with him. I also think sports fans and athletes will be a good audience for them, and you can hear George explain why in the video. This is actually the first interview George has given about Group Story–he claims he’s camera shy, but if you watch the video, you’ll see why I don’t believe it. (hint: I think he gives a good interview).

Interview With Group Story Co-Founder George Junginger from Jason Peck on Vimeo.

Group Story has been chosen to demo at the Internet Summit in Raleigh on November 4-5. Check them out and drop me a line if you’re going to be there so we can meet up.

You can see some of my notes here and here. Also, you should check out a series of video interviews I did with 10 really smart people talking about their visions of a killer mobile+social app. If you still can’t get enough of my face, you can watch a short video of me being interviewed by Lewis Howes, a star speaker, entrepreneur and author.

I learned a ton and met some awesome people at BlogWorld. It was hard to narrow down my thoughts to just three main takeaways but here’s my attempt:

1) Go To More Good Events

I’ve always enjoyed going to some of the local events in Raleigh but lately have started going to other events outside NC. I’ve been fortunate to meet some awesome people at these events. No matter how much things are moving online, there is no substitute for meeting people face-to-face. It was great to be able to put faces to names and hang out with some people who I’ve “known” for awhile online, but hadn’t ever met in real life. As many have said before, one goal of online interactions is to create real-world relationships, and going to good events is one way to move things along. It was great to be able to meet people like Beth Harte (community manager for MarketingProfs-even if it was just for 2 minutes), Suhkjit Ghag (social media evangelist at Sony) and David Spinks (community manager for Scribnia).

Hopefully, I’ll be able to continue going to amazing events and meeting great people. I should have done this more in the past.

2) Focus More

Amber Naslund said in her panel on time management strategies for social media, “sometimes you have to kill your babies.”

She was referring to projects that have stalled or that you’re not passionate about.

I’ve had a variety of websites and projects since I started blogging in 2006. If success is defined as them making money, then yes, some have been and are successful. But I realized there are some projects I have that I’m not that passionate about. They’re taking time away from things I am passionate about, such as sports and social media and online communities. I need to focus on things I’m passionate about and phase out of the other stuff.

3) Give Back More

If you look at some of the most successful people in life and online, the common denominator is that they give. A lot.

They give their time and ideas. They give others a platform to speak and be heard. And they give opportunities for other people to shine.

I’ll be honest. I’ve done a crappy job at this lately. I could make excuses and say I’ve been busy with work, but ultimately, excuses suck. I really need to step up my game.

This has kind of been in the back of my mind for a while. Meeting Lewis Howes in person turned this into something I can’t ignore.

If you don’t know who Lewis Howes is, you should get to know him. In the last year, he’s developed one of the best resources on sports and new media (SportsNetworker.com), co-written a book on how to master LinkedIn, and become an awesome speaker.

While I’ve been too “busy” to blog or collaborate or shine the spotlight on others, Lewis has been doing just that and has become a force in the sports industry.

I feel lucky to have the privilege to know you, Lewis, and hopefully collaborate on some things in the future. Thanks for being so awesome and making me realize that I need to do a better job at giving back more-my time, attention, thanks and ideas.

Thanks to everyone for reading, and have a good night.

One of the most interesting moments during the conference was when video guru Steve Garfield had everyone with a recording device take part in an experiment. We all shot video all the same time, and were encouraged to post it online somewhere. Steve believes (and he’s right) that the revolution in video is due to the fact that we can now record and share video from the same device. Check out the video below to see this experiment.

Here are my top three takeaways from the Inbound Marketing Summit, since you probably don’t have time to read my 11 pages of notes.

1. Companies that are doing a great job with social media have integrated it into all aspects of their business. Responsibility doesn’t just rest with one person or department.
2. Companies that do a good job of getting found (in search engines, by bloggers, in real-life, etc) and trusted are successful. It’s more important than ever to focus on building trust with your audience.
3. Content (creating the kind people WANT to read) is crucial to building relationships online. The sooner companies can figure out how to create interesting, remarkable content, the sooner they can gain a competitive advantage. Never outsource content or social media accounts. Companies should own it.

If you went to #ims09, what were some of your top takeaways?

I’m really looking forward to BlogWorld in Las Vegas later this week. I’d love to connect if you’re going to be there!

Here’s my schedule:

Inbound Marketing Summit – October 7-8 in Boston

BlogWorld – October 14-18 in Las Vegas

Social Media Business Forum – October 23 in Durham

Speaking at York College – October 26 in York, PA

I hope to see some of you at these events!

FanFeedr

One of my favorite things about the site is that when you first visit, a helpful screen pops up to tell you what to do. When people first visit a new site, not knowing what to do is often a barrier to signing up and utilizing the site, so this really helped clarify things for me. I also love the fact that they utilize Facebook Connect to offer a simple sign up process.

The site utilizes social elements by enabling people to follow their friends and see what news they’re interested in. Fans can easily comment on, email, rate, or share any articles they read via Twitter or Facebook. This is accomplished by a nice horizontal ribbon that appears at the bottom of the screen when you click through to see an article.

FanFeedr also has an iPhone app and a robust set of APIs for publishers to take advantage of. I’m really looking forward to following this company’s growth.

When Jeff Brunelle, from Carrot Creative, said he would be happy to put me in touch with FanFeedr’s founder/CEO, Ty Ahmad-Taylor, I had to take him up on it. Please see below for some questions Ty answered via email, after we had a nice phone conversation last week.

1) Where did the basic concept of FanFeedr as a personalized, real-time sports news aggregator come from?

The core concept came from a problem I had myself: I spent far too much time hunting and pecking around for sports news and information on multiple websites. Twitter was emerging at this time last year, and I also saw some of the conceptual success my friends at FanSnap experienced with their event-ticketing vertical.

2) What kind of sports fans do you think will use FanFeedr?

We believe that we can capture most of the market, from the casual fan to the Fantasy Sports player, primarily because the consumption lens is similar to Twitter and Facebook, and much less editorially-driven. Specifically, you can get all of the news about your favorite teams, or some of it, or just bits of it (e.g. “just show me video about my team”) in an easy-to-use manner.

3) The site has a nice mix of features that are news-focused and focused on sharing/socializing. Which features do you think are most important and make FanFeedr special?

Without getting too abstract, and comparisons to Rothko are both appreciated and deflected, often at the same time, we are trying to address a user’s media consumption needs along their social graph.

4) What has surprised you the most about the sports industry since you started working on FanFeedr at the end of 2008?

I came from the music industry when I worked at MTV Networks. Pop, rock, hip-hop and country. Sports people are as passionate as music people, but the level of detailed knowledge about the game continues to astound me.

If you go see a great concert, you will hear music person say: “Minus the Bear has one of the best hooks I have heard in the last five years.”

5) What’s next for FanFeedr?

We are adding Fantasy Sports lifestreaming: right now, if you are in a Fantasy Football league, your wins, losses, player drops and adds are not exposed to anyone besides the 7, 9, or 11 other people that you play with. We want to allow you to expose your activity to your social graph (i.e. friends) on FanFeedr, Facebook and/or Twitter.

6) Where do you see real-time sports news going in the next year or so?

As more athletes get onto Twitter, you are going to see greater connections with fans, as the final barrier to sports consumption, what the athlete thinks, becomes less opaque.

7) What do you think is the biggest opportunity for teams and leagues to utilize social media?

The teams and leagues can use social media for much better CRM. The Oakland A’s don’t have the clearest picture of what their fans do online, for example, because they haven’t done a good job of painting a picture of those fans. Put another way, social media inverts the retail store paradigm: a sports brand doesn’t own the store (which is Facebook, Twitter or MySpace.) The brand is a leasing space, and has to create an pleasant experience for users in those media.

If you had $1 million to spend on FanFeedr right now, what would you do with it?

You can’t shoot, edit and distribute “Hangover II” for that amount, so focusing on the core business:

• Market research
• Product development
• Customer service
• Sales and marketing
• Employee hiring

A few businesses and teams get this, but overall we’re still not there yet. Many teams are getting involved, but not always with a purpose or clear strategy. A Facebook page that has 100k people on it is worthless, without the proper strategy behind it. If you’re a team, you don’t really want Facebook fans, you want ticket buyers.

The video below describes some ideas for ways that teams can use social media the right way and what benefits they (and their fans) can get from this.

The last idea in the video is one I look forward to exploring more, and would love your thoughts on. It’s one thing to do some basic videos occasionally and make them exclusive to Twitter or YouTube to drive awareness and engagement. But hardcore fans are always willing to consume more, in my opinion. Why aren’t teams capitalizing on this?

More and more fans now want to participate, be involved in the creation of ticket packages, get exclusive, behind-the-scenes videos, articles and real-time updates, get personalized merchandise, vote on ideas for sponsor promotions, etc.  Clearly people want content in new forms as indicated by the explosion of sites like Twitter. Why aren’t more teams taking some of these concepts, creating new content areas and fan clubs and charging fans for access to drive revenue?

If you’re a die-hard Lakers fan, wouldn’t you pay for the right to see Kobe’s real-time updates right after the game, before the press get a crack at him? Wouldn’t you pay to have access to short, 30 second videos from Phil Jackson before and after practice? Wouldn’t you pay for a chance to ask a member of the Lakers staff or ownership any question you wanted once a month? I know I would.

I think teams may need to rethink a lot of the things they’re doing online. There should be a balance between using these free social media tools to expand an audience and keep a pulse on what fans want/think vs. charging people for access to really cool content and opportunities. Some of the things teams and players are doing on outside sites could be moved in-house (and on team communities, so they have a better value proposition) so they can be better monetized and packaged for hardcore fans. I think this is the only way teams will see a good ROI from their efforts and will be able to justify spending money on new opportunities that serve to engage fans in more ways.

I’m always interested in hearing what you think. Thanks for watching/reading and I look forward to your thoughts on this.

A Digital Journey – Keith Burtis

Notes/key points

• Never approach a network or individual with a greedy, one-sided agenda
• Passion can be a magnet in getting people to join a community
• Scale and build community one relationship at a time
• When customers can interact with people creating a product or service, the perceived value is almost always greater

I met Keith later in the day and he is a great guy-very easy to talk to. He’s obviously done a fantastic job at putting some of these principles into practice to help him and others excel in business and in life.

Social Media Integration – Greg Cangialosi

Notes/keypoints

• Technology is really just an enabler – it’s always about people at the end of the day
• Social Media Adoption Curve
  • Education
  • Observation
  • Broadcast
  • Participation
  • Relationships
  • Collaboration
• Email is currently the glue of the social web (love this metaphor. Very accurate)

Social Business By Design – David Armano (keynote speaker)

Notes/key points

• Control doesn’t exist. Brands can only hope to be good facilitators. Facilitation leads to engagement
• Examples of social business – Comcast (ComcastCares Twitter account), Starbucks (they let their community’s ideas drive development of promotions and rewards. This is exactly what sports teams and many other businesses should be doing).
• Social media has the potential to affect all aspects of business. Soon brands will stop saying “we are doing social media” and will start saying “it’s how we do business.”
• Pretty much this entire presentation. Seriously. Great stuff, David.

I’ve been reading David’s blog, Logic + Emotion for at least three years now. When I started blogging in early 2006, his blog was one of the first I read regularly. In fact, one of David’s awesome diagrams inspired this post article that said I was still unsure about Twitter in December 2007.  It was great meeting him briefly after his keynote, and I look forward to seeing what he and the team at Dachis Group do with social business design.

The Basics of Social Media ROI – Olivier Blanchard

Notes/key points

Olivier has written about social media ROI extensively on his blog. Here’s the basic process he discussed.

1. Establish a baseline (year-over-year growth, monthly growth) before social media vs. after
2. Create activity timelines – keep track of all important marketing efforts (press releases, attending conferences, videos, blog posts, whitepapers, etc)
3. Look at sales revenue (# of new customers, total customers, revenue per customer, etc)
4. Measure transactional precursors (brand mentions, website traffic, etc)
5. Overlay timelines/activities
6. Look for patterns
7. Try to prove relationships

This method makes a lot of sense. However, I’m not sure how you handle it if your company does a lot of different forms of advertising (print, billboards, radio, etc). Trying to find/interpret overall results could be pretty challenging if you’re unsure about how you’re other marketing efforts are performing. Plus you have to look at how employees are performing, as they can have a big impact on the direction of your company, so it gets even tougher. But just because I don’t know how to do it, doesn’t mean there isn’t a way. Props to Olivier for making this presentation fun and coming up some very interesting thoughts about this subject.

I definitely enjoyed hanging out and learning at Social Fresh and look forward to keeping in touch with a lot of great people.

Here’s an interesting picture taken from Compete.com:

According to Compete.com (probably not 100% accurate, but usually pretty close), both sites attracted roughly the same amount of unique visitors last month as they did in July of 2008. Here are the numbers:

• Planet Orange – 1,767 unique visitors in July (1,413 uniques in July 2008)
• MyColts.net – 8,290 unique visitors in July (8,137 uniques in July 2008)

Unique visitors is only one indicator of growth, and I didn’t look at other important metrics such as number of active members, time spent on site, revenue generated from community members, etc. But according to Compete.com, the communities haven’t grown much in terms of unique visitors over the past year. Why haven’t these sites grown more?

I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that it’s a combination of things:

• Lack of promotion
• Lack of integration with existing marketing efforts
• No clear value proposition stated on the home page
• Not enough unique/exclusive content and access
• More focus on fans on existing social media sites (Facebook, MySpace, etc)

But those are just a few guesses. I really have no idea why these two communities appear to have stagnated in growth. I wonder if other team communities have also stagnated. What do you think?

Are official online team communities a good idea? I still say yes (when executed properly), but would love to hear your thoughts.