Take A Peck

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?

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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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I thought it would be fun to use the dnScoop tool to get valuations for 50 sports social networks and community sites. I ran 72 sites through the tool, which values sites based on domain age, PageRank, inbound links, Alexa Rank, and Link Value. It doesn’t include two key factors that are usually used to value sites like this - monthly revenue and number of members - not to mention countless other factors that affect a site’s valuation.

It’s important to remember that this is in no way meant to be an accurate picture of a site’s value; this is just one benchmark and it’s not really accurate. In fact, most of these values are really low/off. For example at the end of 2006, FanNation was valued at approximately $60 million, but dnScoop says it’s only worth $11.9 million.

Here are the top 50 sports social networking websites and communities according to dnScoop. This only includes sites that are hosted on their own domain, since the tool values sites based on entire domains. Some of these may not be true social networks (ex: Deadspin) and I could have probably been more thorough with the categories. Remember this is just for fun. Feel free to comments about what you think, but please refrain from trying to start nasty arguments about the valuations–I know they’re not accurate.

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Takkle is a social network for athletes and fans of high school sports. Athletes can create a profile, upload videos and pictures, participate on forums, see key stats, participate in contests and show their passion for their favorite sports. It’s backed by Sports Illustrated and features some innovative opportunities for sponsors to connect with this audience.

Basics

Takkle features a nice profile that can be filled with a variety of information, such as hometown, school, graduation year, height, weight, favorite music, books, sports memory, etc.

Photos and videos can be tagged, rated, commented on, and easily embedded and shared on blogs, Facebook and MySpace. Photos and videos can also be sorted by most popular, most recent and highest rated. Based on my research, the most popular pictures are of cheerleaders. Takkle lets the community self-police itself, so members can flag photos if they are inappropriate, and I didn’t see any that would fall into this category.

People can create and/or join groups on Takkle, to connect with others who share their interests. Some of the most popular groups are Takkle Recruits, Footballers and Stretching. There are also forums on Takkle, where people can discuss all things relating to high school sports.

Key Differentiators

There are a few things that differentiate Takkle from some other sports social networks out there. They have a very tight focus, so that gives them an advantage over other sites that may just be focused on many different ages/levels of sports.

1) Takkle taps into the basic human desire to be noticed, a characteristic that is especially strong among athletes and high schoolers. They have a section for featured athletes, where the most popular people (for each sport) can be seen each week. There is a section for rankings (top 25s and top 100 players for various sports (voted on by the community). Sports Illustrated also gets into the mix, giving athletes the chance to try to get featured in SI’s “Faces in the Crowd,” by uploading highlight videos and getting your friends to vote on your profile.

2) Takkle offers incentives to encourage engagement. People can get trophies for reaching various milestones (adding 500 friends, uploading 250 pictures, etc). The trophies are featured on people’s profiles, and this is another way people on the site can show off and get noticed.

3) The site taps into competitive nature of sports fans with a feature called “Throwdowns.” These are user-created challenges, such as who “Who will win the Eastern Conference Finals?” Or “Basketball: Best Dunk.” If you’re creating your own Throwdown, you pick an opponent (from your friends or an established champion) and upload a video or picture that people can vote on. The person with the most votes wins, and Takkle keeps track of your Throwdown win-loss record. Throwdowns can easily be shared on Facebook or MySpace, increasing the exposure they get to exisiting and potential Takkle members.

Sponsor Integration

Takkle does a pretty good job at integrating its advertisers and sponsors into the site’s features. An example of this is the Takkle 25, a list of the top 25 best high school basketball players (voted by the community) that is presented by New Balance.

Sponsors are also involved in Takkle Battles, which are sponsored competitions where athletes videotape themselves showing off their skills. The winner of these Battles is determined by the community. Past battles include the Wendy’s High School Heisman, Three Point Battle sponsored by Spalding and Bench Press Battle sponsored by Met-Rx.

Final Thoughts

Takkle is a very user-friendly and sponsor-friendly niche social network. I think it will continue to be successful in this space. My only question is what happens when people graduate high school. Does Takkle lose these members or have they found that they still keep coming back to the site?

If you want to check out Takkle for yourself you can join here.

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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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Stracka is a sports social network for golfers that describes itself as being “for people who love golf.” My friend Mike asked me if I’d heard about it (and I hadn’t) so I decided to check it out. I’ll walk you through the registration process and then offer some thoughts.

Registration

When you decide to register, you put in your email address, password, choose a profile picture and then tell them a little bit more about what you’re interested in (e.g., meeting other golfers, posting scores and photos, watching video fly-overs of courses, etc). Next you pick which home course/s you’d like featured on your profile. A list of courses nearby appeared automatically so I assume they’re using my IP address to figure out my location–pretty cool.

The last step is inviting your friends to the site (if you want). You can put in their email addresses and customize a message that will be sent to them. I didn’t like the fact that if you don’t want to invite friends you have to click “I don’t have any friends” in order to skip this step.

Your Profile

After registration you can choose to further customize your profile by letting people know what’s in your bag, when you can play, if you gamble, and give more details about yourself. You can also upload pictures and change your location by dragging your avatar to a different spot on Google Maps. Your default location is detected automatically.

Using the site

There are a variety of things you can do on Stracka. You can find other golfers, golf courses, see pictures, view member blogs and participate in forum discussions. The golf course directory has an interactive Google Map that looks confusing at first, because it has a 100s of golf courses in the US marked with pin-points. But when you zoom in, it’s pretty useful so you can see which golf courses are in your area, if you don’t know. One thing that was confusing about the golf course directory is for each state, Stracka lists the top 10 golf courses. It wasn’t clear who picked this top 10. Is it the site owners? Is it the users? Are courses paying to get in the top 10? It was nice that you can click on any golf course and get an overhead view of it through Google Maps.

A cool feature that Stracka offers is the ability to track your scores and handicap. You can select a course and put in your scores and advanced info like number of pars/birdies/bogies, greens in regulation and average driving distance. Then you can compare your statistics vs. an average PGA TOUR player or Tiger, Phi, Vijay, Trevor Immelman or Retief Goosen. You can also compare your stats with your friends who are on Stracka.

No video??

The one major thing that is lacking on Stracka is video. Golf offers countless opportunities for video instruction, swing analysis, putting and chipping tips, etc., but there is nothing like this on Stracka. This is unfortunate as they are missing a huge opportunity to engage users with this content, from professionally-produced video, to user-generated content.

Another thing that annoyed me was I couldn’t find a link or way to log out of the site once I was logged in.

Key Statistics (as of May 16, 2008)

• Compete.com - 9k uniques in April
• Domain age - July 18, 2001
• PR 4
• Pages indexed in Google - 42,000
• Alexa Rank - 145,492

That’s it for my review of Stracka. Do you have anything to add? Also, do you know of any other golf social networks?

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