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United Way Seeks to Leverage NFL’s Social Media Strength

February 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The United Way, one of the largest charities in the United States is partnering with the NFL in an effort to leverage the football league’s huge social presence into heightened awareness of the charity and what it does.

The two entities are already long term partners, having worked together for almost four decades and it has been a common sight during NFL broadcasts to see one star or another stand up and talk about how he is working with the charity for the good of the community.

In addition players volunteer to work in the community one day a week performing a number of services including encouraging kids to stay in school, serving meals to the elderly, and helping to build homes for low-income families.

Now the United Way is seeking to take the relationship to another level, as the NFL’s success has helped it establish itself as a huge presence not just on the airwaves but also online and in a variety of social media outlets.
The charity is currently hiring people that it will call player promoters, and they will be assigned to promote specific NFL players, according to a piece in Mashable.

The NFL Player Promoter program will couple a promoter with a player in an effort to drive increased traffic to that player’s specific social media accounts. The players’ accounts will of course have a United Way message and so it will enable the charity to reach additional fans. According to Mashable the NFL has 4.6 million Facebook friends and 2 million Twitter followers.

Of course some players also have significant following in one or both of these places as well. Steelers’ Troy Polamalu has 2 million Facebook fans and 400,000 following him on Twitter, while Chad Ochocinco has a combined following of over 5 million, according to FanPagelist.com

However it should be noted that not all are United Way spokesmen. It is interesting to look at who are the most recommended accounts to follow on Twitter by CBS and to see how heavily followed some of the analyst and news sites are as well.

I believe that we will start seeing a fight in the future for additional partnerships, both charity ones such as the United Way as well as advertising ones in not only the NFL but in all major sports. Social media is an excellent way to reach fans, especially ones on the go, and it will be interesting to see how the leagues manage to monetize this trend.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, CBS Sports, Facebook, Mashable, NFL, NFL Network, Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

GMR Survey Pinpoints how Sports Fans use Social Media

February 13, 2012 by 1 Comment

The folks over at GMR Marketing have put together a nice infographic on sports and social media based on a survey it performed with fans to see how and why they preferred their sports and a look at the impact that new delivery methods have had on more traditional ones such as television and radio.

The survey was broken down into five easy to follow sections pinpointing fan interests and revealing a few interesting tidbits such as fans today are ten times as likely to check Facebook or Twitter for breaking sports news than tune into sports radio. Of course considering some of the callers I have heard on sports radio they may not be able to use Twitter or Facebook.

The five sections cover the popularity of social media in overall sports media; how sports fans will check in with social media anywhere, even church; a follow up on how fans will use social media while watching games; a list of some of the top sports areas being followed on Twitter and an uptake on how advertising is viewed.

A few take always were that a majority of people not mind or are positive about advertising, which is good news for sites trying to make a buck; people follow top sports reporters and sites that have rumors- I guess they are not the same. One last note is that 33% of fans will check out how an event is gong even in a business meeting-where are you right now?

Head on over and check out what they have found in this space.

Filed Under: Athlete to Follow, Facebook, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , ,

Does Cisco Have the Inside Sponsor Track for Niners’ New Stadium?

February 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Fair warning: This is all conjecture, and not based on any interviews or inside information. But based on some cognizant observations as well as just sheer geography, it is our guess that networking giant Cisco might have the inside sponsorship track for the new football stadium being considered for the San Francisco 49ers.

Now with $200 million in NFL money in hand, it appears that the Niners’ planned move south to the Silicon Valley burb of Santa Clara is as close to a done deal as possible. For the moment, our question is, what corporate name will grace the concourses of the soon-to-be-built temple of football from among the many choices in cash-rich Silicon Valley?

At the top of the guess list you can put Cisco, whose main corporate campus lies just a few blocks down Tasman Drive from the new stadium site. Though Cisco’s historic bent has been to pursue sponsorship of a new baseball stadium for the Oakland A’s (first a failed attempt to build one in the East Bay town of Fremont, and now with hopeful plans for a new stadium in San Jose), the company’s Connected Stadium business would have some serious egg on its face if it couldn’t win the big deal just down the street. But we haven’t heard any rumors that Cisco is even the front runner, so which other companies might be in the race?

How about cash-rich Apple, which has nearly $100 billion stuffing its corporate wallet, or nearby search king Google? Though neither company has a history of sports sponsorships a “Google Stadium” or an “Apple Field” could be an international jewel of a marketing vehicle, acting as a base for either company to demonstrate devices, applications and other innovations in a setting that would regularly draw lots of foot traffic as well as national media attention.

Other candidates could include Oracle, whose leader Larry Ellison has been more involved than any other Silicon Valley in sports sponsorship — both via Oracle’s existing name sponsorship of Oakland’s Oracle Arena, home of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, and in Ellison’s out-front leadership in bringing the America’s Cup boat race to San Francisco Bay. And how about the idea of “Facebook Field,” a place where fans could “like” just by showing up. With a huge IPO on the way, Facebook might want to use some of that cash to show up its older Silicon Valley neighbors by sponsoring the Niners’ new home.

What’s your guess? Chime in via the comments. Gratuitous new-stadium video follows.

Filed Under: Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, NFL Tagged With: , ,

NCAA’s March Madness Connects With Facebook

February 6, 2012 by 1 Comment

I was reading an interesting piece in Mashable about a partnership between Facebook and the NCAA in regards to the March Madness tournament that featured a fan contest and so I hustled on over to participate.

I imagined glory in my picking ability; after all I was first in my pool last year. Well at least after the first day, overall I finished dead last which one fellow member told me was almost mathematically impossible, but these things happen.

Sadly when I got to the Facebook page the contest was closed, which was a pity. However it was not a contest to pick the winners of the tournament, although one of those might be in the offing. Rather the contest, called the Super 10, is a very cleaver twist on the tournament and really meant for a much more serious college hoops fan than myself.

The contest selected 10 hardcore fans and teaches them about the intricacies of the selection process and how the choices are made. It was more than just filling out a form or sending in your name, A 30-second video was required as well in which the entrant needed to explain why their in-depth understanding of the sport made them the perfect choice for the contest. After the entries are all in a fan vote would select the 10 winners.

Well sadly that is all said and done and now 10 people will be flown to Atlanta and given a 4 day/3 night stay with tickets to the ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament and a tour of Turner studios as part of the prize.

What is interesting is that this is a very clever way for the NCAA to tout its tournament in a new way to fans using social media as the primary tool to attract them and to judge the winners. All this without getting into trouble by looking like they are promoting gambling, which they would never do.

As a first attempt to partner with social media it is a very strong one, and the only failing I can see is that it was not well enough known by some groups of fans. I talked to a number of huge hoops fans while watching the Super Bowl and most said that they would have liked to participate, although several expressed some concern about making the video.

According to the stats on the Facebook site roughly 217,000 liked the contest, but that is really just a drop in the bucket. There will probably be that many office pools in California alone once the tournament starts.

This is the first partnership between Facebook and the NCAA and it will surely not be the last. The power of social media is growing daily, from a source of protest to positioning products. With almost a billion users it is an easy tool for the NCAA to reach both its base but also to reach out to new markets.

Filed Under: Facebook, NCAA Hoops, NCAA.com Tagged With: , ,

Golden State Warriors Giving Fans Instant Social Media Payoffs

February 2, 2012 by 5 Comments

With a new coach in Mark Jackson and some new owners at the helm the Golden State Warriors are trying hard to forge a new way to make the NBA playoffs. But while the team so far is struggling to find a winning combination on the court, in the world of social media the Warriors are scoring big with some well-thought promotions that are giving fans instant gratification — like going on the court to shoot free throws — for simply connecting via social media.

I’ve been following the Warriors on Facebook and it seems like at every home game there’s a different promotion. But unlike some team promos that are hard to value, the Warriors seem intent on giving their fans access to things that used to be off limits — like letting them sit in on post-game interviews, or the latest one shown in these pictures, letting the first 200 fans who check in on Facebook on the Oracle Arena parquet to shoot some charity shots post-game.

I am in favor of promotions that give fans something cool to do (meet players, run laps on a baseball field) instead of some of the other ones surfacing these days where people need to sort of act like trained monkeys to win. I’m generally don’t like “contests” that award some prize to the person who shoots the funniest video, or wins fan voting to get a social media job. That seems like rewarding people for being social media experts, with a prize that’s not really fan-based.

Instead, I admire giveaways like the Warriors’ which may not be high in value but connect directly to what a fan wants to do: Be more immersed in the team they love. And by running the promos through Facebook check-in the Warriors are making them easily accessible to any fan with a mobile device (meaning everyone) and via the application (Facebook) that everyone already uses. In other words, no need for extra heavy lifting (shooting a video) but instant fun for fans. Social, mobile and sports. Go Warriors.

UPDATE: Just saw this relevant tweet:

Filed Under: Contests, Facebook, NBA, Sports Social Media Tagged With: , ,

Australian Open 2012 Embraces Social Media

January 18, 2012 by 4 Comments

Do you miss the days of Evonne Goolagong and wooden rackets? Do you have no idea what the first sentence meant but like watching tennis and regret that the Australian Open is half a world away and so difficult to catch much of the action live?

Well the 2012 edition of the famed tournament has stepped up in the digital and social media space and presents a number of methods in which a fan can either catch live action or at least get a steady stream of comments and updates, easily and from a desktop or a mobile device.

As noted in Mashable this could be the most advanced use of social media in a tournament and that there is a wide variety of tournament sponsored avenues in which fans can follow the action, as well as comment on the action as it occurs. This has been a growing tradition at the tournament and one that others sports events can learn from as a tool to heighten fan engagement.

The official site has a range of tools that can meet fans needs on a variety of levels. Want to see video replays of highlights, player interviews or of the most popular players in action? They have that. Want to listen on the radio; there is a feature for that when the matches are being broadcast live.

There is a core feature called Fan Central that brings input from fans into the game. It contains what is called a ‘Social Leaderboard’ that contains a pool of 40 players that were selected due to their popularity. Fans can tweet about one of them using a hashtag that relates to their name, or ‘like’ content on australianopen.com that includes them and with every tweet or like they get points to rise in a leaderboard. You are not limited to just following these 40 as the site enables you to follow any player, popular or not.

The most active tweeters will have the opportunity to become ‘Fanbassadors’ that will be recognized on the tournaments official web site.

But it is not just fan twitters that are available. The tournament has staffed @AustralianOpen, a 24 Twitter feed. For the less serious, or more I guess, there is a feature for predicting outcomes as well as one that enables you to put captions onto photos. You can even submit a short film about the ‘Tennis Essence’ with the winner being played at the tournament.

Of course you can follow on Facebook, but if that is too static there are mobile apps for both Apple iPhones and Android based smartphones. There will also be the more traditional information you would expect-draws, schedules, how to get tickets and an overall event guide.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Apps, Athlete to Follow, iPhone, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, Mashable, Smartphone, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,
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