Checking In on Facebook Places

Pun intended, for sure.

It’s been a couple of weeks since Facebook launched its Places feature – a geolocation function that let’s users identify their location within their social networks. I’ve seen a number of posts and articles by sports marketers about integrating Facebook Places/FourSquare into their promotional mix.

Here’s my 2 cents…

While I will agree that Places/FourSquare presents some interesting and engaging opportunities, my own experience has shown that it’s still the early days for these tools.

FourSquare does have a growing user base, but I’ve found that it still requires a fair amount of education to enable fans to use it effectively in promotions. I’m not suggesting to drop the idea of using it, but right now, my opinion is that the time required to educate and inform is greater than the benefits or rewards.

Moving forward, I would look to include a geolocation feature to a promotion, but would probably hold back on building a promo that only focused solely on that platform. Start small, and look to enhance social projects with a check-in element. For example, if you were building a promo that supported a multi-location sponsor in your market, you could offer a tiered prizing/award structure that offered something for check-ins as well as for entries for less savvy,yet still socially aware/active fans.

Ultimately, the last thing you want to do is create a digital divide. Don’t forget, there are a number of privacy concerns that were raised with this launch. So start small, measure and assess your results and continue to plan from there. Be prepared to teach your fans along the way.

Selling in the Social Space

Published August 11, 2010 Sales Methodologies , Social Media , Sports Marketing Leave a Comment
Tags: Social Media, Sales, Marketing

“Social media is not about making money, it’s about relationships”

Watch out for statements like this…

Social media as it relates to sports teams, organizations or athletes is about marketing. The last time I checked, marketing is about making money – isn’t it? Marketing is not sales (obviously), but it is about awareness, brand, positioning… and there are several tools available to do this in order to drive sales.

There are many who continue to drive home the message that social media is about “relationships” – and yes this is true, but isn’t all marketing? The same for sales; I have trained dozens of sales people on the value of “relationships” as it directly relates to sales. Social media is a marketing tool – its time to demystify exactly what social media is and does from a marketing perspective.

Now, having said all that, there is 1 very important rule to marketing and selling in the social space…

It’s Not Yours

Your fan page is exactly that, it belongs to your fans. It’s a place you build for them. As such, you are best to not go around selling things left and right as it will turn your fans off. The vast majority of the social content online is generated by them. Listen to what they tell you and give them what they want.

With sports brands, its possible to build a fan base of several hundred thousand fans quite quickly – but remember, they can unlike and un-follow you just as fast.

If something is wrong, they will tell everyone about it – and in doing so, will tell you about it as well. You can’t control that – but you do have the opportunity to address it, deal with it/fix it and tell them about what you learned and what you did about the problem. These things happen in real-time, so you need to stay on top of it. Similarly, there are times when its best just to leave things alone.

Remember: Fans first… and success here depends on the triple win for the fan, the team and the sponsor alike.

Facebook Saturation and Web 3.0

Published July 22, 2010 Facebook , Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: Facebook, Web 3.0

As Facebook plows on towards 500 million users, there will be an estimated 6,859,480,895 people on the earth by August 1st, 2010.

So, about 1 in 13 earthlings have a Facebook profile. You get a pretty clear picture that Facebook is quite simply, A BIG DEAL – whether you like it or not.

All this rapid growth has got to stop somewhere, right? Correct. In fact, probably pretty soon. The number of Facebook users will continually grow, but likely not at the same rate. It will begin to level off – then what?

What comes next has already arrived. Recent announcements at the F8 conference back in April showed us that the web was becoming more social in its very nature. You might remember my blog post from a year ago regarding the rise of Web 3.0 – the semantic web.

What Facebook brings across the web now is “meaning”… how the content of the web is presented to the user along with its specific impact to the user’s own experience. We see this in the form of “Like” buttons. When a user reads a story on CNN.com or NHL.com, they can see how many of their Facebook friends liked it. This is what I mean by meaning… its how the web content relates to the user now in a specific and personal way. And there will be more of it… new layers of meaning, and in deeper ways.

Facebook is also changing how people use the web – it is moving from search engine as starting point to social network as starting point. You’ll also notice that Facebook now has “Community Pages” – Facebook is slowly, but surely becoming an online repository of everyone and everything. Like an immense encyclopedia, not only presented with facts – but with what those facts mean to people.

Now, that is a big deal.

Beyond the Team: Social Media and Sports Management

Published July 20, 2010 Branding , Content Management , Facebook , Marketing , Personal Brand , Social Media , Sports Marketing , Twitter Leave a Comment
Tags: Athlete Representation, Online Branding, Online Identity, Social Media, Sports Management, Sports Marketing

The list of benefits for sports teams to be active in social media is clear:

Marketing
Fan engagement
Sponsorship activation
Monetization/ROI

Who else in the industry can benefit and how?

The past few years have seen the athletes/players themselves participate in social media on their own accord. @The_Real_Shaq being one of the first and most infamous on Twitter. Dozens of pro athletes have followed and built huge followings along the way.

The key here is “on their own accord”. Athlete as celebrity status provides these players with the opportunity to comment on news and events, or anything else the rest of the Twitterverse chooses to tweet about. In fact, the recent experience surrounding Twitter and NBA free agency really proved the medium had arrived and mattered as traditional media took a back seat to the goings on.

The Next Wave: Sports Management Companies and Player Associations

Now that teams have incorporated the social space as an important part of their marketing mix, sports management companies and player associations would be wise to do the same on behalf of their clients. Online identity and brand are of huge and increasing importance, and there are opportunities for sponsorship, promotion and PR that are largely un-managed and underdeveloped.

I realize that every player out there may not wish to be updating their Facebook profile or tweeting about their pre-game preparations – and this is not really required, but it is savvy, smart and time to develop an online identity and brand strategy… now.

This should be a priority for sports management companies and player associations alike.

Micro-transactions and Future Revenues from the Social Space

Published July 13, 2010 Facebook , Micro-transactions , Social Media 2 Comments
Tags: Facebook, Gifts, Micro-transactions, Social Gaming

Last week, Facebook announced that it was discontinuing its Gifts feature as of August 1, 2010.

I have previously blogged about important Facebook changes, but you can only come up with eye-catching titles like “Facebook Changes You Need to Know About” so many times… it is pretty clear that Facebook is a constantly shifting space and you need to stay on top of it both tactically as well as strategically.

Discontinuing the Gift Feature

In past posts, I had presented the idea of micro-transactions – small dollar value ($1 or $2) transactions – as a possible revenue stream for the social space. Conveniently, Facebook did a very good job of facilitating and sharing Gifts – small icons that users could buy (with $ or credits) and display on their own profiles or give to friends. This seemed straightforward enough, and a strong fit for sports marketers to leverage a team logo, a player or other aspect of their sport.

Micro-transactions could generate some fairly high numbers (once the initial outlay was built and in place) for strong sports brands with tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of fans. For example, a .5% conversion on $1 from 500,000 fans = $2,500.

Perhaps it was a good idea, but also a bit late. Gifting across Facebook was certainly more popular in 2005-2007/08 – add the recent economic downturn and it results in the closing of the gift store today.

Of course, teams can still continue with gifts on their own – but it seems that the gift/revenue legitimacy is now over; however, the concept of micro-transactions is still a powerful one and will have an increasing role in online revenue and also from the social and mobile space as well.

Micro-transactions

A familiar example of a micro-transaction is iTunes – $1 per song. Pretty easy to execute, and some serious revenues follow as a result.

Micro-transactions have been very successful in “free-to-play” online games represented by both the purchase of virtual items as well as in-game progression. Recent years have seen rapid growth in the popularity of micro-transactions in social gaming (consider famous titles such as “Farmville” or “Mafia Wars” on Facebook).

So how can sports marketers benefit?

For one, I am confident that social platforms will increase their focus social gaming. Sports games make very good sense and offer a wide appeal. While some of these opportunities will exist at the league level, imagine a social game in which you are able to manage “your team” as a GM. There could be integrated sponsor opportunities to give your players more energy by providing them with Gatorade for a micro-transactional fee…

As DVRs (or PVRs in Canada) continue to erode effective messaging opportunities on TV via traditional advertising, product integration will increasingly show up in spaces where consumers spend their time or draw their attention. Similarly, consumers are spending more time on their smart phones and social networking platforms. This is not a “better or worse” type of situation or evaluation, but it is clear that things are changing (fairly quickly) and marketers need to adapt, not to mention, innovate.

NHL Draft: 3 Teams to Watch on Twitter

Published June 24, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
Tags: NHL, NHL Draft, Twitter

Last year’s NHL Draft saw some activity from teams on Twitter and I would expect there to be a lot more content this time out.

Here’s 3 teams to keep a close eye from a social media perspective:

Edmonton Oilers: @NHL_Oilers

Not to be obvious, but apart from the fact that Edmonton holds the #1 pick, the Oilers did a fantastic job of using the draft lottery as a successful Tweet-Up back in April, so you can be sure that they will look to build on the social aspect of their Draft. Not only is this an important pick for the organization but represents a key social marketing opportunity.

Los Angeles Kings: @LAKingsHockey

The Kings are the host team/arena, and they were quite active during last years’ draft. I hope to see some “behind the scenes” approach to what they push out. The Kings hold the #19 pick.

Toronto Maple Leafs: @MapleLeafs

The Leafs social population has been growing steadily this past year and the team does not have a pick until the 3rd round. Toronto previously traded away it’s 1 first round pick – which turned out to be the second pick over all in this year’s draft now held by Boston. In a year with two very strong prospects, the fallout from that trade has been a PR issue for the Leafs. @MapleLeafs will be one to watch for a couple of reasons: 1) To see how other teams address the Leafs during the draft, and, 2) Leafs GM Burke has been known for draft day deals, and the team may look to move up and be more active.

I am certain that teams will also be active on Facebook, but Twitter represents a unique opportunity for events. Hopefully we will see a number of Twitpic photos, Twitvid videos as well as engaging updates from teams.

New Twitter Features Make it More Relevant

Published June 15, 2010 How To... , Twitter Leave a Comment
Tags: Twitter, Sports Marketing, Twitpic, Face Tagging, Geo Location

Useful Twitter photo sharing tool, Twitpic recently announced that it was rolling out a face tagging feature – one very similar to Facebook’s in which users can identify themselves in photos posted on the platform (the story on Mashable here).

This, along with other pic organizing tools brings Twitpic up a few notches in its usefulness for marketing and promotions. The contesting limitations imposed by Facebook last year forced social media marketers (who were not inclined to spend $10,000 on ads) to look elsewhere for engagement opportunities and Twitter/Twitpic has filled the void nicely.

Here’s a few ideas on how to use it for contests, promotions or community building:

Encourage your followers to twitpic themselves with @replys and #’s
Use face tagging for contests – have users upload pics of them in their jerseys/team apparel/merchandise
Have users upload pics of them near/outside your sponsors’ locations using @replys
Twitpic members of your front office/players with Twitter profiles
Use in combination with geo-location features

Face tagging brings with it a personal level of engagement to Twitter making it more visual. Personally, I believe that Twitter is an excellent mobile tool and the addition of face tagging and geo-location give it a greater sense of relevance.

How can you use these new features in your next Twitter campaign?

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Checking In on Facebook Places

Facebook Saturation and Web 3.0

NHL Draft: 3 Teams to Watch on Twitter

New Twitter Features Make it More Relevant

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