Posts Tagged ‘social media’

I got back from BlogWorld in Las Vegas last night. The event was great and the people were amazing. But I’m glad to be home. Four nights in Vegas is equivalent to like 15 nights in other places.

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.

We’ve seen that there is a whole lot more to social media than just media or marketing. Social media tools and the tenets of listening, audience participation, user-generated content, real-time news and updates, sharing and voting are revolutionizing the way companies do business. Done properly and with a purpose, social media has the ability to transform the way companies look at:

• 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.

Planet Orange and MyColts.net are two official online communities from professional teams that often are praised by people (myself included) for being ahead of the curve and doing things the right way. But are they catching on with the average fan?

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.

Yesterday I had a great opportunity to speak on the phone about social media and marketing with some people from the marketing departments of about 20 national governing bodies for US sports. This was made possible by Tim Yount (VP of Marketing, USA Triathlon), who I met last month at the IEG Sponsorship Conference in Chicago. After the conference ended, Tim invited me to speak on the call yesterday and talk about social media — what it is, why it’s important, and some key steps organizations should keep in mind when getting started.

Thanks to Tim for having me on the call yesterday and thanks to everyone else for taking time out of your day to listen. I hope it was beneficial and please feel free to contact me with any more questions you may have. If you’re from one of the organizations from the call, thanks for checking out my blog. For everyone else. here are some points I shared today about social media marketing and six main principles.

What Is Social Media Marketing?

Social Media marketing is a huge buzz word these days, but what does it really mean? I think it really boils down to this (and I’m definitely not the only one who has said this before): Social media marketing is when companies take a human approach to marketing by participating in conversations with their audiences. It’s about engaging audiences in an authentic way to provide helpful information, solve problems and build relationships to achieve business goals and gain a leg up on the competition. In the past this was difficult (and it’s still not easy), but the tools and platforms that are available now have made this a more viable option…and a necessity in many cases, depending on your audience and goals.

6 Principles

Here are 6 principles of social media marketing that I shared with the group. These weren’t meant to be how-tos or steps to take to create a strategy, so measurement and setting goals weren’t included (though I did include those pieces in another part of the presentation). These principles are more about the actions that an organization’s audience will notice and appreciate.

1) Listen

It’s been said before but I will say it again. Research your audience first.  Figure out where they are and what they’re saying about you, your category and your competitors before attempting to insert yourself in conversations online. Spend a month and make notes of the types of conversations about you and what percentage are positive and negative. Listen. Learn the various unspoken rules, guideines and dos and don’ts of the communities you’re thinking about joining. When you do start participating, listen to your audience and figure out what they like. Involve them in idea generation and product creation. Use social media platforms and tools to provide customer service on steroids. It’s about them, not you.

2) Engage

This has a dual-meaning. Part of social media marketing is engaging your audience on their own turf. Your goal may be to get people to come to your website, but what really should matter is engaging people (they way they want to be reached) to build relationships. The other part of this is providing and creating content that is engaging. If it’s not interesting or helpful or entertaining, people aren’t going to care or pay attention to your efforts. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Is whatever content you’re producing something that is interesting and good enough to share? If not, then you should re-evaluate your efforts.

3) Enable

Based on your research and listening, you can probably identify some people who are already talking about your organization. These people are great to involve in your efforts, so you should empower them and give them the tools and content to become an even bigger advocate for you. This also includes enabling people to share your content with their friends on various websites, and maybe letting people take your content and create new content from it in the form of remixes, mashups, and videos. Give people ways to feel ownership of your brand and they’ll get closer to it. Lastly, empower and enable your employees to get involved in your efforts.

4) Share

Share interesting articles, pictures, videos, links about you and your industry. Give to get. Give some more. Give and share your time, attention, expertise, questions and insight with your audience. The more you do this, the more relationships and trust you will build. Your audience will appreciate this, and that’s good for business.

5) Reward

If people are taking the time to interact with you online, why not reward them (and in some cases, you may have to reward them). Reward your loyal and passionate fans and followers with exclusive content, access, discounts and promotions. There’s also an opportunity to involve sponsors in this piece to give your fans something of value.

6) Participate

Participate, don’t promote. If all you do is say, “Look how great I am, look how awesome my product is” people will get tired of it really quickly and stop listening. The whole point of social media marketing is to participate in conversations with your audience, not just talk at them. You don’t have to start with a huge splash; this invites a lot more scrutiny and criticism from people who might not like what you’re doing. If you start slow, there are still a lot of things you can do and learn from. Participation is the key.

Thoughts?

Photo credits:

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/niclindh/1389750548/
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/wooandy/220929743/

What’s up everyone? Yesterday I stumbled upon an article about participation marketing by Alan Rosenpan. As you know, I’m big on social media and how brands can utilize it to connect with their customers and fans. Social media was built for participation. Brands and individuals have to actively participate in order to successfully engage people on whatever communities/websites they’ve determined are valuable.

Check out the video below for some of my thoughts about participation marketing-what it is, why it matters and how teams can utilize social media to follow some of these principles. Some of these ideas are things that a lot pro teams are already doing, though I think there are some ways they can improve things.

Thanks for watching. I’d love to hear what your thoughts are for ways teams can get to know fans better, involve them in creating ticket packages/promotions  and make them feel like they have a stake in their success.

Legacy Direct is a sports & entertainment technology company that helps athletes and their advisors manage their brands and discover new revenue streams. I connected with one of their employees (Andy Bailer) on Twitter recently and after we had a nice phone discussion about sports and social media, I emailed him a few questions. Here are his answers: (more…)