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The Impact of Social Media on Sports Marketing

Social media and sports marketing are a perfect fit.

I was very pleased to read Pat Coyle’s article from the Sports Business Journal about social networking and fans (SBJ is subscription based, so the article link is on Pat’s Sports Marketing 2.0 site).

Over the past several months, I’ve been reading a lot of Pat’s blog and info posted on his Linkedin Group – and it was great to see the similar content and thinking we have in why sports teams/leagues should care about social media and social networks.

Definitely take a minute a read Pat’s article, but here’s the high level take-aways:

• Social media isn’t about technology, it’s about fans
• Build online fan communities to allow them to connect with one another, and in turn – to the team
• Leverage community #’s to make $ via e-commerce
• Sponsorship opportunities present themselves by increasing visits to team sites

  • And I’d like to personally add – through social media sites themselves
    

This is all relatively new for many teams – and building/managing fan generated content and opening up sponsorship opportunities  is the task that many teams are uncertain about how to proceed with…

The other part of the story that I like to bring to this topic is integrating social networks into sales training. When it comes to ticket sales or sponsorships, the consistency of use in social media platforms not only goes a long way from a sales methodology perspective, but the simple fact that social networking tools get results for sellers is key.