Syme, principal at the CKSyme Media Group, wrote this piece on content sharing by athletic communicators exclusively for CoSIDA.com.
You can follow Syme on
Twitter and see her
website for more information.
Syme will be speaking on crisis communications and brand strategies at the 2014 CoSIDA Convention in Orlando during the Monday, June 9th Division I "divisional day" programming.
Share This, a social sharing “booster” app,
released a report recently that is good news for good content. The bottom line of the report
"shows that shared online content, such as recommendations shared between friends, now influences consumer purchases more than price and brand, carries nearly as much weight as in-person recommendations and can motivate buyers to spend 9.5 percent more for a product." Social sharing influences the bottom line.
Before we get too excited, I thought it might be worth pondering that even though we already know that sharing is gold on social media, if the content is not share-worthy the numbers are irrelevant. Social media by itself does not produce sharing anymore. The social media honeymoon is over. We have passed the “if you build it, they will come” phase of social media.
Mike Petroff, Digital Content Strategist at Harvard, illustrated this perfectly. He likened the history of social media to a dance party. When social media first came on the scene as a mass media in 2006, it was one big dance party(Facebook).Connecting with people was easy, and content was not very sophisticated. Everyone engaged because there was so little to choose from. Then Twitter came along and another party started up next door. Now there were two parties to choose from. Today, there are more parties than people have time for. So what’s their goal? They are looking for the best dance party. If you want people to come to your party, your content has to offer value.
And who better to turn to for valuable content than the athletics communicator? They've been writing share-worthy content long before social media came along.
When I was in media relations, I learned to think like the media. What did they need? How could I get them to "share my content" with their readers? Now, the paradigm is shifting and sports communicators are challenged to "think like the fan" and "be your own media." I've seen many of my friends struggle with this, and my desire is to help them understand that the content concept is still the same--getting people to share. Producing fan-centric content does not mean ignoring the media's needs. Athletic communicators and the media community all have the same challenge--produce valuable content that will get the fans to share. And that's the challenge they've always had.
Today's word-of-mouth is a click. And even though the tools and tactics have changed drastically over the last eight years, the goal is still the same: get the fans to share the content. And that action of "sharing" ultimately results in more tickets sold, more booster club memberships, more donors, better programs, better facilities, and better reputations. Today's college athletic communicator is the first link in the chain of the athletic department's bottom line.
So for those of you that dread social media, just remember that the game is still the same, only the players' names have changed. Social media is nothing new--it still requires top notch writing, good headlines, and great images--something every athletic communicator already knows. So if you call it "be your own media" or "think like the fan" just remember that you've always been there, and that you were social before social media was cool.