Social Media + Sports
This framework was written for a class assignment my senior year of college (2018) and has not been updated since. View the framework in it’s original formatting here.
Social media is an integral part of sports marketing; it builds team loyalty, deliver direct content, and provides opportunities to personalize interactions with fans.
The Why
Social Media provides an opportunity to strengthen relationships with fans and create team loyalty. Abeza, O’Reilly, and Seguin (2017) highlight that social media provides an opportunity to “feel the pulse” of your fan-base at any given moment, learn about your fans, humanize your brand, maintain an ongoing dialogue, create a fan hub, deliver direct content, and provide customized customer service. Social media has become a key component of relationship marketing.
Yoon, Petrick, and Backman (2017) proposed and supported a conceptual model of Twitter’s moderating effects on fan loyalty (pg. 156). This model suggested that team attraction, team trust, and team involvement lead to team attachment, which consequently leads to fan loyalty. The authors found that team attachment was a key determinant of fan loyalty, and that the use of Twitter for a sport team, not only at a game, but more importantly throughout an individual’s daily life, enhanced the positive effects of perceived team attraction and team involvement on team attraction.
Twitter Marketing recently commissioned a study from Neuro-Insight that highlights the increased engagement and ad memorability that Twitter has on sports. Tercek, Elrhoul, and Lenahan (2018) reported that when used as a complement to TV, Twitter users show higher levels of memorability and engagement than those only watching TV. Interestingly users who are only using Twitter to follow a sporting event also exhibit higher engagement (+60%) and memorability (+59%) than a TV-only audience. Both Twitter ads and TV ads are more effective for those who are following an event on Twitter and TV. These results indicate that a second screen makes sporting events more engaging and memorable. More importantly, ad memorability increases potential for sponsorships and partnerships with other brands.
Nielson identifies the modern fan as a fan who stays connected through technology and extends the definition of “sports.” The modern fan seeks social connection, is fueled by a community ecosystem, and craves dynamic engagement. Further, the modern fan wants authenticity, grows with both the team and the sport, defies expectations, and recognizes the role of sponsorship.
Success Stories
Golden State Warriors. The Golden State Warriors have seen a 300% increase over the prior season in digital revenue since revamping their digital strategy. Starting during the 2015-16 season, the Warriors switched to an impressions-based model to ensure that all parties had “skin in the game” to create engaging content. It worked – last year the Warriors generated 600 million engagements across all channels (Badenhausen, 2018). A case study published by Instagram (2016) shows that during the 2015-16 season, the Warriors saw a 14.8x return on ad spending on Instagram for merchandising and ticket sales. Further, team sponsorship revenue has increased 25% annually in recent years, showing that an innovative digital strategy has financial benefits elsewhere (Badenhausen, 2018).
Portland Trailblazers. The Portland Trailblazers were able to double their return on ad spend from last year, to a 14x return on ad spend, through immersive ads on Instagram Stories and in-feed Instagram ads. Specifically, they have seen a 56x return on ad spend for in-feed Instagram advertisements and a 33x return on Instagram Stories advertisements. They have also seen a 10% increase on mobile ticket purchases from these ad campaigns. There has also been 10x revenue increase in sponsorship on social media (Beer, 2018).
Strategic Framework
The Foundation
A. Current State + Challenges
B. Goals/Objectives
C. Audience Segmentation
Content Philosophy
A. Platform Breakdown
B. Brand Identity
C. Ideas
Distribution
A. Organic or Paid
Review
A. Best + Worst Practices
The Foundation. The first place to start is by talking to all departments within the organization to determine the current state of your brand. Internally, what do you think your brand is? Externally, how do consumers currently think about your brand? How do you want people to think of your brand? How can social help guide to where you want to end up? What challenges does your organization currently face?
From there, specific goals can be determined. For ex- ample, social media could be used to reach a younger audience, drive ticket sales, personalize customer service, and/or increase brand engagement. Make each goal measurable; success will look different based on the actual content of the post (e.g. video vs. Twitter poll), but it is important to ensure that your overarching goal is measurable. Where goals are broad, objectives need to be specific – use both when defining your strategy.
After defining the current state, challenges, goals, and objectives you need to determine who your audience is. Gather as much data as possible and create audience segmentations or personas. For ex- ample, the Chicago Cubs have three main personas: Generation George, the Wrigley Wes, and the Die-Heart Dave. The Generation George’s are those that are very invested in the organization and they are so because their families have long been Cub’s fans. Wrigley Wes’s are the social fan, they go to games largely for the environment. The Die-Heart Dave’s are focused on statistics and they are a logistical baseball fan; they want numbers and specifics. Understanding your audience and segmenting it properly is key to creating content that will be effective in reaching your goals and objectives.
Content Philosophy. Not all platforms are created equally, therefore, content and copy should be optimized for each platform. Create a platform breakdown that highlights objectives for each platform, given each platform’s strengths, weaknesses, and audience. The Arizona Coyotes prioritize talking all things hockey on Twitter, videos are king on Face- book, strong images and short copy meant to appeal to millennials reign supreme on Instagram, and they keep it raw on Snapchat by taking viewers behind the scenes. A platform breakdown is useful in identifying what content will work best on which platforms and ensuring that you have a diverse cross-platform social media presence. Some teams will approach this more from the audience perspective since different audiences live on different plat- forms, however, a platform breakdown is extremely useful to clearly outline specific objectives.
Another option for thinking of a platform breakdown would be considering the limitations and main users of each platform. Below are just a few generalities of three platforms you might consider:
Skews older in demographics • Algorithm is not time-specific
Younger demographic
IG stories are in time-sequential order, but posts are not
Limited to 1 minute of video
Demographics ranges more than Instagram and Facebook
Time-specific, but also curated by engagement
Limited to 2:20 minutes of video
The next step is to create a brand identity. Having a consistent brand image increases fan’s ability to recognize your content. A key component of your brand identity is your ‘voice.’ Do you want to be relatable, witty, funny, or serious? Social media allows for the humanization of your brand, and ‘voice’ is a key tool in this aspect (Abeza, O’Reilly, and Seguin, 2017). Your ‘voice’ will be unique to your brand, and in the formation of your fan’s relationship with your organization. For example, the Coyotes strive to be relatable and want to be your favorite person to watch a game with. The Cub’s focus on being over- all light-hearted while tailoring their voice to what audience persona they are addressing. When post- ing something meant to appeal to the Generational George’s their voice will be more sentimental, but if the post if aimed at the Die-heart Dave’s they will be more straightforward and factual.
Once you have outlined your platform breakdown and defined your brand identity, the fun begins. Now that you have a strong foundation, it is time to create content. Keep your goals, objectives, brand identity, and audience segments in mind during this creative phase.
Distribution. Once you have content you need to decide how to distribute it. Paid social media is growing and as the algorithms change on each platform, organic reach is struggling. However, paid campaigns may not always be the best way to achieve your goals. This is where the measurables you defined earlier come into play. Test both paid and organic campaigns. Start small with paid and ensure that you are getting the right returns before investing more money. Collect data on how much you spent and what the outcomes was, so you can show partners and upper management the true value of each campaign. This will also be useful if you need to charge sponsors more; having actionable data to show that you are charging a fair price will create better relationships between your partners. Data is king and will provide insights into what is working and what is not.
Review. Social media is constantly evolving, therefore, your strategies should as well. Consistently evaluating best and worst practices, top content, and objectives will ensure that your team stays on top of trends and technological advancements. Experimentation is necessary on social media, but you should keep track of what works and what does not. For example, the Carolina Panthers posted a picture of a player with a song lyric as the copy. This post performed well on Twitter and Instagram where the audience was familiar with the song, however, on Facebook the audience is skewed older and the copy did not resonate with this audience. Reviewing your social strategy, posts, and the measurables that you have defined may be a monthly event, or quarterly, or any amount of time that works for your team. What truly matters is that your social media strategy is flexible to adapt to a constantly evolving media environment.
Wrap Up
Social media is an integral part of sports marketing;
vides opportunities to personalize interactions with fans. A team’s voice on social media has the potential to humanize and create a community surrounding your brand. These are fundamental pieces of building relationships, which is what today’s connected fan craves.
There are many moving pieces that surround the sports industry that make having a stable social media strategy difficult. Fans today expect a completely different experience than any of us did when we were growing up. Attention is now a form of currency. Technology changes faster than we can learn it. However, if you have a strong foundation you will be able to adapt to changes within existing platforms and new technological advances.
A Note About My Framework
I built this framework from insights I gained through my four years running the Cornell wrestling social media accounts, a blog post written by Jess Smith (Senior Manager of Digital and Social Media Strategy, New York Yankees), and my interviews with three social media managers; Nicole Bersani (Digital Media Coordinator, Chicago Cubs), Marissa O’Connor (Director of Social Media Strategy, Arizona Coyotes), and Anastasia Williams (Content Coordinator, Carolina Panthers).
References
Abeza, G., O’Reilly, N., and Seguin, B. (2017). Social Media in Relationship Marketing: The Perspective of Professional Sport Managers in the MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL. Communication and Sport, 13-17. Retrieved from: http://journals.sagepub.com.proxy.library.cornell.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/2167479517740343.
Badenhausen, K. (2018, February 23). New Digital Strategy For Golden State Warriors Pushes Revenue Up 300%. Forbes. Retrieved from: https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.forbes. com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/02/23/new-digital-strategy-for-golden-state-warriors-pushes-reve- nue-up-300/&refURL=&referrer=.
Beer, J. (2018, April 20). How the Portland Trail Blazers Became NBA (Social Media) Champs. Fast Company. Retrieved from: https://www.fastcompany.com/40561449/how-the-portland-trail-blazers-became-nba- social-media-champs?utm_source=Newsletters&utm_campaign=8d023c0b58-HSD_Apl_20_2018&utm_ medium=email&utm_term=0_3f77fb2fcb-8d023c0b58-309983737.
Bersani, N. (2018, March 9). Digital Media Coordinator, Chicago Cubs. Interview.
Golden State Warriors (2016). Instagram Business. Retrieved from: https://business.instagram.com/suc- cess/golden-state-warriors/.
O’Connor, M. (2018, March 12). Director of Social Media Strategy, Arizona Coyotes. Interview.
Smith, J. (2018, February 1). A Content Strategy Framework. Social n Sport. Retrieved from: http://so- cialnsport.com/a-content-strategy-framework/.
Tercek, A., Elrhoul, M., and Lenahan, L. (2018, January18). Twitter Changes the Live TV Sports Viewing Ex- perience. Twitter. Retrieved from: https://marketing.twitter.com/na/en/insights/twitter-changes-the-live- tv-sports-viewing-experience.html.
Williams, A. (2018, March 19). Content Coordinator, Carolina Panthers. Interview.
Yoon, S., Petrick, J. F., and Backman, S. J. (2017). Twitter Power and Sport-Fan Loyalty: The Moderat- ing Effects of Twitter. International Journal of Sports Communication, 10(2), 153-177. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1123/IJSC.2017-0010.