Early on, the Chicago Red Stars women's soccer organization understood that online marketing was the most efficient and effective way to reach their mostly young and active fan base. Here, blogger Daniel Prager, Metrics and Analytics Manager at Imagination Publishing in Chicago, gives ideas on what major market sports teams and college programs can learn from smaller pro sports teams in niche markets when it comes to social media.
Everyday, something is written about sports and social media. The sports blogging community is quickly becoming monetized, and the line between the mainstream sports media and the sports blogosphere is quickly blurring. On ESPN’s SportsCenter broadcast, there is a new segment entitled the “Blog Buzz” where [CoSIDA workshop presenter Kathleen Hessert's] sports marketing company
Sports Media Challenge uses it’s “Buzz-Manager” software to provide the top 5 most blogged about stories of the day.
Beyond blogging, thousands of athletes and teams are constantly on twitter and other social media portals. There is even a service that
aggregates athletes’ twitter updates. Partly because of social media, the sports world is more transparent than ever, where athletes have the ability to control their own public image and interact directly with their fans. Chad “Ocho-Cinco” Johnson has even threatened to tweet during NFL games.
Now all of this is impressive, and has been examined thoroughly by just about every sports blog and PR company. What few have talked about however, is what major market teams can learn from smaller sports teams in niche markets.
Today, I became a fan of the Chicago Red Stars on
Facebook and started following them on
Twitter. For those who aren’t familiar, the Red Stars a professional women’s soccer team from Chicago. After checking them out, I am very impressed by their social media campaign and fan community. There is much that major market sports teams can learn from these Red Stars:
1) Build an officially licensed and branded fan community
The Red Stars have an amazing
fan community. The key to the community is integration. All of the Red Stars’ social media presence is accessible from the fan community– links to their twitter, facebook, myspace, and youtube profiles.
Beyond links to other social profiles, they have lots of internal blogs and media on the page.
The fan community reflects that the organization seriously cares about their fans. Moreover, by putting up interesting and fresh content, they will convert many new fans (like me), who just happen to browse through their community.
Imagine if every NFL team had a branded fan community with great interactive content such as forums, pictures, video, and blogs like the Red Stars. Give fans the tools to express their loyalty online,and your brand or fandom will grow exponentially.
2) Leverage contest marketing with Twitter and Facebook
Both twitter and facebook are great tools for contest marketing. Many large market sports teams are using both twitter and facebook, but few are tapping into their full potential.
The Red Stars are running a campaign right now where if you suggest friends join the facebook group you receive a $10 ticket to the game. Moreover, if they hit their goal, 5 fans will win free parking.
This is a perfect example of the power of contest marketing with twitter and facebook. I guarantee you if a major market team ran a contest similar to this they would be on Twitter’s trending topics within hours. Imagine if an NFL team randomly gave away 5 pairs of tickets a day to those who mentioned the team on twitter using hashtags. People would go nuts.
3) Transparency and Fan Appreciation (Reaching out to content creators)
One of my favorite things about the Red Stars fan community site is that they list all the people who work within the organization with links to their personal profiles and blogs. In this day and age, transparency in your organization is key. We live in a world where the open brand is king, and privacy has been redefined.
Acting as a closed brand, you appear untrustworthy. In today’s world, if everything isn’t placed out in the open, it is assumed you are hiding something. Fans want to be part of their organization, they want to know who is running their team, and feel like they reflect their own values.
Show your fans that you reflect their desires by expressing your own ideas in an authentic way. By showing the human side of your franchise you will create a fan base and community who not only believes in the athletic prowess of your team but in the underlying message of your whole organization.
In the sports world in particular, many sports bloggers and other content creators have huge followings. Bring those content creators into your own fan community. Offer them guest posts. Involve them in press release creation. While you can never fully control the message in the online world, you can develop relationships and communication avenues where you appear likeable and human– even in the eyes of those pesky bloggers.
The Red Stars are building up a passionate fan base one social profile at a time– your major market teams could learn a thing or two from them.