Many people call Linkedin the “Facebook for business”. I’m not 100% in agreement with that statement, but Linkedin certainly is a powerful and important social network. Personally, Linkedin has been vital in my own experience having been the stating point for projects, clients and even full time jobs. I consider being on Linkedin a must.

As sports sales teams are out there looking to increase their sponsor business – and for many accounts, this means the incorporation of social spaces, I think it makes sense for sales departments and marketing teams to spend some time ensuring their presence on Linkedin is strong.

Here’s how:

• Update your “Company” profile – Marketing should have a look at this; be consistent with other messages
• Ensure that all sales people have profiles – using Linkedin as a business development tool is essential in this space…
  • Reach out/connect with sponsors/contacts = Re-enforce existing relationships
  • Continue to build out networks and contacts
• Is the Executive/Management team represented? This lends to credibility…
• Consider starting a business networking group for your teams’ fans
• Link to other social media platforms

If you are selling the social space, you need to be on Linkedin. It just makes sense.

More about using Linkedin as a business development tool by clicking here.

Very recently, Facebook as taken a pretty conservative position in light of privacy laws on running contests from the platform itself. In fact, Facebook has zero interest in allowing it to happen and restricts this activity to 3rd party apps. The fear here is that personal information may be exchanged via Facebook, something they want to stay very far away from. Contesting frequently requires the exchange of personal information – contact info, phone #’s, email addresses, etc…

Unfortunately for many, this directly limits the immediacy, and direct engagement that Facebook offers a team and their online market. Taking these activities off the platform limits viral visibility and community awareness.

Failure to comply with this new mandate could result in account restrictions, blocks or shut downs – this can grind your social media activity and current sponsorship integrations to a halt.

This is a constantly changing landscape and markerters need to be adaptable and quick to change course. Facebook has been less than pro-active in letting marketers know about these changes and many contests have been interrupted and shut down in the middle of the promotion.

Here’s a link with a story/more background about a global brand – IKEA – and their Facebook contest. CLICK HERE.

Running a contest right now? Got questions? Use my Contact Page…

Got your Facebook Fan Page with several thousand Fans? CHECK.

Great – you’re taking advantage of social media platforms to engage your fans. And now you have a presence that is EXACTLY the same as every other team in your league or market. You need to do something different for two important reasons:

• To monetize the space
• To differentiate

After establishing and earning your fans and followers, its time to take the next step and make this place your own. Custom tabs allow you to do this. Here’s how:

1. Use the search on Facebook to find “FBML”. This is an app that will allow you to add a custom tab and fill it with any HTML you like… FBML stands for Facebook Markup Language.  You will find the first result is “Static FBML” and has about 10M+ users.  Click on it.
2. Click on “Add to my Page” under the FBML logo.
3. It will ask what Page you want to add it to (as you may have more than 1 page), so simply choose the Page you want to add your custom tab to.
4. Go to your Fan Page.
5. Click on “Edit Page”.
6. Find the FBML app on your list – Click on “Edit”.
7. Give your new Tab a title – you can come back and change it any time/as often as you like.
8. In the FBML field, you can enter any HTML you want to make your custom tab.
9. Click on Save.
10. Add your new Tab by clicking on the “+” at the end of your Tab row from the Wall.

A couple of tips and things you should know:

• You’ve only got room for so many tabs, so Facebook will/may bump one to accommodate your new Tab. You can click on each Tab to delete (and bring it back later if you like with the “+”).
• You can change the order of your Tabs by dragging and dropping them.
• I suggest you build a dummy profile and a dummy Page to test things out before to start playing around with your real Fan Page. Get it right and then update/enhance your Page for real.

You can use your new Tab for sponsors, promotions, contests, you name it…

Want to see some examples? Click on the following…

• Here’s the Carolina Hurricane’s “Promotions” Tab
• Here’s the Vancouver Canucks “Contests” Tab
• And the NHL’s custom Tab
• And the Chicago Blackhawks “Mobile” Tab

Good luck! Got some other interesting or innovative custom Tabs? Please let me know…

Links – hands down. But there is a differing of opinion on a few factors. I’m going to focus on Twitter for this post as it is great at link sharing.

Here’s an article based on the idea that more followers = higher CTRs (Clickthrough Rates).

And here is one that goes against that idea.

Now these ideas in social media marketing are still kinda new and in the world of sports marketing, Twitter followers are generally over 10K. But what seems quite clear is that in social media spaces, providing information via links that your market cares about is a solid way to go.

Keep in mind – we are in the social media space here – when looking at sponsors, we need to position them as partners. Dropping any old corporate link into your Twitter stream may not sit well with your followers so you need to consider who or what your corporate partners offer that will best suit your base. These people can “unfollow” you very quickly, and will do so if they feel that what they are receiving is not of interest to them. They are there to follow your team – your product – so you need to build social media sponsorships in collaboration with your sponsors that will give them – and your followers, something they value.

Here’s why…

Let’s say you have a Pro Sports Team Facebook Fan Page – and a brand – one that is not currently a sponsor of yours – shows up and engages your brand on Facebook. The viral nature of Facebook makes this action visible to many, possibly thousands of other people. Is this kind of brand interaction “fair” to your other (paying) sponsors who are not actively engaging your brand on Facebook?

Perhaps fair is the wrong word, but you get the idea. Social media is a platform – and yes – it is a free one, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that brand interaction in this space does not have a price. In fact, I would counter that it does.

As teams and leagues begin to negotiate the social media space (check out the NHL’s new Fan Page that launched recently) these kinds of questions need to be asked and addressed. These are the kinds of answers and strategies that I build. More on just how to do that in a later post…

What do you think? Can brands be Friends?

Check out the link for the webinar by clicking here. Hurry – it’s this Thursday, August 6th!

This great presentation comes from a contact of mine - Trevor Turnbull at zu. These are the folks who built StampsConnect which I posted about a few weeks ago. I received some great feedback on this site – this should be an informative webinar and I encourage you to join in and check it out.

I first met Trevor via Twitter during the Pens/Caps series of the NHL playoffs – since then we have traded lots of good ideas. Zu is working on some exciting stuff, so be sure to attend.

So let’s compare and contrast what Calgary has on the go.

StampsConnect vs. C of Red

First off – “The C of Red” hits a little too close to the “Red” brand/tag used by the Washington Capitals. (POST SCRIPT: Please review the comment by Rowan regarding other NHL teams use of “Red” as a tag or brand. My apologies to the Flames, I was wrong.)

KickApps is more of a “push” strategy, as opposed to a “pull” strategy employed by StampsConnect. In order to be a member of the C of Red, fans must sign up via the NHL in order to participate. With StampsConnect – users can simply view and leverage the social media content already out there on the Internet now. These same social media sites – namely Facebook and Twitter – are available to the C of Red as well, but exist completely outside of it.

StampsConnect succeeds because it is so simple – by leveraging the web tools and content that is already there, fans do not have to sign up for anything new, or “float” between platforms/logins to be part of the community.

Ultimately – these networks build loyalty and fan investment and will drive revenue indirectly as such. There is limited opportunity for sponsorship via KickApps itself as this would result in traditional web advertising possibilities. However, via true social media networks – sponsorship is much more dynamic and open to possibilities – not to mention the viral component of user visibility that provides a greater marketing footprint.

Summary

It remains to be seen how NHL teams will be using the KickApps platform – and what kind of engagement their fans provide vs. existing social media networks. I believe the goal is not to build isolated networks that borrow concepts of sharing and connection – but work with sites that are already doing this like Facebook and Twitter. Smart teams will be making the most of these opportunities and layering on sponsorship activation to provide a ROI in addition to fan loyalty and engagement.

It’s a bit too early to start talking about the NFL, and MLB is not the most social media focused league in town.

So one might think that there is very little to discuss regarding social media and sports right now – but that would be a mistake. Now is a very important time for teams and leagues to keep fans engaged.

Why? Because, if you follow my path to social media then you know that sponsorship is not far behind. Through social media, there are still opportunities to keep fans active, and to keep sponsors activated.

Consider the following… How can you leverage:

• Ticket Sales – Do you have a social media angle for marketing tickets?
• Contests/Give Aways – Are you giving your market a reason to keep plugged in?
• Off Season Drafts/Trades/Personnel Changes – Can you provide perspectives and insight from the source?
• Discussion – Can you generate discussion and debate?
• Access – Can you provide visibility on team insiders?
• Announcements – Can you release info via social networks prior to a press release?

If you give your market good reasons to stay plugged in – then they will. Staying plugged in is what your sponsors want and need to see.

Here is What You Need to Know About It…

Have a look for yourself by clicking right here; the link is to a search on Sports.

You’ll notice how WolframAlpha presents information. Not links to websites like Google does, but information and context about your query. WolframAlpha can do things that Google can’t – and that means that the rest of the world can access information about you and your brand in ways they haven’t before.

Now, these are the very early days for WolframAlpha – it’s pretty good with some things, like the NFL or MLB teams – but it doesn’t know what to do with “Chicago Bulls” (it displays the distance bewteen Chicago, IL and Bulls -  a location in New Zealand), but it will be getting smarter in the days ahead.

WolframAlpha is a “computational knowledge engine” and represents the shift in focus of the current Internet (web2.0) to the semantic web (web3.0). Exactly how WolframAlpha will impact the business of sports remains to be seen. But now teams and fans alike have a new tool to drill down on information. It can provide statistical info, comparisons, analysis – a new set of tools to open doors.

Whatever WolframAlpha doesn’t know now is just a matter of time until it does. When it does encounter something new, it displays the icon on the right and informs the user “Development of this topic is under investigation…”

Start by searching on your brand or your team now. And keep looking back…

The skinny: Through Direct Contact, I provide social media consulting services. Working with IBT now gives me the opportunity to work with sports teams to build customized applications for Facebook. This is an exciting development as now teams can:

• Take the fan experience even deeper by redefining the online experience through the custom development of their own applications
• Differentiate their brand from other teams on Facebook and outpace competitive interests
• Include unique sponsorship activation through product placement or advertising
• Improve and enhance their current Facebook presence and social media focus

This helps elevate social media engagement strategies to a direct ROI level with bottom line impact. IBT’s games yield engagement levels 4x greater than that of average top applications on social media – that means more eyeballs spending more time on your team, your brand and your sponsors.

This is a total solution approach. Many teams have adopted social media strategies, but they are unable to differentiate themselves online within their league let alone their own local markets. Direct Contact nad IBT Games now allows them to do just that.

I should be clear that anyone can use IBT’s games on Facebook right now – my partnership with IBT allows sports teams to build similar games or high level engagement apps focused on their own league, team and brand. Teams may have ideas but lack the technical resources to develop such apps, but through my partnership with IBT, we can provide the full solution.

For more information on IBT Games – please visit their website, or contact me with any questions you may have.