Take A Peck

I recently enjoyed reading Jeremiah Owyang’s post about the five questions companies ask about social media. This inspired me to put my own spin on this and apply it to the world of sports. While Jeremiah discussed the questions from his experience about what companies actually ask him, I decided to write the questions that I think teams should be asking about social media.

What is Social Media?

Common Craft does a great job at explaining complex things in simple ways. Here’s there video about social media that makes it pretty easy to understand, in my opinion. Obviously there is a lot more to it than this but the video makes it easy to grasp the basic concept of social media and why it is so powerful.

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

Why Does It Matter?

Social media and related tools allow people to easily connect around common interests, form close bonds and make their opinions heard. Sports generates a huge amount of passion in people, and social media has made it easier for people to display and share their passion for their favorite players, teams and sports. People are now consuming information about your team in new ways, instead of just reading about you in the newspaper or watching ESPN. Fans write their own news and can reach a large amount of people through simple blogging and social media tools. If you’re winning, people are talking about you. If you’re losing, people are talking about you. Just know that even if you choose not to get involved, the conversation is still happening. You might as well monitor it and participate, don’t you think?

What Does It Mean For Fans?

Sports fans love talking. If you give them an opportunity to react to stories and videos, share them and submit their own stories, you’re providing a way for them to become even more engaged with your team. Instead of having the conversation take place only on outside message boards because your team website isn’t relevant, why not open the site up for conversations, or start a new site (ex: MyColts.net) to provide an outlet for fans to connect and communicate?

Another part of this is that social media tools have given fans who don’t live in your team’s city a way to keep up with what’s going on and connect with other like-minded fans.

What Does It Mean For Sponsors?

Building a team community website and/or participating in other social media sites gives sponsors a way to extend their connection to the team and provide relevant content or exclusives to fans online. Sponsors can get more impressions and have the opportunity to engage fans in new ways through content, communities, blogs, groups and widgets.

How Can Social Media Help Generate Revenue?

Social media tools can help teams reach more fans and deepen their connection with current fans. More engaged fans means more ticket sales, merchandise sales and increased revenues. Teams can also take advantage of social media tools to provide new ways for sponsors to activate. New activation ideas and more options for sponsors should help teams generate more revenue.

That’s all I’ve got for now. What else should teams be thinking about in the social media space? If you’ve had experience working with teams on their social media initiatives, what questions have they asked you?

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Lately I’ve stumbled upon some good blog posts about being open and transparent in business. One of the reasons why I’ve always thought blogging was good for businesses (not all, but many of them) is that it lets you showcase your knowledge and be seen as an expert by your customers. Being transparent in business takes this a few steps further and helps establish an even deeper connection with your customers. According to Court’s Internet Marketing School, being transparent has the following benefits:

• Your customers are more knowledgeable about you and your business
• You establish a sense of trust upfront by being transparent
• Others value your honesty and are drawn to you in the process

Back when I used to work for a sports agency/consultant I always wished we would blog. Many advertising agencies blog, so why are so many sports marketing agencies and businesses not doing it? We had a collection of some of the smartest individuals in the sports business industry but the fear was that blogging about what we do would give away valuable information to competitors. Now, I don’t really know any business that has a 100% transparency policy, but even if you do give away something of value, someone else still has to do the work. But blogging and showing that you can offer good insights and smart thinking can be the best form of PR or business development you can do. That said, I still understood the hesitation to jump into this, since no other competitor was really doing it, either.

So what if you’re scared that you’re giving away too many things? Social media legend Neil Patel said in a recent interview, “And the main key to my success was that I let everything out. Because sooner or later others are going to know what you know, so might as well be the one to tell them.” Also, you don’t have to always write about your business. You can write about notable events in the industry and what you see others doing right/wrong. If you don’t even want to write the blog, just hire me and I’ll write it for you - as long as we’re transparent about it

There are tons of sports blogs, but I’m still waiting for agencies in the sports business world to catch up with advertising in terms of taking advantage of blogs and social media to position an agency as an expert and spread influence. The only sports agency (that I know of) right now that is really involved with blogging is Dynasty Reps. Its founder, Darren Heitner, could probably tell you that he owes just about all of his success to blogging, being transparent, and using his blog to build his reputation.

I think there’s a huge opportunity for a sports marketing agency (or two or three) to start blogging and generate some buzz in the industry while building a reputation.

Why do you think the sports business world is behind advertising in terms of blogging? Is it just that sports marketers and agents aren’t around new technology as much as ad agency people? Do you think the lack of blogging by sports agencies will change soon? I’d love to hear what you think.

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American Express does a great job with its golf sponsorships, using them to obtain benefits for Cardmembers and reward them for paying an annual fee. Though they may not have Tiger Woods as a spokesperson anymore, I don’t think this has hurt them much due to the wide variety of valuable offers they have for golfers. Here are a couple things they have going right now.

Friend of a Cardmember program

• Book a lesson with a PGA professional and bring a friend free.

US Open Golf Tickets and Travel Packages (visit this site for more details)
2008 US Open

• Stay at a nice hotel for 3 nights and get 2 weekend grounds passes as well as access to the American Express Hospitality tent. $2,699 per couple

2009 US Open

• Presale now through June 15 for daily trophy club tickets, which are ONLY available to AmEx Cardmembers.

2009 PGA Championship

• Cardmembers have access to a presale (now through May 31) to purchase Wanamaker Club and Season tickets

As you can see, these are tangible, valuable benefits that American Express offers its Cardmembers. You can see more benefits at http://www.americanexpress.com/golf.

If you’re an avid golfer and have an American Express Card, are you taking advantage of these benefits?

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March Madness is here. Time to watch some basketball, avoid work, family, friends, girlfriends, wives and sig. others (who don’t want to watch). Tomorrow is a first for me–I’ll be watching the four first round NCAA games in Raleigh, and I’ll get to see my Tar Heels play, too. Doesn’t get much better.

SportsBusiness Daily reported that tickets to these games in Raleigh were selling for an average of $209 each on StubHub. I just checked and it looks like StubHub is sold out for now. If you’re going to these games though, I bet you can get tickets from a scalper just before game time.

If you’re stuck at work you can still watch the games via CBS’s March Madness on Demand, where you can watch every game online for free. But you probably already knew that.

In case you’re curious about March Madness presence on social networking sites, there are currently four March Madness-related groups on Facebook with over 500 members each (the top two each have 1,400+ members). I’ve already discussed the March Madness Brackets Facebook application, which is one of the few FB apps that is actually useful (in my humble opinion).

There is a lot less March Madness presence on MySpace–only 3 groups (public), with the largest group having a whopping six members.

On YouTube there is a Men’s NCAA Tourney Channel, which has over 5,700 subscribers.

I hope you all stay glued to your TV/laptop/work computer and enjoy these games. Go Heels!

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This was a HUGE week for MMA. The UFC gained a blue-chip corporate sponsor in Anheuser-Busch, making Bud Light the league’s exclusive beer sponsor for 3 years. ProElite and CBS announced a multi-year partnership to put EliteXC events on broadcast TV (though it reportedly was a time buy and not a rights-fee based deal), a huge breakthrough for the sport.

Both of these developments signify that marketers are starting to see MMA as a legitimate sport and platform for promotion. I think we’ll definitely see more networks and sponsors get involved in the next year or so.

You can read more about the UFC-Bud Light deal here and the ProElite-CBS deal here.

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The number 10 is many things.

• 9+1
• Number of fingers most people have
• The number of heads Ravana has in Ramayana (yes, you can only see 9 heads in the picture, but this doesn’t matter)

You’re probably wondering where I’m going with all this “10 stuff.” This is the 10th edition of the Sports Business Carnival (if you’re new here, this carnival is a bi-weekly roundup of articles from the best sports business bloggers out there). Check out the links below for some great reads.

Kenji Summers at Sports Agent Blog writes that entertainment guru Jay-Z will start a new advertising agency with long-time friend Steve Stoute. Translation Advertising will help connect brands with multicultural audience, which represents about $2 trillion in buying power, according to the article.

At Biz of Basketball, Maury Brown has an interview with Celtics President Rich Gotham, who discusses the the pressure to have a good team in Boston, finding a presenting sponsor and future plans to focus on content and programming. Very interesting article.

We’ve heard a lot (ok, more than just a lot) about the Roger Clemens saga recently. At The Word on Employment Law, John Phillips offers his take on the situation in a post titled, “Rocket Man.”

CNBC’s Darren Rovell writes that NASCAR needs Dale Jr. to win–for the sake of its TV ratings and sponsors such as adidas and Amp energy drink.

At MMA Payout, Adam Swift presents “Cuban’s HDNet Fights Enters the UFC-Couture War.” For those of you who don’t know the background, Randy Couture (UFC heavyweight champion) doesn’t want to fight with UFC anymore. UFC says he is still under contract and doesn’t want him to fight elsewhere. HDNet Fights wants the court to decide when Couture’s contract expires, so they can potentially plan to set up what could be one of the biggest fights in MMA history - Couture vs. Fedor Emelianenko.

Emmett Jones at Sports Business Digest writes about the NBA’s potential expansion into Europe.

Lastly, I put together a few notes/thoughts from the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit.

That’s all for the 10th edition of the carnival. Thanks for participating.

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