Yesterday I sat down with Justin Cener, Founder of Crowd Seats, to discuss how sports organizations can use group-buying deal sites as part of their sales efforts and what’s unique about the Crowd Seats product compared to other options.

Justin, give us a brief overview of Crowd Seats?

Crowd Seats is the first and only daily deals site for sports tickets. We offer amazing sports ticket deals for 50-90% off face value with no added ticket fees. Consumers love us because we offer great tickets for great games at unbelievable prices. Teams and events love working with us because we’ve created a medium to generate revenue on distressed and last-minute ticket inventories. We focus on one niche – sports, and our business is built to meet the needs of sports teams.

In general, how do you see discount and group-buying sites adding value to sports organizations? What trends have you seen in this area?

Sports tickets are the ideal match for the daily deals model. Sports ticket inventory is perishable – if you don’t sell it, you lose it. Teams have an incentive to offer discounts in order to salvage this perishable inventory.

Further, the nature of attending a sporting event solves the issue of overage spending. Deal sites have had to battle a lack of overage spending as customers would buy a deal and not spend a dime extra. For each ticket sold, teams can count on additional per-cap revenues in the forms of parking, concessions, and souvenirs. $20 parking, $8 beers, and $6 hot dogs add up quick and represent a significant revenue stream for teams.

How should teams best manage the risks associated with discounting tickets? Are there any best practices you recommend?

Teams know they need to discount to salvage distressed/last-minute inventory, but they hate offering discounts to their full-price-paying customers. Teams can alleviate this risk by utilizing services like deal sites to promote the offer to their own user bases. We do recommend that the team provides as big of a discount as possible without going too far past their season ticket price.

How important is the group/social component of these sites in driving sales?

Going to a sports game is a social event, a group event. Further, getting a great deal is a social event as well so the two mesh nicely together. In order for these deals to be really successful, there needs to be a social element to it. That means social media needs to play a huge role in both increasing deal exposure and driving sales from social proof. There is no better advertisement than one that comes from a customer that is sharing his/her purchase. As an example, with Crowd Seats, over 1/3 of our sales come directly from Facebook or Twitter.

What is different about Crowd Seats compared to other non-sports-specific sites like Groupon and LivingSocial?

As a niche daily deal site focusing on sports tickets. we’re able to build our business to meet the needs of sports teams. We’ve spoken to over 50 teams and events nationwide and listened to what they were and were not happy with when working with deal sites. Armed with this data, we built Crowd Seats to give teams another avenue to move inventory on their terms.

Most importantly, we differentiate ourselves from Groupon, Living Social, etc in two major ways. First, we offer the most aggressive revenue split in the industry – by far. Our revenue split gives the team a much larger share, leaving them with far more revenue per ticket than they would receive with other sites. Second, we provide full customer contact information to our partner teams so they can build their customer base. So, we’re not only generating revenue, we’re driving highly targeted leads to teams. This has been extremely well received by teams and has been a driving force behind a lot of our relationships. As a niche site, users who sign up show a pre-determined interest in our partner’s products and we consider them to be highly targeted leads for teams.

What’s next for Crowd Seats?

Currently, we’re live in two markets, New York and Los Angeles. We’ve sold over 250 tickets to date and we’re aggressively targeting new markets to enter. In total, we see 16 potential markets nationwide and we’ve already begun to build relationships with many teams in those regions.

You can connect with Justin Cener on LinkedIn or on Twitter at @CrowdSeats.

In case you didn’t know, I’m a big social media advocate. I love what it can do for people and business alike, creating content, conversation and active communities. In turn, when I see unique opportunities and promotions based around this space, I love to share them here, which bring me to the “Ultimate Sports Social Media Job” program created by Xfinity.

Here is a quick summary of the contest and what the winner can receive:

“Comcast’s Xfinity Service is launching a contest to hire an individual who will serve as the new voice of Xfinity in the sports social media space and go behind-the-scenes at some of the biggest nationwide sporting events in 2012, sharing exclusive insights and updates with fans. The contest, entitled “Xfinity Presents: The Ultimate Sports Social Media Job,” runs from January 13 through March 25 in search of the next sports social media star.”

“The winner will receive a one-year salary and will be responsible for tweeting from the @XFINITYSports Twitter handle on continual basis,  reporting live from premier sporting events throughout 2012, and educating and engaging avid sports fans in social media communities. In addition to live event access, the winner will also receive all the electronics for the ultimate sports pad, including televisions, home audio/video equipment, etc.”

Anyone who is interested can apply through their Facebook page at Facebook.com/Xfinity. You have to share a video (up to 2 minutes) pitching why you’re the perfect person for this role based on your knowledge and passion for sports, social media and Comcast (after all, the winner will be working for them!). The top entries will be featured on this page and voted on by fans, with the top 5 advancing to the finals. These lucky five will get a trial run covering a premier sporting event in early March, and then a panel of celebrity judges will make the final decision on a winner who will get to travel to and cover some of the biggest sporting events for an entire year.

So, if this is your ultimate sports and social media dream job, make sure to enter ASAP. Also, if you are a reader of this blog and decide to apply, please let us know in the comments so we can check out your entries. I’d love to throw my support behind one of our fans, sharing your entry on the site and in the newsletter. Good luck!

Last week, Coyle Media released a great infographic on how sports fans use various social media check-in services. It’s interesting to see how the results vary by sport (unfortunately, there’s no data on MLB), how sports venues compare to other types of check-in locations, and the most effective ways to drive check-ins.

Personally, I have concerns about the long-term success of geolocation-based services, but the poll does show that there is definite value in this service when it comes to sporting events. So even if the overall adoption rate in these services lags behind other social media channels, it shouldn’t be overlooked by sports organizations.

Sports Marketing from Coyle Media, LLC.

Digital Fan Marketing Summits, created and organized by Pat Coyle, are educational events designed to help attendees increase revenues through digital media. Pat normally hosts a few of these per year, most recently in Los Angeles and New York. His next event is coming up on October 11 in San Francisco, and I highly encourage folks to attend.

As a special offer for our readers, you can use the discount code sportsbiz to get $100 off the cost of admission!

Each summit attracts leading practitioners in digital publishing and brand marketing who share their experiences and latest thinking, build relationships and debate emerging opportunities such as:

• how to attract fans in digital channels
• how to generate value for these fans
• how to drive revenue from fans
• how to evaluate emerging trends and emerging technologies

Major discussion themes will include: social commerce, mobile commerce, location-based services, games, analytics and more. These 1-day events will feature keynote speakers, panel discussions, Ignite presentations, and ample networking opportunities.

For more information and to register, please visit http://dfm11-sf.eventbrite.com/.

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Caleb Mezzy.

Playing OF for the AL in this year’s #TweetStarGame, leading the league with a Klout score of 77.80, @JoeyBats19……

We’ve seen the recent activity and popularity of many of our favorite players on Twitter. I’m sure, by now, you have favorite players to follow based on their funny tweets or inside information.

However, have you ever thought about how influential the player is on Twitter? You can see their followers, their following and their tweets, but who is the best MLB player on Twitter to follow?

On July 6, I launched #TweetStarGame. The idea was to combine Klout with my love for baseball and Social Media. I wanted to see which player had the highest Klout score. On Klout.com it states: “The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.”

We wanted to find the best MLB players on Twitter at each position for both the American (AL) and National (NL) League. You’d be surprised at the scores we received and who is starting, on the bench, or flat out just didn’t make the cut!

Major League Baseball teams could use something like the #TweetStarGame as a positive way to gauge their players’ influence on fans. The most appealing thing in social media is your total outreach. These players are able to influence and engage with their fans all over the world. Klout helps to measure this for the individual players, and teams are also able to see their own organizational Klout score.

There are many teams in which their players have happily adopted social media and are using it wisely. The Yankees, Rays, are among the leaders in the AL and the Indians even have #BullpenMafia as a popular hashtag with their bullpen pitchers being popular tweeters. In the NL,  we’ve seen a recent rise in the Phillies’ players and a steady involvement with the Pirates and Marlins.

As Klout is a measure of online influence it is important to note a few moments that have caused MLB tweeters’ influence to rise. Here are a few instances:

• @HeathBell21 made the NL Bullpen in #TweetStarGame right after his grand entrance with a slide in the MLB All-Star Game
• Players like @HunterPence3 and @CarlosBeltran15 saw a rise in trade talks as they were welcomed by their new teams graciously using their handles. This led to more mentions and followers.
• Other players like @thisisdspan and @mcuddy5 received an increase in influence due to potential trade talks. Although Denard Span and Michael Cuddyer were never traded, their names wer frequently mentioned.
• Other tweeters new to the game of Twitter always see a significant spark in their Klout score. This is evident in Phillies’ Rookie Vance Worley (@VANIMAL_49) who started his Twitter career last week and is now seeing time in the #TweetStarGame bullpen for the NL.

The scores will update once a day. I encourage all of you to voice your opinion using #TweetStarGame. You can post comments on my site (see Caleb’s original blog post here) and use #TweetStarGame to congratulate the players (their handles/Twitter pages are linked) on their deserving spot in the #TweetStarGame.

Coyle Media has created a great info-graphic providing insight into the demographics, behaviors and affinity of fans that follow NHL teams on Twitter. Take a look…

[Via Coyle Media]

Some of the items that I found to be most interesting were:

• 78% attended at least one game, which is particularly impressive since only 68% live within the team’s metro area. These engaged Twitter users represent an important source of potential ticket revenue.
• 87% check Twitter multiple times a day, but only about 1/3 of these users have used a geolocation service. While geolocation has a lot of potential, the adoption rate is still much slower than other forms of social media usage.
• The fact that 88% are multi-screeners shows how much value fans see in social engagement as a key facet to the home viewing experience. The more that media outlets integrate social media, the better experience these viewers will have.

For more insights from Pay Coyle, including his thoughts on how this data relates to sponsorship potential, visit his blog post at CoyleMedia.com.

Update:  Coyle Media just released a similar info-graphic on Facebook usage – click below to view that one as well, or visit CoyleMedia.com for the complete blog post.

Sports Marketing from Coyle Media, LLC.

Rather that relying just on my opinion, earlier this morning I asked my Twitter network, “What does the #USWNT loss yesterday mean for the WPS and soccer in the US in general?” Let’s take a look at some of the different replies I received, ranging from quite positive to pretty gloomy…

From @timingle:  Loss is unfortunate but gives increased motivation to continue developing program. A strong, well-funded professional women’s league can only help the future of the #USWNT, it certainly can’t hurt it. Recent fans of the #USWNT need to be made AWARE of WPS. ‘Strike while the iron’s hot’, so to speak, capitalize on excitement.

From @gx5:  Means nothing for soccer in the US. Was never big, will never be that big here. Nothing changes. Huge hit for WPS though. People will continue to not care. Another Cup win could’ve temporarily boosted attendance.

From @andrewhfine:  Definitely a hit to lose, but game was well played and very entertaining. As far as attracting fans, thats better than 3-0 win.

From @ShekBorkowski:  Probably nothing. US fans are big event fans and a typical womens football club match just will not excite them. Not really possible to sustain that level of interest without media coverage we have witnessed since the BRA match.

From @Chris_Lesley:  It meant WPS being marketable for 3 months to not being marketable at all.

From @parkour_knox: As much as I loved them being there, even a win for #USWNT would have done very little for WPS or womens soccer in the US. The hype around the game was more about national pride and less about people caring about womens soccer #inmyopinion.

From @jonathan_norman: I think the strong overnights bode well for the long-term health of soccer. I still see growth potential, honestly. #sportsbiz

From @spencerlueders: Millions in $ and lost potential of young girls picking up the sport. London 2012 is next chance.

From @JoshuaABoren: Long term it benefits the game. Added lots of new fans & drove interest. Short term though, people will forget when NFL is back.

In addition, this was the first topic discussed in last night’s weekly #sbchat. You can check out the transcript here (thanks to @cannonjw for sending this over). What do you think the short- and long-term impact of yesterday’s match will be?

Today’s post is from guest blogger Brian Gainor, founder of Partnership Activation, a leading resource in sports business that showcases sports marketing and sponsorship trends, best practices, and creative activation tactics. Brian has also been featured as a guest writer for Darren Rovell’s CNBC SportsBiz column.

Sports leagues and organizations are turning to Facebook to offer fans more content, access, and interactivity than ever before. As sports entities begin to fully understand the value of social media, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have become critical channels in the marketing mix to promote messaging, drive participation and interest, and engage fans on a 24/7, 365 basis.

Teams can no longer rely on Wall posts, photos, and shareable videos to drive consumers to frequently visit their Facebook pages and stay for awhile. As a result, it’s important that teams identify and share best practices in the social media space both internally and externally.

Here are 50 creative ways that teams are engaging fans on Facebook outside the traditional elements:

1. Fans Map – FC Barcelona (Find FC Barcelona fans across the world)

2. Real Madrid Avatars – Real Madrid (Fans can create their own virtual avatar)

3. Arsenal “Like the Players” – Arsenal FC (Fans can easily like all the players on the team)

4. Spread the Word - Manchester United (Fans can easily invite their friends to join the Manchester United Facebook Page

5. Fountain Tire Shootout – Vancouver Canucks (Fans can play a virtual hockey game to win prizes and coupon vouchers)

6. 3-Point Play – Boston Celtics (Fans can compete in an interactive stats-related game to earn points)

7. Summer Salute – Team Lowe’s Racing (Fans can post a military salute or message to troops overseas)

8. Polls / Quizzes – NASCAR (Fans can test their NASCAR IQ via a number of quizzes and polls)

9. NBA Ball of Fame – NBA (Fans can click on basketballs to relive famous moments from the NBA Finals)

10. NBA Turnstile - NBA (Fans can “check-in” to NBA games on Facebook to chat with fans, win tickets and merchandise, and earn badges)

11. Support Your Team on Facebook! – NFL (Fans can scroll through an interactive tab to see where their favorite team ranks in popularity and intensity amongst all teams and within conference/division).

12. Shopping – Liverpool FC (Fans can quickly scroll through ultimate shopping ideas and can get easy access to the team’s mobile application)

13. JetBlue FaceOff – Boston Bruins (Fans can access game information, play games, win prizes, and more)

14. Mavs Spirit Photo Upload – Dallas Mavericks (Fans can submit their best photo wearing Mavericks gear for the chance to have it featured on the team’s Facebook page)

15. Fan Zone - New England Patriots (Fans can interact with polls, listen to live broadcasts, post comments, share virtual gifts, play trivia, and more)

16. Share Your Story – San Francisco 49ers (Fans can share why they are a Faithful Fan for the chance to be featured on 2011 season tickets or in a team commercial)

17. Tickets & Promotions – Philadelphia 76ers (Fans can closely follow current ticket specials and promotions using a tab integrated into the team Facebook page)

18. A Date with SFC – Seattle Sounders (Fans can watch video dating profiles of different players on Seattle Sounders FC and partake in a date auction via Ebay.

19. Guess the Kit – Tottenham Hotspur (Fans have to correctly guess what the team’s new kit (uniform) will look like)

20. Broadcast Schedule – Portland Timbers (Fans can easily see which networks will be carrying the team’s upcoming soccer matches)

21. Locker Room – Los Angeles Lakers (Fans can take a virtual tour of the Lakers locker room)

22. Flickr - Milwaukee Bucks (Fans can scroll through photos of the Bucks’ gameday experience posted on their Official Flickr page)

23. U-Stream – Golden State Warriors (Fans can watch a live webcast with a Warriors player each day during Training Camp

24. Trailblazers.tv – Portland Trail Blazers (Fans can watch exclusive interviews, shows, highlights, pre- and post-game shows, and more)

25. AC Milan Jersey – A.C. Milan (Fans can create their own virtual A.C. Milan Jersey (with a custom name and number) and share it on their Facebook wall)

26. Fantasy Manager – A.C. Milan (Fans can create and manage a virtual team of players and compete against friends for the chance to win team prizes)

27. Ice Dancers – Florida Panthers (Fans could vote on their favorite Ice Dancers in a bracket competition that gave away a free cruise!)

28. Stars Text Alerts – Dallas Stars (Fans can easily sign up to receive basic text alerts or student rush text alerts)

29. Leafs on YouTube – Toronto Maple Leafs (Fans can watch a series of YouTube clips directly within a tab on the team’s Facebook page

30. Photo Pick-Up – Phoenix Suns (Fans can have their picture taken by Suns personnel at a game and retrieve it for free on the team’s Facebook page)

31. Match of the Week – Sporting KC (Fans can receive in-depth information about a premier MLS game each week)

32. Meet the Team – Denver Nuggets (Fans can vote for their favorite players on the Nuggets by “liking” them on the interactive Facebook tab)

33. Letter to Fans – Buffalo Sabres (Fans can read a letter sent from the team’s owner Terrence M. Pegula thanking them for their support)

34. Which Cap Are You Like? – Washington Capitals (Fans can take a quiz to see what Washington Capitals player they are the most like and win an autographed jersey)

35. Foursquare – Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Fans can view the team’s Foursquare profile and access tips and insights on whose checked-in at Raymond James Stadium)

36. Draft Party Sweepstakes – Charlotte Bobcats (Fans can sign up on Facebook to win a VIP experience at the Bobcats Draft Party courtesy of Donatos Pizza)

37. Fan Forum – Dallas Cowboys (Fans can participate in an interactive forum where they can participate in a live discussion board)

38. Showcase – Sacramento Kings (Fans can scroll through to see all of the Kings’ hottest merchandise in their online team store up close)

39. Host UpClose Contest – Indianapolis Colts (Fans can upload a video of themselves hosting a sports segment for the chance to fly to Indianapolis and host a segment on Colts UpClose)

40. Scarf Yourself! – New York Red Bulls (Fans can add an official New York Red Bulls scarf to their profile picture and feature it on the team Facebook page)

41. Support – Atlanta Falcons (Fans can post questions/ideas/problems that they have and a Falcons customer representative addresses them for all fans to see on a live discussion board)

42. Give Your All – All Blacks (Fans can watch a series of vignettes where the All Blacks players talk about giving everything they’ve got when they enter the pitch)

43. Fan of the Week – Chicago Bears (Fans can submit a message/photo detailing why they are the biggest fan for the chance to be featured online)

44. A’s Kids Club – Oakland A’s (Fans can sign up for an Oakland A’s Kids Club Membership directly through the team’s Facebook page)

45. WTA Extra – WTA (Fans can easily scroll through high-res images of the top WTA players and also see information about their world ranking and Twitter feed)

46. Giving – Tampa Bay Rays (Fans can read about the Rays Baseball Foundation and make a donation)

47. Fanographies – Cleveland Browns (Fans can submit their Browns story for the chance to win 2011 season tickets)

48. Bulldog Club – University of Georgia Athletics (Fans can read about the Bulldog Club, make donations, invest in educational opportunities, and more)

49. Charity – PGA (Fans can read about the PGA’s new partnership with Darius Rucker and download a song which benefits PGA Tour Charities, Inc.)

50. UStream Live – Colorado Avalanche (Fans can watch broadcasts throughout the season and sign up to receive email alerts every time they take place)

During the Global Sports Forum, I had the chance to sit down with former NBA player John Amaechi to get his thoughts on several current topics, including:

• The NBA’s efforts to expand their footprint in Europe and how the league compares to existing European professional leagues
• The way athletes use Twitter, both good and bad, to engage with their fans
• What CSR (corporate social responsibility) really means, and how some programs are more marketing than CSR
• His work at the Amaechi Basketball Centre

I hope you enjoy the interview!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWwYnQzf0bI

There were two different sessions at the conference that specifically focused on the subject of social media. The first featured Jonah Lomu, former professional rugby player from the New Zealand All Blacks, and Christian Hernandez, Head of International Business Development for Facebook. I don’t have any amazing insights to share from this panel, because it felt more like a confirmation of many of the typical social media tactics that most teams and athletes already implement, such as:

• Social media is the ideal way for athletes to take ownership of their brand – it all comes down to effort.
• It lets fans see a personal side of an athlete that they can relate to, such as their upbringing, family, personality, etc. Fans learn what type of person they are based on what information is shared.
• Personal tones in Facebook messages resonate stronger than statements tied to a corporate message.

There were a couple of specific details that deviated from the standard social media discussion. For example…

• Jonah Lomu initially decided to join Twitter because someone was imitating him. This could be an interesting way of “encouraging” a particular athlete to join the conversation.
• Instead of creating a dedicated “Jonah Lomu Fan Page” which he could still manage himself, he actually opened up his personal Facebook account to connect with everyone and share more. There are some functionality differences between what you can do with a regular account vs. a page that can add value to this approach, but it does mean the athlete has to sacrifice the idea of using Facebook in a private manner with family and friends.
• I also learned that the English Premier League has rules in place to prevent their players from using Facebook and Twitter (I’m surprised I hadn’t realized that).  As a result, their official pages aren’t as effective because they are run by player management, making them less personal and less engaging.

The other social media panel was actually a breakout session with Christian Hernandez specifically discussing Facebook and sports marketing. Two specific statistics that I found to be quite interesting were:

• A typical Facebook page update will be seen by 5% of followers.
• 200M out of 500M Facebook users play a game at least once per month.

The first statistic shows that even the best updates will only reach a fraction of your audience, so there is a definite importance to frequency of communication in order to maximize your effectiveness (as long as you do not sacrifice quality with frequency). The second shows that games are a very viable engagement option to complement the standard Facebook communication options. It may take resources to pursue that option, but the results could be well worth it.

For more insights from this session, check out the three videos below:

Engagement through Facebook Games vs. Basic Facebook Functionality

www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6oPabEkelM

Facebook and TV Integration in Sports

www.youtube.com/watch?v=htHNkQepPZY

Facebook Pages vs. Using Microsites:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZOwP-VavW8

Today’s conference recap post is courtesy of guest blogger Dave Cutler.

This past weekend I attended the 5th Annual MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference (#SSAC to the Twitterverse). Dubbed “Dorkapalooza” by ESPN.com writer Bill Simmons, the conference is perhaps the largest single gathering of statheads, sabermetricians and other likeminded folks fascinated by statistical analysis in sports. It has also become a premier networking opportunity for students with an eye towards a career in sports as well as those already established within the industry.

Unfortunately, with four overlapping sessions running simultaneously during each time block, it is impossible not to miss a significant portion of the conference. The following is a recap of a few of the most compelling takeaways and themes from those panels which I attended:

SOCIAL: Social is not often a word associated with a collection of self-proclaimed stat geeks, but it should come as no surprise that social media was a recurring theme throughout the conference.

• Sarah Robb O’Hagan, CMO at Gatorade, talked about the company’s “Mission Control,” their social media command center dedicated to tracking all discussion of their brand occurring on social media sites. She made a point of noting that Gatorade makes a distinction between the values of different tweets, assigning greater importance to one that is read by teenage athletes, for instance.
• Bob Bowman, President and CEO of MLB Advanced Media, warned of the perils of businesses not using social media to engage with their customers, saying that “no matter what your business is, if you’re not following Twitter, you’re missing what your customers are saying.”
• Celtics Co-Owner Steve Pagliuca said that while he and other team personnel discuss the potential risks for players engaging with the public through social media (i.e. harming endorsement potential) the team doesn’t take any measures to regulate their messaging. He also stated that he believed Celtics players are fundamentally good people and just needed to avoid making damaging early mistakes with social media.
• There seemed to be a consensus across all panels that fan input is more impactful than ever, especially with the advent of Twitter as a real-time reaction tool.

Authenticity was a prevailing theme in the discussion of social media. Multiple speakers mentioned the fans’ ability to detect the difference between a Facebook page or Twitter account managed by an athlete’s marketing representative versus one in which the player provides personal thoughts.

• Both O’Hagan and Lawrence Norman, Vice President of Global Basketball for Adidas, cited Dwight Howard as a great partner/endorser because of his willingness to actively engage with the fans through social media.
• Nick Grudin, Manager of Strategic Partnership Development at Facebook, gave a lunchtime talk entitled, “Social Sports: Facebook, and the Fan-Centric Experience.” He singled out Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics as someone who successfully parlayed genuine fan interaction such as Facebook chats into a disproportionate following. Rondo’s 2 million fans on Facebook ranks an impressive 3rd among NBA players behind only Kobe Bryant (6.8 million) and LeBron James (5.3 million).

CUBAN MISSILES: Dallas Mavericks Owner Mark Cuban, whose “Talk Nerdy to Me” T-shirt was a hit with the attendees, launched countless off-the-cuff barbs in the direction of fellow panelists that left the audience laughing. He displayed the quick-thinking business savvy behind his success, interjecting significant insight into the discussions and demonstrating impressive foresight.

• Dallas Cowboys COO Stephen Jones speculated that the enormous HD video boards in the team’s stadium could soon become outdated, rendering them useless and requiring the team to replace them at an enormous expense. Cuban immediately chimed in that some enterprising individual would have the ingenuity to re-purpose the screens, using them as the main attraction at a drive-in movie theater.
• Always with an eye towards the future, Cuban scoffed at the continuous mention of social media in discussing innovations that will impact the fan experience in 10 years, making the following two statements: “Twitter is a great broadcast opportunity, but that’s living life in the past lane” and “If 500 million people are on Facebook, how can it be new and exciting?”
• Cuban, seemingly serious, responded to conjecture that he would be providing lively commentary during the panel on Referee Analytics by informing the audience that he had received an e-mail from the NBA league office reminding him that the conference was a public forum and he would be held accountable for any statements made in regards to NBA officiating.

THE FUTURE OF THE GAME DAY EXPERIENCE: HDTV VS. LIVE EVENTS: The closing panel was chock full of informative discussion and interesting insights. There was significant focus on the issue of making technological innovations to improve the in-game experience for fans in attendance. The panelists lamented the limitations created by insufficient Wi-Fi bandwidth.

• New England Patriots COO, Jonathan Kraft, shared that the Patriots provided devices and an application to a segment of the fans in attendance as a trial-run with the goal of making it available to the entire stadium in the future. The app offered a stream of the TV feed as well as the option of four other angles from cameras placed throughout the stadium along with real-time fantasy updates. Kraft envisions this app eventually allowing the fan to stream the Red Zone channel and perhaps select an audio feed from a number of mic’d-up players, but cautioned that this would not be feasible without significantly improving the Wi-Fi capabilities of the stadium.

The speakers were in agreement that they needed to put an emphasis on addressing and improving all aspects of attending the game in order to provide fans with the best possible game day experience.

• Cuban noted the importance of working with the local transportation authority to ensure that travel to and from the arena is as easy possible. Kraft agreed and said that in addition to working with public officials to improve transportation options such as a commuter rail to the stadium, the team had spent $70 Million improving the existing road infrastructure around the stadium.

ODDS & ENDS: Other notable tidbits include…

• During Grudin’s Facebook presentation, one stat illustrated a surprising disparity between Major League Baseball and the other three major sports leagues. MLB ranked a distant 4th in “Likes” with a mere 280,000 trailing well behind the NBA (7.6 million), NFL (2.6 Million), and NHL (2.4 million). This stood out on the heels of the announcement that MLB.com At Bat 2010 for iPhone and iPod touch was named the highest grossing application on iTunes.
• While there is an enormous amount of secrecy amongst ownership and management within a given sport, a few panelists mentioned the conference as an opportunity to learn from their counterparts in other sports and share best practices. Stephen Jones also confessed to learning a great deal from what Cuban and the Mavericks do at American Airlines and replicating some of it in Cowboys Stadium.
• Eric Mangini handled what could have been an uncomfortable and contentious moment with grace and good humor. ESPN The Magazine Editor Gary Belsky, responding to a panelist’s mention of nearly being fired by saying that having been fired wouldn’t disqualify him from appearing on the panel before turning to Eric Mangini, realizing his faux pas and saying, “Oops…sorry” as the audience laughed.

WIT & WISDOM: In addition to sharing tremendously valuable insight and lessons, panelists used the informal and lighthearted nature of the sessions as an opportunity to showcase their comedic talents. Many proved to be incredibly witty and it was evident that a number of the speakers had an established rapport with each other, leading to some very entertaining, albeit good natured ribbing. For a look at 5 of the most entertaining and informative personalities from the conference, you can read my guest blog post here.

Dave Cutler is an experienced sports marketer who has held positions with the New Jersey Nets, NBA, and Sports Illustrated. He was previously featured on this site as the Free Agent of the Week. You can follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, read his blog, or reach him via email at CutlerDave@gmail.com.

This weekend I had the chance to email back and forth with Lou Imbriano and J.W. Cannon, who a few weeks back started a weekly event on Twitter called #sbchat. It’s another valuable resource for the sports business community that everyone should take advantage of. Here’s what they had to say about it.

First off, what is #sbchat?

Lou: Every Wednesday at 8pm EST on Twitter, a group of sports business professionals utilize the #sbchat hashtag to discuss various topics about the business of sports. This one hour chat is a great exchange of concepts, opinions and philosophies concerning topical sports business issues. JW Cannon and I moderate and lead the direction of each week’s chat to keep the chat efficient and helpful to all participants, rookies and veterans alike. At the end of the chat a transcript of the hour exchange is provided in case any participant missed any comments or if those interested in sports business were unable to attend.

Why did the two of you decide to start it?

JW: To be completely honest, I think that the biggest reason that #sbchat was started was because we were sick and tired of seeing sports business “professionals” peddling “advice” for a business that they haven’t even worked a day in their lives in. Much of the information they were sharing (often with a price tag) was inaccurate or factually misrepresented, and we felt that it was leading the young folks coming up in our business down the wrong path. Unfortunately, nobody was really calling them out on it, and we saw this as a potential forum to set the record straight – not by throwing jabs, but with proven advice and commentary from savvy sports business professionals that had actually done the work. It sounds cliché to say that Lou and I want to “give back” to the industry, but we really do.

What are your goals for the weekly chat?

Lou: The goals of #sbchat are to introduce a topic that is relevant to the business of sports at the time of the chat in order for sports business executives to exchange best practices, while answering questions for those new to or interested in getting into the industry. The intention is to provide some transparency about the business of sports, while exhibiting mentoring and lending advice for those who are seeking direction. The hopes are that experienced pros will not only help those entering the business but also others in the field by providing their philosophies and experience.

What has the response been like so far?

JW: The response thus far has been great. We have a broad range of folks from all across the industry participate on a weekly basis – from the property to the brand to the event side, and usually average 20-40 folks per week participating. What’s most positive has been the participation from the up-and-comers in the industry, who are not only coming to share their opinions, but also to learn from other folks in the industry (without paying $19.95, that is).

Finally, what is the best piece of advice or insight that you’ve seen in #sbchat so far?

Lou: There has been an ample amount of great advice since the genesis of #sbchat. Each week there are nuggets of gold that folks share that are not only helpful, but also thought-provoking. One theme that seems to have surfaced a few times is that sponsorship is only as good as the activation efforts that are put into motion to bring it to life and drive consumers. It’s a concept that experienced sports business executives would think to be a given, however many companies miss the mark quite often. The reinforcement from multiple #sbchat participants has displayed that no one should assume that any proper practice is a given and discussion about all facets of the industry is healthy and helpful.

JW: There’s been so much good advice passed though #sbchat that it’s hard to pick out just one tidbit, but I’ll try. I think in our very first #sbchat, we talked career development, and someone made a very good point about working in this industry and the work-life balance we all face. The point was that we all work long hours, weekends and holidays, but that’s no reason for us to completely sacrifice a life outside of the office or to neglect your loved ones. We’re not saving the world or curing cancer, so we all need to stop, take a step back, and at times, work a little more efficiently to ensure that your significant other, your family and your dog all remember who you are.

Thank you to Lou and J.W. for providing this great resource. Make sure to check out the next #sbchat tomorrow night!

Editor’s Note:  You can use any Twitter interface (twitter.com, HootSuite, TweetDeck, etc.) to monitor and participate in the chat. However, I personally prefer to use TweetChat.com which has a very nice web-interface designed specifically to track a chat-specific hashtag like #sbchat.

Teams are always looking to try new things in the social media space, so here are three recent examples to take a look at:

New Jersey Devils:  Mission Control

Yesterday, the Devils officially unveiled their new “Mission Control” social media hub at the Prudential Center. Manned by a staff of die-hard Devils fans called the Devils Army Generals, this control room is a place for the team to manage all of their social media communications, especially Twitter and Facebook. The room is filled with televisions, computer screens and iPads, providing all the resources that the Generals will need to push out their own content and actively engage in conversation with other fans.

Check out this launch video for more information:

Milwaukee Bucks:  Ticket Giveaway on Facebook (from JSOnline.com, 2/16/2011)

In an effort to increase their fan engagement on Facebook and learn more about their fans, the Bucks were offering two free tickets to an upcoming game to anyone that “liked” the team on Facebook and completed an online survey. In total, over 1,500 fans received tickets through this promotion.

According to Don Walker from JSOnline.com, “The Bucks have research that shows 57% of people who come to Bucks’ games had visited Facebook in the previous 30 days. With that kind of connection, the Bucks want to tap into that and solicit more fans to go on Facebook and, ultimately, go to games.”

NBA:  NBA Legend Facebook Game (from NYTimes.com, 2/14/2011)

The NBA has consistently embraced social media, and because of that, they have the most Facebook fans (over 7 million) of any U.S. sports league.  Creating that level of following is impressive, but once you have an audience, you need to engage them in order to sustain a valuable relationship with those fans. The NBA partnered with game developer Lionside to launch NBA Legend, where users can create their own virtual player and develop his career over time.  Companies like Zynga have shown there is a definite audience for social media managed games, so hopefully that success can translate into the sports realm.

A couple of weeks back, I noticed that American Express was running a hashtag-based promotion via Twitter. New York sports fans that were tweeting with the hashtag #AmexSports had the chance to win some pretty nice prizes. I looked into this, and via the @AmericanExpress Twitter account, I was able to connect with Shari Forman, their Director of Online Communications & Social Media. Shari was nice enough to answer a few questions about their campaign:

First, can you give us a quick overview of the #AmexSports campaign?

#AmexSports is an initiative we created to drive excitement for the great access and experiences American Express provides. We launched a Twitter-exclusive campaign that included “surprising” our followers tweeting with the hashtag #AmexSports with exclusive VIP access to sporting events, team merchandise and memorabelia. Our first initiative for this campaign was around the NY Rangers Heritage Night (11/17 game), in which we surprised our followers tweeting with #AmexSports with suite access to the special event, a chance to meet the players and more. Then, on game night we continued the fun on Twitter by surprising more followers tweeting with #AmexSports with tickets to future home games, throwback jerseys and more throughout the night. Our next initiative will be around the NY Knicks Night of Greatness on December 17. We’ll start our suprises next week with access to the game.

How did you come up with the idea?

We know our Cardmembers are passionate about sports and through this campaign we were able to provide amazing access to some of the teams they love, as well as some keepsakes and memorabilia that will last much longer than the game itself. We constantly see fans tweeting about the games and their favorite players, so we wanted to tap into that passion and use it as a way to interact and engage with our Cardmembers and fellow sports fans.

I noticed that you were working with the teams at MSG (Knicks and Rangers). What did they think of the campaign?

The Rangers and Knicks have both been very supportive and have helped to drive awareness to the campaign by using their own Twitter handles (@TheNYRangers and @TheNYKnicks) to send out Tweets of support and to Retweet announcements from the @AmericanExpress handle. We have also received support from Madison Square Garden’s Twitter handle (@MSGnyc) through Retweets of our messages to their fans.

Any plans to expand to other teams and locations?

Our efforts will continue starting next week, highlighting our partnership with the Knicks and the great access American Express provides with a ticket giveaway to an upcoming Knicks event. We have seen a strong level of engagement and support of this campaign from our Twitter fans, so we are going to continue to explore other teams and events to work with in order to keep the campaign going.

What were you able to learn from this?

The fans are devoted and very excited at the prospect of being able to sample the great access that American Express provides, which is what made this campaign so successful. It is important to focus on initiatives that our Cardmembers are passionate about and for this social campaign, it was important to choose a team and event that our Cardmembers and fans were already chatting about through their social networks.

Thanks again to Shari Forman from American Express for answering my questions. I hope this gives all of you some ideas on how to develop and run similar campaigns for your organization!

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Mike Mahoney from the Carolina Panthers.

May 18, 2010. 8:30 a.m. – At Caribou Coffee, in the shadow of uptown Charlotte, people fill chairs for coffee meetings, fire up Wi-Fi  on their laptops, and swing in to get their day started with some much needed caffeine. Scott Hepburn (@scotthepburn) and I meet to exchange ideas and chat about social media, marketing, sponsorship etc. It’s maybe the 4th time we’ve done this over the last year.  We go over a number of things we are each trying to get accomplished and Scott brings up one last project he has started. He pens it as a “social media road rally”, touring Charlotte while documenting your Amazing Race like experience using social media. He has a couple of businesses signed on to be stops on the tour, hosting competitors and offering challenges. I thought instantly it had potential. Scott was meeting with his prospects and clients and getting good feedback. I thought about how we had been looking for a way to include social media in sponsorships. I thought the Panthers would make a great theme for the event, something to tie it all together. And we’d have enough partners and connections to get a sponsor to help defray costs while generating payback for their efforts. Plus we could include our community partners who would benefit from the mentions and interaction.

I take the concept back to the Panthers sponsorship group and got early buy-in from my boss, John Berger, and team to research and find out more about what the event would look like. Sponsors had been asking us about Facebook (Panthers FB  launched 3 days earlier) and Twitter, where we had 9,000 followers for a while now. Scott came in and explained it to the group and after two or three follow-up meetings, everyone was on board. We needed a title sponsor. Allen Tate Company, the leading residential real estate company in the Carolinas, was the first company I called. They were the first of our sponsors in Charlotte to hire a full-time social media coordinator, Genevieve Jooste, (@genevievejooste) who talked to Scott about it as well separately.   Scott agreed to let me try to make the event a Panthers event and hire Media Emerging, his firm to be the race director. Dana Thomas, our event coordinator would run sign-ups and marketing of the event and any operations at the stadium and organize the awards party. Our sales team and account managers would work with our sponsors and include some as stops on the challenge and we’d need to find sponsors to cover the costs. Our mascot, Sir Purr (@pantherssirpurr) would do whatever we needed.

July 7, 2010 – Genevieve and the VP of Marketing for Allen Tate setup a meeting at the stadium to talk about fresh ideas for 2010 sponsorship elements. The goal was to have something with more concrete measurement capabilities and benefits. Allen Tate CEO Pat Riley bought in quickly after the presentation and agreed to be the title sponsor as they saw immediate fits with bringing in open house, offices with agents and combing both social and personal interaction.

Several planning lunches and brainstorming sessions continue. Allen Tate’s marketing team brainstormed and generated the final event name, Panthers Purrsuit and logo. Media Emerging generated YouTube, Facebook and Twitter accounts which we all helped manage.  One of the main questions we get is why are you charging for this and why $20. We just had to know how many people to plan for. We knew we get more folks for free but how could busy retail locations plan for an event not knowing if it would be 25 or 200? So we decided we’d charge about what our 5K race charges and instead of getting to run for 20 minutes you’d get a whole day of fun, free stuff, coupons, and companionship with a partner (not to mention great prizes).  Scott Hepburn and the assigned Panthers reps went out to each interested sponsor to help create exciting challenges for the teams to complete.

By the time registration ended in mid October we had two Panthers players help us with videos, Jon Beason (@jonbeason) and Everette Brown (@everettebrown). We had several teams make promotional videos after their entry and engaged in playful trash talking. Thirty-two teams signed up and they were all extremely enthusiastic, making costumes and uniforms and trying to encourage their friends to get involved as well.  The Panthers added a new sponsor to our roster as well in SportClips who saw the value in promoting Purrsuit across their 14 area stores since they too are very active in Facebook marketing and Twitter.

October 23, 2010 – Event day was a truly amazing sunny Chamber of Commerce weather day in Charlotte. After days of stuffing SWAG bags, filling envelopes with color coded clues, and delivering signage, we were ready. Teams started from Bank of America Stadium by kicking a field goal into an inflatable goal post and getting their pictures taken with Panthers mascot SirPurr. Teams were dispatched with their first clue at 1:00pm. After that, If you were in Charlotte and on Twitter from 1pm – 6pm you could not miss #Purrsuit Tweets, Facebook posts and YouTube videos. Not to mention teams of two building Lego houses on a real estate office sidewalk, scooping up empty sweet tea containers with their elbows in recycling bags, watching 3DTV, and playing paper football in a dining booth. All in response to challenges dreamed up by Panthers partners and Scott Hepburn. Some sponsors had the capability and the vision to dedicate resources to be on-site interacting with the contestants. Others came up with ways to be creative without expending many resources at all. I believe it is fair to say the stops where staff were there to meet and greet, instruct and compete against the teams were the favorites of the challengers. Allen Tate was certainly in this group, as was Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont and Bojangles’ Famous Chicken and Biscuits.  Their blogs, recaps, or photos are linked in their names above. We collected school supplies for classroom central, food for Second Harvest Food Bank, learned more about Goodwill’s job training and electronics recycling and garnered $10 text donations to the Library system.

To tie this all up in a bow Purrsuit was a success from a numbers perspective, mentions, sponsorship, interaction, donations, sales all were there and that is important. But the most gratifying part of the entire event by far was the Bud Light awards after party at Dandelion Market where we had a private room upstairs and we were able to have a cold one, tally up the points, give out the prizes and collapse from the exhaustion of a crazy day. The winners were funny, smart and gracious. Check out the pictures from our Facebook page and a full recap of all the media exposure and relevant numbers from the event are on this slideshare presentation (also included below).

And of course, there are more people to thank than I will be able to here but the event would not happen without Scott’s creativity (he wrote about his 5 A-Ha moments in the process here), Dana’s execution, the support of everyone at the Panthers from the top down and the bottom up and of course the vision of the Allen Tate Company team who continue to be leaders in real estate as well as social media and the rest of our sponsor and partner roster that participated.  I certainly can’t express enough gratitude for the support of the Sportsbiz community as well as the social media advocates and Panthers fans in Charlotte.

Mike Mahoney is a sponsorship sales executive for the Carolina Panthers with 5+ years of sponsorship sales experience. Prior to selling in the sports world he worked in major account sales at FedEx and SAP. Mike believes in the power of CRM and loves social media. You can follow him on Twitter (@mahoney) or find him on LinkedIn.

I’m always on the look out for new, fun ways that teams can use social media to engage their fans and customers, so I was quite pleased to see this latest initiative from the Los Angeles Kings and the Colorado Avalanche (with a big assist to Digital Royalty, who worked with the Kings on this program).

On Saturday, October 23, the Los Angeles Kings and Colorado Avalanche “faced-off” in a the first-ever NHL Hashtag Battle, as part of Hockey Fights Cancer Awareness month. From the start of the game until the final buzzer, fans of each team could tweet with either the hashtag #GoKings or #GoAvs, and for every tagged tweet, $1 would be donated to the Childrens Hospital Los Angeles or local cancer organizations in Colorado involved with the Hockey Fights Cancer program.

This type of social media initiative has a wonderful combination of competition between rival teams, fan engagement and community outreach. The battle was actively promoted on the teams websites and via email. So what did the results look like?

Final score:

• #GoKings: 29,374 tweets
• #GoAvs: 13,876 tweets

Specifically looking at the Los Angeles Kings:

• $29,374 was raised for the Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles
• The Kings were also the #1 trending topic world wide during the game (better than UFC, which had two fights going on, and Kanye West, whose short film “Runaway” debuted at the same time)
• The team added close to 1,000 Twitter followers during the battle

Sounds like a pretty effective campaign from the folks at the Kings and Digital Royalty. You can read more about the Kings use of Twitter here.

On Monday night, I had the chance to attend a preview showing of Lombardi, the new broadway play about the life of the great Packers coach Vince Lombardi. First off, the play was excellent across the board.  I thought all of the actors did an incredible job, especially Dan Lauria and his portrayal of Lombardi himself. The script did an excellent job is showcasing the dynamics between Lombardi, his family and his players. Finally, the show was in a quaint theater and performed “in the round” so there isn’t a bad seat in the house. Any sports fan, especially a football fan, would enjoy seeing this show.

Now that I’ve hopefully peaked your interest in the show, I also want to commend the show’s marketing department for a clever way of promoting the show via social media channels.  As everyone exited the show, ushers were handing out small “business cards” – check out the images on the right.

As you can see from the back of the card, the show has covered their social media bases.  All attendees are encourage to write their own review at NYTimes.com, become a fan of the show on Facebook, follow the show on Twitter, watch videos on YouTube and even check in on FourSquare.  Finally, there is a special offer link at the bottom to share with friends if they want to purchase discount tickets (please feel free to use the link to purchase your own tickets). I thought this was a great marketing tactic for the show to use. Word of mouth is a very important marketing channel for both sports and theater, so having a uniform presence on these social media outlets and making customers aware of all of them with simple, direct messaging should be quite effective for spreading the word.

Side Note: I wanted to take a moment to congratulate Joe Favorito. Joe is the author of the Sports Marketing and PR blog over at joefavorito.com, and he was an associate producer for Lombardi (I was excited when I saw him listed in the Playbill). Great work Joe!

Jason Peck had a great idea for a series of blog posts based around “Why We Should Care” about social media. The “We” refers to everyone from fans to teams to athletes to agencies and more. I was very pleased that Jason asked me to contribute to this series, and you should visit his site (www.jasonfpeck.com) to read what all of his great contributors had to say. In the meantime, here are some of my opinions on the subject.

Why Fans Should Care – Fans are always looking for ways to interact with their team and feel a deeper connection to the teams and players that they live and die for. Social media can give the fans a new level personal interaction that they are looking for. In addition, as most teams increase their own social media presence, these tools can be used to share opinions and feedback that can eventually lead to a better fan experience.

Why Teams Should Care – Teams should care because fans care. Their most active, passionate and vocal advocates are participating in the social media landscape, regardless of whether the teams are there or not. So really, teams have two options: ignore the conversation and stick to old-fashioned, one-way marketing, or join the conversation and engage with their fans. I think the answer here is obvious.

Why Athletes Should Care – In the age of free agency and big contracts, the most important thing that a player has outside of their contract is their brand. They need to care about social media because it gives them a direct-to-consumer communication channel that has more influence over their brand image than any jersey or team logo does. Because of the power that this medium has, players need to have a great balance of being genuine and being self-aware.  They should let that fun personality shine through while remembering that once they click “Submit”, there’s no going back. They need to better understand the pros and cons of the instantaneous nature of social media.

Why Agents Should Care – Agents should care for the same reason that athletes need to care. If an agent is going to best represent their client’s interests, they need to be just as aware, if not more aware of the impact that social media has on their client’s brand. How their clients interact with fans on social media can affect everything from player contract negotiations to maximizing the athlete’s endorsement and marketing opportunities.

Why Colleges Should Care – College should care for the same reasons as teams, with the added focus that one of their key audiences, their students, are some of the most active and ultimately influential social media users out there. Even if they don’t currently represent the same monetary value of alumni and donors, the student of today become the donors of tomorrow, so social media can help build an even deeper loyalty and affinity now while they are in school.

Why Agencies Should Care – Agencies should care because social media needs to be a part of any company’s marketing mix, and this includes the events and properties that they represent. Their corporate clients are ultimately looking to increase revenue and improve their brand value, and actively engaging the fans through their sponsorships is an important part of that process. Outside of the actual gameday experience, social media is the most “active” and engaging communication option they can leverage.

It started with one, small, under-140-character sentence…

“Hello World, the Real King James is in the Building “Finally”. My Brother @oneandonlycp3 gas’d me up to jump on board so I’m here. Haaaa”

Well, actually it started several hours before that, when the word got out that twitter.com/KingJames was the official Twitter account for LeBron James. News spread of this account like wildfire, both through traditional and social media outlets. As a result, the account had close to 100,000 followers before anything was ever posted. As of 9:45PM Tuesday, that number was up to over 170,000 with still just the one tweet on the record (Update: Two tweets and 222,292 followers as of 10AM Wednesday). Darren Rovell tweeted several updates throughout the day, highlighting the account’s incredible growth rate. So now that this account exists, there are two big questions (besides what team will he sign with).

1. What will LeBron do with his Twitter account?
2. What should LeBron do with his Twitter account?

Here are a couple of Dos and Don’ts to help him with his new-found interest in tweeting:

• Do update multiple times per day, even if that means getting some help from your camp. With all the buzz right now, there is no better time to really leverage your social media presence.
• Don’t tweet just for the sake of tweeting. We’re all tuned in, but if it becomes noise, we’ll also tune out.
• Do have some fun surrounding the pending contract announcement. Feel free to tweet and joke with other players and build the suspense.
• Don’t actually give any of the real news away or announce your decision on Twitter first (although with the TV special announcement, you seem to already know this)
• Do be personal! Let your charisma shine through. This was a great approach for Shaq and Ocho Cinco.
• Don’t go over the line. Shaq and Ocho Cinco can also go too far (being critical of others, being honest to a fault). You want to be the Global Icon, so nothing that can damage the brand.
• Do reply to fans occasionally. The impact you’ll make on those fans cannot be measured.
• Don’t feel obligated to reply too much. It will take the fun out of Twitter, and we want to make sure you hang around.

While we’re talking LeBron, here are some other interesting links to read through:

• What the Knicks Told LeBron: Come to New York and Make $1 Billion from Forbes.com SportsMoney (in particular, make sure to check out the presentation from Interbrand – interesting stuff. I’d really like to see more of how they calculated those numbers!)
• LeBron James is Twitter’s Latest Sponsored Trending Topic from Mashable.com
• LeBron Decision Thursday on ESPN.com

For the record, I think they’re going with the scheduled TV announcement for two reasons. The fun reason is that he recognizes the level of interest in this decision and found a way to go something positive with it (raising money for the Boys and Girls Club of America). The business reason is (and this is pure speculation), I think it’s down to the Cavaliers and one other team, but he’s waiting for some action from one of those two clubs. What better way to take control of the situation than through the pressure of a public time deadline. I bet there’s a lot of moving and shaking going on behind the scenes today!

The 3rd edition of the Blogs With Balls sports bloggers conference is taking place this weekend in Chicago. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get out there for the weekend, but you and I can both follow the conversations going on via the Twitter hashtag #bwb3 by scrolling through the list below.

I hope you find the tweets informative – at a minimum, they’ll definitely be entertaining!

Since you are sitting there reading this, I don’t need to tell you about the value of blogs (and sports blogs in particular) in the marketing and social media landscape. However, it seems as if that understanding is now reaching the large-scale consumer products industry. In particular, I’m referring to the recent announcement that Blogs With Balls 3 (BWB3), a sports bloggers conference that has only been around for about a year, just signed on Proctor & Gamble to be their presenting sponsor. In particular, P & G is specifically focusing on their “Official Locker Products of the NFL” brand and line of products in this event sponsorship.

I had the change to attend the first Blogs With Balls event in New York last June and came away very impressed. The panels deal with very important topics in sports media, including advertising, traditional vs. new media, branding, interactive content and more. While most of the attendees themselves are blog authors and publishers, I felt like anyone in the sports community (teams, leagues, media outlets, brands, etc.) would have learned a great deal from the event.

Several of the original sponsors are back again, including SB Nation, Bleacher Report and YardBarker, which makes sense considering the conference audience. However, I’m very pleased to see a company like P&G (not to mention Captain Morgan, Guinness, and Fox Sports among others) recognize the value in associating themselves with the sports blogging community through an event like this. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them further increase their involvement with the sports social media landscape after BWB3 is over.

For more information on Blogs With Balls 3 in Chicago, including details on how to attend, with www.blogswithballs.com.

A couple of weeks back, I wrote a post about how teams can take advantage of sponsor relationships to sell “discounted” playoff tickets without directly discounting their seats and in the process, devaluing their product. Well, the Suns’ Amar’e Stoudemire has found an even more creative approach that brings the athletes themselves into the equation through their social media outlets.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, you can find the full article over on Mashable.com. The short version of the story is that Amar’e partnered with RazorGator and AtCost.com to offer “group” discounted tickets through the store tab on his Facebook page. I call them group tickets, because the more people that took advantage of the offer, the better discount everyone received, similar to how Groupon.com and AtCost.com are able to provide great discount offers by selling their offers to a large number of consumers. By the time the offer expired, two tickets that normally go for $600 total sold for more than 50% off, and the entire allotment of tickets for both games 3 and 4 sold out (the offer was posted separately for each game). In fact, there is now an offer up on his page directed towards Amar’e/Suns fans for game 5 in Los Angeles (as of writing this, the price for a pair of tickets was down to $435.97).

This may be one of the most effective social media sales tools that teams (or athletes) have implemented to date. Now in this situation, they were selling a fairly high-demand/high-value item, but the tactic should translate to all different types of ticket inventory and beyond – maybe we’ll see a merchandise offer next. Very cool promotion from Amar’e and all of his partners.

Last week, I found out about the new Sports Fan Graph tool that was developed by Coyle Media. The idea is pretty straightforward and effective.  Through their website, you can view social media rankings for most major sports leagues and teams based on their quantity of Twitter and Facebook followers. You can try out the service by visiting www.coylemedia.com/sportsfangraph.

To try and make the service even more valuable, you can apply filters based on the sport, league, conference or (coming soon) geographic location. All of the data is sortable by overall rank, team name, Twitter followers and Facebook followers, and it is refreshed regularly so everything is up to date. There are also quick links to view any specific organization’s official Twitter or Facebook page.

Now we all know there is a lot more to social media that the sheer quantity of fans and followers that an organization has, but this data is a good indicator of what organizations have made a strong commitment to social media and what brands have a deep, interactive connection to their fans. Besides just checking to see what your organization’s  “rank” is, this tool can be used to look up comparable teams (geography, market size, brand affinity, sport, etc), see how you compare, and then jump over to their actual Twitter and Facebook sites to look for specific tactics that have helped (or hurt) that team’s social media success. Overall, a very cool service by Coyle Media, and one I expect to see grow even more over time.

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Jenny Schmitt. It originally appeared on her website, CloudSpark.com.

We’ve been telling visual stories for nearly our entire careers. Why? Visual matters because most people are visual learners or can better recall a visual cue than a written one. When YouTube came around 5 years ago, a whole new opportunity came up to tell that story directly to an audience – no media required. We’ve been on board every since.

Now wait, if someone tells you they can make a viral video for you, stop there. You (or your agency) can’t make a video viral, you can make it great. Only your audience, your customers, your fans, can take it viral. No matter, even if you think you have a tough product or service, there is always a visual story.

We’re sharing this new branded YouTube page from The Coca-Cola Company. It’s a soon-to-be-classic example (created by Sapient Nitro – deep talent over there) of just where video can take a customer. Coca-Cola a global leader in the refreshment category has taken the World Cup ritual (the on-field celebrations) and asked fans to share their own celebrations if they were playing on the field. Here’s why we think Coca-Cola succeeds:

1. It lets people (the fans) participate directly: send in video, artwork, photography (branded or not)
2. The content is seemingly new, refreshed, all the time and it’s easy to share
3. Coca-Cola can tie-in the campaign with actual events (note the videos with the branded banner)
4. The music is universally appealing, borrowing beats, harmonies from different cultures
5. For a global brand, the World Cup is a near-perfect opportunity to showcase its near-universal appeal

What videos do you think stand out as examples of a great visual story? What would you add?

Jenny-Rebecca Schmitt is a veteran public relations and marketing professional, trainer and sought-after public speaker. Her 15-year marketing and communications career includes experience in the fields of sports marketing, nonprofit marketing, healthcare communications, and public relations, including work at the collegiate, amateur, Olympic and professional level of sports. You can follow her on Twitter as @cloudspark or visit her website at www.cloudspark.com.

Geolocation is definitely a hot topic in social media, and as such, is starting to make its ways into the sports marketing landscape. The idea that you can proactively target and communicate with people based on their exact or relative location is a very appealing thought. Right now, all sports organizations practice based forms of geo-targeting in their marketing campaigns. This can take several shape, such as:

• Delivering web advertisements only to visitors from within your DMA (designated market area)
• Sending direct mail pieces to certain towns and zip codes within your DMA
• Purchasing prospect lists based on a combination of zip and area code
• Placing billboards and running grassroots events locally

All of these measures are taken to another level when you break down your existing customer base to find out what zip codes you have the most success in and focus these campaigns to the areas with the best fan penetration.

VaynerMedia and the New Jersey Nets have taken the idea of geo-targeting in another direction with geolocation through social media. This live, interactive form of geo-targeting has some great potential for teams and leagues to interact with local fan segments in ways that can drive fan affinity and revenue. Take a look at the case study to see what they did with their recent promotion through Gowalla.

The guys at the Row Show also discussed this case study live with Sam Taggart from VaynerMedia. Check our their discussion below.

(NOTE: This was written prior to the airing of Monday evening’s “Dancing With the Stars” and therefore contains NO spoilers)

We all know Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chad Ochocinco can make some serious moves on the football field. Tonight we’ll find out what he can do on the dance floor when he and partner Cheryl Burke perform the Cha Cha and Viennese Waltz on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’

He’s not the first athlete to trade in cleats for dancing shoes… five of the last seven DWTS winners are recognizable for their athletic achievements, and three more have been runners-up. Winners include the first athlete to take the crown, Emmitt Smith (NFL, season 3), followed in quick succession by Apolo Anton Ohno (Speedskating, season 4), Helio Castroneves (IndyCar, season 5), Kristi Yamaguchi (Figure skating, season 6), and Shawn Johnson (Gymnastics, season 8).

Does that mean Ochocinco has a leg up on the other 10 competitors? If his post-touchdown celebrations are any indication, he can definitely learn new steps on a week-to-week basis. He can improvise when needed, and has a sense of humor. Evan Lysacek, the gold-medal winning Olympic figure skater, may be Ochocinco’s toughest competition. He’s certainly got the dance background and the sense of balance. Let’s see how he does when he has to share the spotlight.

Back to Ochocinco: what remains to be seen is whether he’ll be able to keep his cool when he receives criticism from the judges and what this experience will mean to his personal brand. Ochocinco has over 800,000 twitter followers, and seems to be one of the most  transparent athletes out there when it comes to his use of social media (see also: Shaq, The Real).

So for a man that has spent so much time tweeting, live-streaming and updating his website (the OchoCinco News Network, or OCNN), tonight’s episode will give him a far larger audience than he ever sees on Sundays. His actions and reactions can go a long way towards earning him new fans. I doubt he could turn fans off unless he does something really over the top. Those that follow him regularly know that he pulls no punches (for example: telling Tiger Woods jokes) and is unashamedly honest about who he is.

The draw for someone who is a public figure, as athletes are, is the opportunity to both build their brand and stay ‘relevant’ in the public eye. This is a great complement to what Ochocinco is already doing with his online endeavors. He has been successful at gaining a large Twitter following and through DWTS will have the opportunity to garner new fans who may not have already found him online. Since he has merchandise available on his web site, his participation may end up making him money from the sale of such t-shirts as the ‘Girl/Boy You Trippin’ line. I wouldn’t be surprised if he found a way to slip in a little self-promotion at some point. This season, we’ll find out if dancing is one of his hidden talents.

Other reality shows that have featured athletes:
‘Shaq vs.’ – Enough said
‘Pros vs. Joes’ – Michael Irvin, Bo Jackson, Jose Canseco, Kordell Stewart, etc. show those every day wannabe pro athletes what its really like out there on the field.
‘The Surreal Life 5′ – Jose Canseco came out as one of the most level-headed people in the house on this particular season
‘Age of Love’ – Mark Philippoussis (tennis) attempts to find love, ‘The Bachelor’-style

I follow several different team fan pages on Facebook, both for personal interest and to see what different tactics teams are taking with their social media marketing. Yesterday during the course of my usual Facebook usage, I noticed the automatic “Become a Fan” suggestion that you see on the right. Because I am a fan of the Philadelphia Flyers, Facebook thinks I should also be a fan of Wawa.

You may ask what’s so special about this, but in case you didn’t know, Wawa is a very big sponsor of the Philadelphia Flyers. This got me thinking – how great would it be for integrated property/sponsor social media efforts to be aware of certain sponsor relationships and be able to cross-promote each other in such a natural way through Facebook’s standard interface? Maybe this is actually an instance of it already happening!

In this specific case, the more likely scenario is that there is a very high index between fans of the Flyers and “fans” of Wawa (Wawa is HUGE in the Philadelphia and South Jersey region). Facebook is simply recognizing the overlap and making a suggestion that is statistically logical. Of course, that statistical logic is further support for the team/sponsor relationship that the two entities have.

With the power that Facebook has to collect and instantly analyze large amounts of consumer data, I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing new measurements like the “Facebook Index” that supplement the current standard consumer research data that a company like Scarborough Research provides.

Have you noticed the slightly new look that ESPN has rolled out for their news articles? Take a look at the screen shot to the right (or click here to view the article). Right up top in prime viewing position,  you can see:

• Email/Print links (have been there for a while)
• A Comments quote box with count
• Twitter and Facebook share buttons

I don’t know what you think, but all of a sudden, this layout has a lot more of a “blog” feel to it, and I think it’s great. To me, this is an example of how “traditional” media (a news website) has identified elements of “social” media (blogs) that will positively influence their business. These elements highlight an emphasis on generating conversation and sharing information, two key principles of social media.

Now you might say that ESPN has been using their “Conversation” product on their website for a while. However, instead of burying it at the bottom, they’ve put it above the fold, showing an increased dedication to this aspect of their site. They’ve also made the Facebook and Twitter buttons more prominent, which will easily lead to more active sharing of their content across these social channels.

It’s great to see how new forms of communication and media continue to be a positive influence on more traditional channels, and a company like ESPN trying to combine the best of both worlds.

In the midst of my usual sports business ramblings on Twitter last week, I wrote the following message:

“Come on @ispsportnetwork and @learfield. Two of the biggest college sports marketing brands – you guys can do so much more on Twitter!”

I didn’t think much of this at the time. I sent it because I noticed that these two corporate Twitter accounts had a very low number of followers, didn’t tweet much and offered little in terms of actual content. I was pleasantly surprised when a few days later, I got the following reply from@Learfield:

Learfield: @rscibetti Guilty as charged. Been working on the Grown-Ups for 3 years. How about a blog post: “10 Reasons Learfield Sports Should Tweet”

So, at the prompting of the @Learfield Twitter account, here are ten reasons why Learfield Sports should tweet (in no particular order):

1. Raise awareness for your properties – At a most basic level, Twitter gives you a popular communication channel to promote all the great things that your college teams are doing, both on and off the field.
2. Create an engagement opportunity to connect with fans and customers across your properties – Beyond promoting the schools and teams, Twitter will let you interact with the fans in those locations, building a deeper connection to the property and also providing you valuable feedback.
3. Help test and execute social media campaigns that you can share as best practices with your properties – What better way to assist your properties than by learning about Twitter yourselves, finding out what can be most effective, and then spreading best practices across your different locations.
4. Engage in conversation with other sports media and sponsorship professionals – Twitter is an incredible educational platform that gives you an easy way to learn from other industry leaders and apply those ideas to your company.
5. Leverage your network of properties to create high-value social media promotions that generate direct value for top-level sponsors – It’s one thing for a corporate partner to run a Twitter contest with one location…you can harness the power of Twitter across multiple locations to really generate a powerful campaign for a sponsor.
6. Get direct feedback about current marketing promotions that your properties are running – People on Twitter are honest and direct, which will help you learn what is and is not working.
7. Connect with future Learfield employees – There are a lot of talented individuals on Twitter that have unique skill sets that could benefit both Learfield and your properties.
8. Create more value that can help retain customers – If you are at risk of losing certain partners, perhaps developing integrated, cross-property social media campaigns as an addition to their current elements can provide more value and help retain your customers.
9. Build a stronger relationship with your properties – Some schools are running great social media campaigns, while others are well-behind the curve. If you can leverage your own Twitter presence is a way that educates and assist these schools, you provide more value and make your relationship indispensable.
10. It’s fun – I wanted this to be last, but there’s importance to it. There is a uniquely fun element to engaging with others through Twitter, and I believe that whoever at Learfield shares this responsibility will get more satisfaction out of their job, which will in turn make them a better employee.

So that is my list of 10 reasons why Learfield Sports should tweet. I hope I’ve made a strong case for it, and if anyone at Learfield would like to talk more about this, they can reach me right here!

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Amanda Rykoff, a NYC-based sports fan, TiVo junkie and social media consultant. Amanda shares her observations, commentary and diatribes on these and many other topics on her blog, The OCD Chick. She is a former Director of Business Affairs at ESPN and previously hosted the ESPN podcast, “Play Ball! with Amanda and Melissa.”  You can follow her on Twitter @amandarykoff. This post previously appeared on The OCD Chick.

Social media is literally a game changer in sports. It’s leveled the playing field (pun most definitely intended), as fans can communicate directly with athletes. Social media has changed and is changing the way we receive, process, deliver and consume all information. Stories break on Twitter before they’re picked up by the so-called “mainstream” media. Blogs make everybody – including fans – reporters to a certain degree. Access to news and information changes every minute. The line between “mainstream” media and blogs blurs each day. And the impact of the blogosphere cannot be underestimated. Just look at Deadspin, which has become as much a part of the sports vernacular as ESPN.

Given the monumental impact of social media both on and off the field, the New York Times presented “Unleashing Social Media on the Sports World”, featuring the following panelists from a variety of perspectives in and around sports:

• Moderator: Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee), Partner and Co-Founder of VaynerMedia, author of the best-selling book Crush It, and an unabashed New York Jets fanatic.
• Michael DiLorenzo (@NHLdilo), Director of Social Media and Business Communications for the National Hockey League
• Matthew Cerrone (@matthewcerrone), Founder of metsblog.com
• Tyler Kepner (@tylerkepner), National baseball writer for the New York Times
• Jim Bankoff (@bankoff), Chairman and CEO of SB Nation

As noted above, the panel represented a variety of perspectives (a league, a blogger, a mainstream media sports writer, a businessman who runs a blogging network, and a fan). Personally, I would have liked to see at least one woman on the panel (attention powers that be: there are plenty of female sports writers and bloggers); there were many women (myself included) in the audience.

After brief opening remarks by each panelist, Gary V. immediately opened up the floor for a lively and engaging Q&A session (in which I was a willing and vocal participant – another shocker). What follows is my Tale of the Tweets from the panel. For a complete wrap-up and more detailed analysis, check out the outstanding post by Matt Wurst of 360i at the SWMNY blog.

The bottom line: thanks to the emergence of social media, the boundaries in the sports world shift every minute. The old model has been turned on its head. This represents a challenge for some, an opportunity for many, and an exciting time for all.

Keep reading below to see a complete “Tale of the Tweets” – live commentary via Twitter of the discussion panel.

Tale of the Tweets: Unleashing Social Media on the Sports World

• Social Media & Sports at @nytimes w/@garyvee @tylerkepner @nhldilo@matthewcerrone @bankoff. #smwnytsports
• Whoa. @garyvee is a die-hard NY Jets fan? Had no idea. #sarcasm #smwnytsports
• Per @bankoff: with social media, there has never been a better time to be a sports fan. #smwnytsports
• Social media changes fan’s expectations. Fans expect a player to say something to them now. @garyvee #smwnytsports
• Interesting discussion of how athletes use Twitter. Personally, I don’t follow a single player. They’re boring. #smwnytsports
• RT @dwag29 No longer does ESPN decide who fans will see. Allows non “face of franchise” players to connect w/ fans. #smwnytsports
• We’re in an era of transparency. If you’re not authentic, transparency will run over you. @bankoff #smwnytsports
• Biggest challenge for brands (sports or not) is how to engage the negative. You have to own it. @garyvee #smwnytsports
• Battle to be 1st vs. accuracy. Make sure it’s right. @garyvee says if you’re wrong 3x in a row your brand is dead. #smwnytsports
• Sorry guy who just said Peter King is “the best”, I’m not listening to your question. #smwnytsports
• Paging @jerodmsf: @garyvee just mentioned “that guy who wrote about Ibanez.”#smwnytsports
• This is social media. It’s about engagement and relationships. Sports fans = engagement. #smwnytsports
• Missed the @amyknelson story on @ogochocinco I mentioned? Here it ishttp://bit.ly/awJg0L (h/t @moneyries)#smwnytsports
• Social media is sunlight and water for the NHL fans’ passion. Passion grows. @nhldilo #smwnytsports
• SBNation has 5 credentialed “bloggers” at #SB44. Times have changed. @bankoff#smwnytsports
• Criticism of @mlb. Need to allow viral distribution of video to grow the sport and attract younger fans. #smwnytsports
• What’s next? @bankoff: some place to allow real conversations btwn sports fans instead of cacaphony/shouting. #smwnytsports

I also picked up some good tweets from others who attended the panel:

From Jason C. Fry:

• Thing I keep returning to at #smwnytsports — How do things change when most athletes are social media natives?
• NHL’s DiLorenzo has great warning for leagues re control at #smwnytsports — “No one roots for the shield.”

From Dana Wagner:

• NHL stance on social media is to create “rich experiences” not just promote websites. e.g. NHL Tweetups @NHLdilo #smwnytsports
• People value effort. Athletes don’t need to reply to every single reply/mention as long as it’s clear they’re making effort. #smwnytsports
• Opportunity for brands to integrate with sports fans’ conversation on Twitter during games. #smwnytsports

The National Sports Forum starts this Sunday and runs until Wednesday, February 3. Representatives from almost every major team and league will be in attendance for three packed days of breakout sessions, networking activities and presentations. In preparation, I’ve put together a list of which sessions I’m most looking forward to and why. If any of you are attending, please send me an email, or a DM on Twitter, as I’d love to meet as many TBOS readers as possible!

Sunday, January 31 - Case Cup competition: Some of you may not know, but I am a member of the final (for now) Sports Business MBA class from Arizona State University. Four of my classmates will be participating in the annual Case Cup competition. I am excited to cheer them on (silently) and hopefully go out on a winning note!

Monday, February 1 – Morning: After the General Session and Super Panel, the first round of Breakout Sessions start. The one I’m planning on attending is: ‘New Media = New Opportunities: Using the Latest Communication Technologies to Generate Revenue.’ It is a panel, and considering my current fellowship at Digital Royalty, I’m very interested in how the sports industry responds to and takes advantage of new media. You’ll notice this as a theme throughout the week.

Monday – Afternoon: This session will be spent at ‘The 3 Social Media Musts.’ I see a lot of Top 10 lists, or articles about ’20 things to do to improve your personal brand,’ but three is a number I can handle. I still consider myself somewhat new to Twitter, and a total rookie when it comes to LinkedIn, so I think this session will be a good litmus test for my social media savvy.

Monday – Evening: One of the events I’m most anticipating is on Monday night. Digital Royalty is hosting a ‘meet-up’ at the ESPN Zone in Inner Harbor. We’ve put the word out through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as inviting our friends and colleagues. Anyone who will be in Baltimore is invited. Come out, have a drink, get an ESPN game card, and meet some of the dR crew (ie Amy and me).

Tuesday – Super Panel: Tuesday’s Super Panel looks really interesting. Cal Ripken, Jr. and Kevin Plank from Under Armour are two of the guests. I’m excited to hear what Mr. “Iron Man” Ripken has to say. He seemed to play the game with such joy and passion, and was looked to as the penultimate leader. Kevin Plank has led Under Armour to amazing growth in a market that must have been intimidating considering how dominated it was by Nike and Adidas.

Tuesday – Morning Breakout: For this session, I’ll be front row (if not backstage) for Amy’s presentation on ‘Social Media: The Bottom Line.’ In the short time I’ve been with Digital Royalty, I’ve been really impressed by the amount of metrics and data that go into their social media campaigns and presentations. For anyone who works for a company that is trying to monetize social media, or who needs to justify to the ‘higher-ups’ the time commitment to do social media correctly, I think this is a must-see.

Tuesday – Lunch: Wow. Ari Fleischer. I’m really interested to see how many times the BCS comes up during his keynote speech. I have followed InsideTheBCS for awhile on Twitter, and feel a little like I’m getting sent propaganda, but regardless, this is an absolute lion in the Public Relations realm. I’m pretty sure there will be some worthwhile takeaways.

Tuesday – Afternoon: I’ll be attending ’7 Touches.’ Besides Sports Business, I am also specializing in Strategic Marketing and Services Leadership at ASU. Ever since my first services marketing class, I have been hyper-sensitive to customer service, and how each and every interaction with a brand shapes the way you feel about that brand. Knowing that, I think customer service for teams and leagues right now should be a huge focus.

Wednesday: I’ll be attending the “What Keeps You Up At Night” Super Panel. I especially want to hear what Kevin Payne, the President & CEO of DC United, has to say. I know they have had some on-going stadium proposal issues, and are facing ever-increasing pressure from new MLS teams. My ears will be tuned for his comments in particular.

Wow, just writing this has been a little exhausting, so I can only imagine what the actual four days will be like! I hope to see some of you there, and would love to hear what sessions you’re most interested in attending…

Jason Peck (www.jasonfpeck.com) has put together an excellent e-book titled “Sports and Social Media Predictions 2010.” Jason reached out to several sports professionals and asked them a simple question: “What are your thoughts and predictions for sports and social media in 2010?” The answers provide incredible insight into the different ways that this aspect of the industry can grow and develop in the coming year.

Without giving too much away, here are a few quick quotes from the book:

• Brian Gainor: “The smartest U.S. brands will look to benchmark the mobile marketing practices of our European and Asian counterparts, who are paving the way with some innovative campaigns.”
• Joe Favorito: “People have to get some kind of ROI on what is going into the development and the time that social media consumes, and as of today very few if any smart brands have figured out a way to monetize what they are spending.”
• Lewis Howes: “I predict we will see even more opportunities for sports fans to engage in real-time interactions.”
• Pat Coyle: “In these favorable conditions, 2010 could very well be the year in which we see some teams moving social media from the periphery to the center of their marketing strategies.”
• Rob Katz: “Moving forward, controlling the message means active participation and some level of transparency to allow deeper, more sustainable audience engagement.”

This is just a small selection of what this e-book has to offer. I’m personally honored that Jason let me contribute to this project…you’ll have to read it for yourself to see my thoughts and predictions!  I’ve included a copy of the e-book below that you can view here, or you can click the download link to get a PDF version. Great work by Jason, and I encourage everyone to download this today!

Sports Social Media Predictions 2010

To continue with the trend of some of my recent posts, there is a great dialogue going on via Twitter from today’s NYC Sports Networker Summit. There are several panels discussing various topics in social media and sports, everything from the convergence of traditional and social media to ticket sales, retention and marketing. The panels feature excellent speakers, including Amy Martin, Lewis Howes, Tom Jolly, Jim Bankoff, Michael DeLorenzo, Brian Cuban, Ben Sturner and many others. You can follow the conversation by searching for the Twitter hashtag #nycsports, or you can scroll through the live stream of tweets below.

Yesterday I was able to attend part of the 4th annual Princeton Sports Symposium. Social media was definitely one of the most popular topics of the day, with multiple session dedicated to the topic along with regular mentions of the subject on various other panels. In fact, several attendees were sending tweets throughout the day with some great questions, quotes and highlights from these panels. You can find them all by searching for the Twitter hashtag #psports, or you can scroll through the list below.

Today’s guest post is courtesy of Christopher Byrne of The Cayuga Group. This post was in response to a discussion on The Business of Sports LinkedIn group regarding examples of current social media practices in sports.

Sometimes I think it is easier to say what teams, leagues and organizations are doing wrong. I do not know if it is intentional or the appearance that they do have a clue on what the world of social networking and social media is all about: collaboration and sharing.

I do not know if you remember Goofus and Gallant from Highlights Magazine or not (to summarize using the picture, Goofus is mean and doesn’t share while Gallant is nice to his friends and shares with others), but I will use their names and characters as an example.

• Goofus wants to manage all content, so his Facebook page does not allow people to share their ideas in the main wall thread.
• Gallant wants to engage people and build a community, so he allows people to post to the wall and interact with the larger member community, as long as they do it within the acceptable rules of conduct.

• Goofus deletes comments that they do not like (and I am not talking about profanity).
• Gallant realizes that people want honest, frank discussion, and that by allowing non-spun content actually helps build the page owners brand as a true social media/social networking participant/sponsor.

• Goofus wants everybody on the world to follow them on Twitter, but does not follow them in return. So he has no idea what they are saying about their organization. And because they are not followed, they cannot send feedback via direct messages.
• Gallant knows that the exchange needs to be two-way. First to get information out there, and second to receive feedback and monitor the conversation.

• Goofus wants all traffic to go to his web site, so he does not allow the embedding of any video from his site.
• Gallant knows that he will actually build up more goodwill AND increase traffic to their site by allowing people to embed video content from that site. He also knows that if he does not do it, people have no incentive to direct traffic to his site and that the risk of unauthorized pirating and distribution of the content goes up.

• Goofus thinks blogs are one way conversations and don’t allow comments of any kind for reasons that include corporate embarrassment.
• Gallant realizes that having a truly interactive blog is a way to not only engage people in community type dialog, but also a way to get unrestrained feedback from people.

So who are the Goofuses and the Gallants out there? Join the conversation on LinkedIn or leave your comments here.

Christopher Byrne is the managing partner of The Cayuga Group, LLC, a consulting firm focused on the development, deployment, management, and administration of information/collaboration systems including social networking tools. He writes about information technology and business process controls at the Business Controls Caddy, and sports media issues and opportunities at Eye on Sports Media.

At this point, everyone should understand how important it is to integrate social sharing links into any web-based campaign. These links provide an easy mechanism for fans to share the message with others and hopefully create a viral-like distribution for the campaign.

While I completely agree with this approach, I just saw an interesting report from Marketing Sherpa on the most common ways that people share links with friends and family. Take a look at the chart below:

The primary link sharing method of choice is clearly still email.  This is about 3.5x the number of percentage of people that share links via social media. Unfortunately I do not have a chart that shows the results of this question over time, but I’m sure that the social media percentage has increased as Twitter and Facebook grow in popularity.  In spite of this, for the time being email is still the king of link sharing. So don’t forget to include an “Email to a Friend” link with the rest of your sharing options and encourage your fans to email your links to others – they will probably be more likely to respond.

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Rob Campbell, Analyst for IEG Research Services. This article was first published on IEG’s Sponsorship Blog at Sponsorship.com.

Social Media and Sponsorship Join Forces for Marquette Basketball

This past week, Marquette University started posting from a Pepsi-sponsored Twitter account focusing on the home opener for its men’s basketball team. This development is unique in that very few (successful) forays have been made into the world of sponsored social media.

So far, the only evidence of Pepsi involvement is a Pepsi logo and the text “Pepsi Season Opener” on the Twitter page. There have been no tweets or links posted regarding Pepsi or the sponsorship and the posts have largely focused on information aimed at building excitement around opening night. If the user’s window is not maximized, the Pepsi logo and blurb receives little visibility, as it is mostly shrouded by text display.

The account has amassed just over 100 followers at the time of this post, but its posts are retweeted through the Marquette Athletics account.

I think this minimalistic approach of the lowest possible integration (no influence on tweets) is a great start. By keeping the sponsorship transparent and the content sterile, the account does not have a detrimental effort on the actual sponsorship of the athletic department and if anything, only adds to it.

If Pepsi ever does make it into the subject matter of tweets, it should not be in the form of just marketing messages. Instead, the best way to integrate the overarching Season Opener sponsorship into this sponsored Twitter page is to provide actual useful content or promotions. For example, if Pepsi were to give away tickets or create a highlight video, that would be relevant content to relay to the account’s followers. However, simply stating there is a sale on Pepsi at the local grocer would not be relevant.

Essentially, this Twitter account is just an activation extension of Pepsi’s sponsorship of Marquette Athletics and is not the sole focus of the sponsorship. I think placing the Twitter account in the supporting role of the much larger sponsorship makes the sponsored page feel much more organic than if the sponsored Twitter account were the primary focus.

It would be interesting to know if Pepsi requested the Twitter tie-in or whether Marquette’s athletic department took the initiative in its creation.

(Editor’s Note: I love to see experimentation like this in the social media space. I believe the first sports-related Twitter sponsor to get involved was Tissot on Danica Patrick’s page. Social media allows for a wide array of value-added activation, which is so important now as companies look to gain more value from their sponsorships without increasing their spend.)

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Steve Koss.

Social Media, Crowd Management & Security at Stadiums Empower the Fans

The real action of the sports business occurs in the front and back of house operations for the event at a stadium. The action on the field is the entertainment for the fans with the players being the gladiators engaged in the competition of the game. When you pack a venue with 60,000 plus fans, the ability to control and react to an incident is critical. Social media is fast becoming an added event staff member at venues.

We are seeing another transformation and evolution in crowd management at venues. The hand radio and cellular technologies had an impact on venue operations, but social media will impact the front and back of house operations in ways we could not have imagined in the past.

Social media is allowing fans not only to experience the game on the field; the technology is allowing the fans to control their environment in their specific sections in the seats. Fans can simply send a tweet or text message to the venue command center to allow the event security staff to take effective action. The NFL used a text messaging system during the Super Bowl this past year to report fan behavior issues, allowing security to address the problem at an early stage for quick response.

Crowd management and security at venues will see vast technology breakthroughs with social media playing a vital role. The Human-Robot Interaction project that allows robotic-type technology to mimic some human behaviors underway at Bristol Robotics Laboratory in England has huge implications, such as safety, crowd flow, manpower analysis, design and construction cost. Just think of an eye-tracking system employed at venues that allows robotic-type sensors to estimate the gaze of its human fans and infer their “state of mind,” like intention and focus, and instantly alert the command center for “correct” action by security or event management.

Moreover, such technology can be employed to scan crowds and provide warnings when those crowds reach critical-mass levels. This could create safer venues and transform crowd-management activities. Improving business processes and increasing revenues, such the ability to instantly place a message on the scoreboard or send a Twitter message to increase food and merchandise per caps, will be a real-time social media activity.

To survive and be competitive in the sports business environment, organizations have to make innovation a top action priority. For breakthrough business solutions to be found, you will need to “get out of the box” and be a problem solver. The simplest and most powerful way to awaken the creative part of your brain is to imagine how social media can be more than just a marketing force. Imagining can create a new reality with social media in extraordinary ways, driving revenue, improving business processes, empowering the fans and mitigating risks at sports venues.

Steve Koss has an extensive venue and sports background improving business processes and delivering innovative solutions that drive front and back of house business results. You can follow him on Twitter at @SteveKoss.

I just heard on the radio that the NBA is going to release a league-wide Twitter policy this week. This isn’t very surprising, since other sports organizations, most notably the NFL and ESPN have released similar policies in the past month. In addition, the latest story involving the Texas Tech football program has unfortunately showcased some of the pitfalls associated with Twitter.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been running a poll to see what you think of the NFL’s social media policy, and now is a good time to look at the results!

Almost 80% of the participants agreed with the policy. I’m really impressed by this number. At first, it seemed like the initial reaction to the policy was quite negative, with fans and social media advocates disappointed as these “control measures.” However, it seems like the readers here recognize that even with social media tools like Twitter, putting some policies in place will actually provide a benefit.

I do want to add one more point though. If a league is going to implement a Twitter policy, then I think they should also build and execute a Twitter strategy. Hopefully this is already the case for both the NBA and the NFL, but I would like to see their social media programs and strategies get as much attention as their policies and guidelines.

If you have an idea for a new poll, please use the Contact Us link at the top of the page to send me your suggestion!

Tonight’s first live broadcast on Ustream will start at 7:30pm EST (4:30pm EST).  You can watch the stream below, or you can click here to visit the The Business of Sports Live Ustream channel to also participate in the live chat and send in your questions!

As a special treat for tomorrow night’s New York City Sports Business Networking event, the guys at FanChatter put together a special ChatterBox that will aggregate any Twitter conversations that includes the #sportsbiz hashtag.

So make sure to use the #sportsbiz hashtag in all your tweets during tomorrow night’s event, as well as in any sports business tweets leading up to and after the event.  That way, they’ll show up right here on the site!

Thanks again to FanChatter for setting this up, and we hope to see all of you tomorrow night!

Last week, news came out about a new “Twitter policy” being implemented by ESPN.com. It started with a tweet from Ric Bucher, followed by lots of speculation, and then information on the actual guidelines was released on TheBigLead.com.

Last night, I had the chance to talk with Rob King, Editor-in-Chief of ESPN.com, about this policy and the relationship between ESPN.com and social media.  I wasn’t able to do a full podcast recording, but here are some notes and quotes from our conversation that I thought were really valuable:

On the new guidelines:

• The recent guidelines are meant to be a starting point for the company, because there was nothing in place with regard to how ESPN personalities were using Twitter, blogs and social media, and this seemed like the right time to put something in place.
• These channels are viewed as a “valuable opportunity to relate with our audiences” and it is regarded “as a form of important programming and publishing,” and as such, the focus on the guidelines is less on prohibiting content and more on how social media should be used.
• The desire is to disseminate news on ESPN platforms, but continue to converse with and engage with fans through other platforms such as Twitter.
• There is an additional challenge as a media company in balancing the opportunity to broadcast a personal message versus a company message, so “even in the instance of a 140 character message sent along through a cell phone, we’re in the position of representing something a lot larger” and they wanted to make sure everyone is aware of this.

On driving users to ESPN.com vs. reaching out to them in other locations:

• ESPN realizes that the conversations often occur outside of the ESPN.com platform, and still wants to engage users in those ways.  As such, there’s been an increased focus on using blogs, optimizing the site for search engines and a partnership with YouTube for video content.
• ESPN has also worked with a company called CoveritLive to integrate with live Twitter conversations, which was used in the WNBA All-Star Game and Sunday night’s game between the Yankees and Red Sox. This let users engage with ESPN through the website or Twitter, whichever they preferred to use. There are plans in place to use this again during ESPN’s coverage of the PGA Championship.

On the reaction to the new guidelines:

• Internally, there was a large follow-up call to review the policy, which helped clarify things and created a lot more understanding. Some questions might still come up as to what content is “breaking news” and where the content can or should be shared.
• There was an “appropriately passionate” initial response from the public. Rob received a lot of thoughtful feedback, and it showed how much people cared about ESPN and how passionate they are about their sports coverage.  Most of the negative public reaction died out in less than a day, once people saw the policy and learned more about it.
• “If there’s a great story here, its that people clearly expressed the notion that they enjoy connecting with our talent or our contributors in a way that was immediate, that was direct, and that was ongoing through the course of the day.”

I want to thank Rob for taking the time to talk with me.  You can follow Rob on Twitter at twitter.com/rfking.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that I always have a poll running on the right side of the page. If you haven’t already, please vote! I try to change the poll every couple of weeks and the results can be quite interesting. On that note, here are the results from a recent poll on sports marketing and social networking. Remember, the more people participate, the more valuable the results will be, so please vote!

This poll ran back in April and May, but for some reason I never posted the results.  As you can see, a majority of the respondents believed that Twitter was a more effective marketing tool than Facebook or MySpace.  More and more, people have been won over by Twitter’s potential, which makes it even more surprising that some sports organizations have recently put more restrictions on its usage.  ESPN has just released a new internal policy that could cut down on some content from ESPN personalities, and several NFL teams have implemented restrictions on both the media and their own players.

Even with the current focus on Twitter, it is nice to see that a large percentage of people still believe that Facebook is the most effective of the three.  They still have a much larger user base, and the statistics also indicate they have a larger percentage of active, engaged users.  Any sports organization’s marketing plan must include both of these communication channels.

Finally, it seems like it might be time to cut bait on MySpace.  I personally believe MySpace is too cluttered and hard to manage for it to be a very effective tool.  Additionally, a large percentage of MySpace users also have a Facebook account, with many abandoning their MySpace accounts entirely. MySpace may have had the “first mover advantage” in the social networking space, but that advantage has now faded away.

If you have an idea for a new poll, please use the Contact Us link at the top of the page to send me your suggestion!

Just a quick post today to share a great video clip from ESPN’s Outside the Lines discussing professional athletes on Twitter and featuring a couple of friends of mine, Kathleen Hessert of Sports Media Challenge and Brendan Wilhide of Sportsin140.com.

Today’s post is an email interview that I recently did with Marty Wetherall, Co-Founder and CEO of FanChatter.

Marty – tell us a bit about yourself.

My background is in filmmaking and advertising, but I’ve always found myself figuring out ways to work in sports. My thesis film at USC was a baseball movie, I’ve produced Super Bowl commercials (you may remember the EDS “Cat Herders” spot in 2000), I’ve directed TV, in-venue, and web content for Vikings, Twins and Timberwolves in Minnesota, and back in 2005 I created a TV show for Twin Cities NBC-affiliate KARE-11 around the life and trials of being a sports fan.  We called it THE SHOW TO BE NAMED LATER… and it was completely open source. We hand-cuffed fans of opposing teams together during games, staged sports fan MC-battles, and basically did anything anyone could think of to have fun with the sports fan experience.  Most importantly, we gave fans like us a platform to broadcast their respective points of view, which we’re seeing now in a big way with social media.

Social media is a hot topic among sports teams and leagues, with everyone is trying to figure out the best ways to use these new tools.  Which social media websites and services do you think are most effective in engaging with fans, and can you give us some examples of teams or companies that are doing a good job?

Twitter continues to get a lot of buzz, and for good reason. Fans are self-organizing using hashtags like #redsox. Athletes are drawn to Twitter because of the control it gives them, and we’re seeing players like Shaq and Mark Madsen hearing they’ve been traded from fans on Twitter before hearing it from their team or agents.  Facebook is also important because of their 250 million users, but in terms of involving your fans, what happens in Facebook stays in Facebook, so I think teams could do better than to surrender all that engagement. I give credit to any brand who is accepting of the open two-way relationship they now have with their customers or fans courtesy of the social web, but soon every website will be social.  You can now sign in at the Sears website with Twitter or Facebook.  So I predict that closing the engagement gap between the social networks and your own site will be the next big trend we’ll see.

One thing about social media that most intrigues me is the immediacy of it, how quickly and directly the message can be delivered.  But this can be a double-edged sword.  What are your thoughts on this?

It certainly requires a new frame of mind. A lot of brands don’t want to give up control of what’s being said about them. But they need to realize that this conversation – for better or worse – is already happening without them, and it’s better to be a part of if than not. Brands should try to strike a balance between control and conversation, and teams need to realize that these are your fans.

Most social media efforts are focused on engaging the fan outside of the arena (online, television, etc). How can teams find a way to bring that social media engagement into the arena?

This is really at the core of what my company FanChatter is trying to do. Content sharing is happening everywhere, not just on YouTube, and today’s mobile phones are a big part of this. Our Scoreboard Photo Sharing feature starts in the arena with fans vying to get their mobile photos displayed on the jumbotron, but it really comes to life after the games in the team’s online gallery where photos can be downloaded, sent to friends, or shared on social media.  Content is the connector for fans and the path to engagement, so that’s where I think real progress can be made in-venue.

What are some ways that sports organizations can go beyond fan engagement and actually monetize social media?

More engagement means more time spent, more page views, more chances your fans will buy stuff from you, and so on, so finding ways to harness all the online activity you’re inspiring that’s happening elsewhere is key.  Fans take a lot of photos with their phones at games, but simply offering them a chance that their photo will be shown on the videoboard inspires hundreds to be sent in at every game.  Now you have an interactive feature that results in content that can be repurposed online.  And sponsors are looking to prove their ROI.  Well, you have to give a little to get a little, and by that I mean give the fans a chance to participate in their experience and they’ll respond with actions that can be measured and monetized.

Also, advertising using social media can be a powerful tool if used properly. Once a team’s built up a following on Twitter, why not offer those followers deals on tickets and memorabilia? Best of all, you can now track how many people saw each message and measure how effective it was so you can refine it. And of course, our products help facilitate this.

What do you think the next big thing is for sports and social media?

I look at what Chris Bosh and Stephon Marbury are doing on Ustream as indicative of a whole new chapter for fans and athletes.  I once needed to get special locker room access to interview Marbury after a game for my show, and recently any fan could go online during his 3-day Ustream marathon and ask him anything they wanted with no permission whatsoever!  And athletes (and actors, and politicians) are open to this.  To me, that’s another example of how the barriers are gone and convergence is happening.  Now it’s up to the teams and leagues to jump on board and turn this to their advantage.

I know that FanChatter has recently released a new product.  Tell us a bit about it.

Yes – we call it the ChatterBox, and you can see it right now on the homepage of Timberwolves.com. We think ChatterBox is the future of fan chat. It aggregates social media activity about your team from Twitter and blogs, but it also lets fans sign in with their Facebook or Twitter account and join the conversation, right there on the home page. This is our third go at building a fan conversation platform, and along the way we’ve learned that in the heat of the moment, fans like to talk A LOT; probably more than your followers on Twitter would stand. That’s why we give fans the ability to choose whether or not to post back. That enables fast-paced conversation among people directly sharing the same experience, and it’s incredibly powerful. And of course, the photos work in the ChatterBox as well, creating a highly engaging real-time hub of fan activity.

You can learn more about FanChatter at www.FanChatter.com, and you can see a live example of their new ChatterBox product at www.timberwolves.com.

I know I’ve mentioned these guys once before, but I wanted to share a couple of the recent videos from The Row Show.  Every week, they put out a new video that covers the combination of sports, business and technology.  In some of the most recent episodes, they discuss user-generated video promotions, social media campaigns, developing a Twitter strategy, and much more (including a nice reference to this site in their most recent episode – thanks guys!)  Hope you enjoy the videos!

Episode 013: Twibbon, Lebron, & Sixovertimes.com

Episode 012: Developing a Twitter Strategy With The Oakland Raiders

Episode 010: How to Monetize your Twitter Feed

According to PCMAG.com, Twitter has increased 1,382 percent last year based on research done in March. Most interestingly, the use of Twitter has played a enormous role inside sports. Players and fans now have a much easier and more direct way to communicate via this 140 character message limit platform. Not only do professional players tweet what they’re up to, but coaches, administrators and other sports figures use Twitter to promote their teams and organizations.

One of the greatest tools of Twitter is the ability to find and follow specific professionals and experts in the field of your choice. While it’s fun to keep up on those celebrities your fond of, personally I enjoy following people who live outside the limelight and give me useful informative tweets rather than “I just got done with practice. Coach XYZ was hard on us today.” With that said here are a few links to a few fellows Tweeple that do an excellent job tweeting sports business news and opinions.

The Business Of Sports Official Twitter Accounts:

• Russell Scibetti – Founder of TheBusinessOfSports.com and author of most of the content on this site
• Dino Gomez – Official summer intern, providing news on sports, social media and their intersection
• TheBIZofSPORTS – A Twitter account to help promote and share the content from the site

Other Sports Business Twitter Content:

• Emmett Jones – Publisher of SportsBusinessDigest.com, another great source of sports business news
• Brendan Wilhide - Creator of sportsin140.com, a great reference for verified sports twitter accounts
• Lewis Howes – President of Sports Networker, helping connect people in the sports industry
• Darren Rovell – Sports reporter and blogger for CNBC, always offering the latest industry news
• Peter Robert Casey – A great source for anything basketball or social media
• Kathleen Hessert – President of Sports Media Challenge (you can find the rest of her staff on Twitter as well)
• Howard Bloom – Publisher for SportsBusinessNews.com
• Steve Dittmore – Sports management professor from the University of Arkansas
• Joshua Duboff – Creator and editor of The Sports Business Exchange, a journal for young sports professionals

Now I know this is a VERY short list.  There are many more Twitter users out there providing great sports business content, and I try to follow all of them.  If you have a minute, please use the comments below to share the names of 3-5 more sports business people that you follow.

Facebook is far and away the largest social networking community in existence, and as such, it is a prime location for sports organizations to communicate with their fans.  Most do this through fan pages, which are profiles that can be created on behalf of a company, team, website, product, celebrity or anything really.

Back in February, two of the top fifteen fan pages belonged to athletes, Michael Phelps at #7 (now over 2.5 million fans) and Cristiano Ronaldo at #12 (later shutdown for being “unofficial”).  When I tweeted yesterday asking for suggestions on teams that use Facebook well, one reply suggested the official Pittsburgh Penguins fan page, which has over 100,000 fans.  EA Sports has recently made a push into using Facebook Fan pages as well, creating pages for their different products such as Madden NFL 2010.  Even though it seems like Facebook is “old news,” the potential is still tremendous because they have over 200 million active users, of which over 50% log in at least once per day.  That audience size is simply too big to overlook.

So why are we talking about Facebook today?  Because we wanted to let you all know that The Business of Sports also has an official Facebook page. By becoming a fan on Facebook, you can see all of our latest sports business news and updates as part of your Facebook news feed. If you are on Facebook regularly (and from the statistics, about 50% of you probably are), this will give you a quick and easy connection to the blog. And once you become a fan of The Business of Sports Facebook page, you can invite any of your current Facebook friends to our page so they can keep up with the latest sports business news as well. The Facebook page also allows you to communicate with other fans of the site and maybe even connect with individuals that you met at one of our networking events. Finally, if you have suggestions on ways we can improve the page, please let us know by posting your ideas on our wall.  Thanks, and we’ll see you all on Facebook!

It’s day two of the Sports Careers Conference in Dallas, TX (held in conjunction with the Association of Luxury Suite Directors conference), and things have gone really well so far.  I’ve had the chance to talk in two different panels – the opening panel on getting started with a sports career track and a panel on using social media to build your network.  I received some great feedback on both panels, so I’ll share some of the details here for y’all (hey, we are in Texas):

Panel on Career Development:

• Start with your skills: Too many people come into their sports careers search just wanting to work for a team because they “love sports” or “want to get a foot in the door.”  This shotgun approach is ineffective and even dangerous, as it can set you up for failure if you end up in a position that doesn’t match your best skill set.
• Educate yourself: There are so many great tools out there (blogs, journals, social media, networking events, etc.) that there is no excuse not to learn about the industry first before you try and find a job.
• Tailor your approach: If you are applying for three different jobs,  you should have three different resumes with three different cover letters, each tailored to the specific detail and requirements of those jobs.  The HR departments get so many application to go through, that if you don’t tell them exactly why you fit their needs, they’re not going to look at you.

Panel with Lewis Howes on Social Media:

• Valuable tools: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and blogs are all valuable tools in developing your network if you use them the right way.  You still need to make quality connections and start relevant conversations to get the most out of them.
• LinkedIn: Don’t underestimate how valuable it can be.  Make sure your profile is complete.  Pursue and give recommendations.  Paint the best picture of yourself that you can.  Use groups to find people with common interest and reach out to them, but make sure you explain why you want to connect with them.
• Twitter: The Four C’s of Twitter are just as relevant for building up your personal brand through Twitter.  Use search.twitter.com to seek out people who are talking about the things that you are interested and join in the conversation.
• Blogging: Running your own blog can definitely help build your reputation and personal brand, but it is a huge commitment so make sure you are dedicated to it.  If you don’t want to run a blog, you can still use other blogs to education yourself and contribute comments, which itself could lead to great conversations and networking opportunities.
• Take the online offline: Develop your network through online tools is great, but its even better if you can take the online connections you’ve made and turn it into a face-to-face connection. Seek out conferences and networking events whenever possible, or if someone is local, just invite them out to lunch.
• Hustle: Lewis has done an incredible job of building his profile and network through these tools, both online and offline, and he’s done it because he works hard at it.  There is no substitute for effort and hard work.

Lewis tried to stream our social media panel online via uStream, but there were some technical issues.  You can still check out some of the clips from the panel here. (Warning – they are broken into clips of varying size from 1 to 5 minutes long. If we can get everything pieced together into one clip, I’ll post an updated link!)

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended the “Blogs With Balls”sports bloggers conference on Saturday.  I have to say the event was a great success.  The discussion panels were excellent and covered a wide range of topics, including how to leverage social media, generating advertising revenue, contrasting mainstream media vs. “new” media and much more.  There were panelists from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, YardBarker, SB Nation, Bleacher Report, Octagon and too many quality sports blogs to list.

Many people were “live tweeting” the event, including myself.  Here are some of my favorite comments and thoughts from the event, all collected via search.twitter.com:

• AnnaLindow “Content is king, marketing is the queen” -from@garyvee at #blogswithballs
• mikehall03: Perhaps the takeaway of #blogswithballs is that any blog written with a clear purpose can be successful within constraints. Is thàt enough?
• rscibetti: From @bankoff There is a demand for quality. Sometimes there is a need to moderate the conversation. #blogswithballs
• joshuaduboff: YardBarker CEO: online advertising revenue for sports blogs will be up a few % despite economy #blogswithballs
• BlueWorkhorse: “best way to luck into something is to work really hard” – matt ufford from with leather #blogswithballs
• StephBags: You need to use google analytics on your blog so you know where your readers are going/why they leave: @joesportsfan #blogswithballs
• CompanyWoman: Wow. Daily twitter circulation of @The_Real_Shaq (1.2MM+) surpasses the NY Times. #blogswithballs

Here are links to some other articles and blog posts that wrote about the event.

• http://www.lacrosseallstars.com/blog/2009/6/14/we-just-got-struck-by-blogs-with-balls.html
• http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/pretzel/Maybe_we_arent_all_going_to_die.html
• http://www.thejetsblog.com/2009/06/14/my-blogswithballs-report/
• http://jeffpearlman.com/?p=1853
• http://gogameface.com/blog_detail.php?postid=291
• http://thedugoutsportsshow.com/?p=244 (Podcast recorded live during the event)

Thanks again to everyone from HHRMediaGroup who created Blogs With Balls. I can’t wait for the next one, and I encourage anyone else who is interested in learning more about blogs and social media to attend.

Over the past month or so, Pat Coyle has held three different Sports Marketing 2.0 summits in New York, Chicago and Palo Alto.  Some of the people in attendance, specifically at the recent summit in California, live tweeted the event, sharing some of the things they learned through their Twitter messages.

Take a minute and go to search.twitter.com and search for “#sports20″ (all of the live tweets were marked with this hashtag so they are easy to find).  You will find some short but valuable insights.  Here are a couple of examples:

• danstwitter: MIT study A fan goes to your site, contacting them within first hour is more likely 2 convert into sale. This declines 10%/hour #sports20
• danstwitter: Talking CRM. It drives what you do in Service and Sales, but have your plan in place and this helps feed those programs. #sports20

For more information on these summits and other valuable sports marketing content, visit www.sportsmarketing20.com.

This past Sunday marked the first Twitter Conference ever which focused entirely on Twitter as a business platform. The conference which was referred to as TWTRCON, was held in San Francisco and featured an amazing panel of guest speakers ranging from Guy Kawasaki of AllTop, all the way to celebrities such as M.C. Hammer. Having been fortunate enough to attend such a conference, I felt I would summarize what I learned there in order to help those readers interested in using Twitter to further their business.

The conference began with a section called “Twitter for Business 101.”  Laura Fitton, the author of Twitter for Dummies, spoke about the true importance of your followers. She emphasized that it is not necessary to have 10,000 followers in order to make Twitter useful for your business. Instead she explained that it is important to have quality followers, and by that she implied followers that are in a field related to yours, or followers that have a similar interest. For example if you work as the head of the softball department for Easton, a design company and manufacturer of sports equipment, then the people you want following you on Twitter should mostly be female and 22 years of age or younger. Why? Because that is your target market for softball equipment and there is little need to have followers that don’t fit into that market. Fitton exclaimed multiple times not to waste your time trying to attain some superficial number of followers unless your market is very large and unspecific.

Guy Kawasaki spoke on “How Twitter Will change Your Tomorrow.” Kawasaki, whom everybody seemed to be fond of, wanted everyone to realize the potential of Twitter. With 30 million users, you have the ability to find a lot of people in very specific niches. In general you also have the ability to connect with the world quickly and easily so it is important to be very careful of your tweets. You have to be aware of “ghost tweeters,” which are people managing Twitter accounts for you or for others you connect with.  Unlike other social media platforms, once you tweet you cannot delete.

Jeremie McPeek, Vice President of Interactive Services for the Phoenix Suns,wanted to remind the audience that it is important how you market yourself or your company through Twitter. The Suns team has many players on the roster who tweet quite frequently. Sometimes these players may tweet something that does not positively reflect the image that the Phoenix Suns want. Large companies need to be mindful of this. Remind your employees that they represent more than themselves online. McPeek who is known as SunsWebmaster on Twitter, encourages you to carefully lead your followers to your website. Attract followers by having fun with your tweets. You don’t need to be all business all the time. As an example, the representatives for different NBA twitter accounts created a competition to see which team could reel in the most followers, with the winner being awarded the “Twophy of Twitter.”

Since there were so many influential speakers and attendees at the conference, I could write forever on everything I learned. Instead now I’m going to direct you to a couple of useful platforms I was introduced to that should help you better manage your Twitter accounts. These were all new to me.

Co-Tweet is a comprehensive business platform which allows multiple people to communicate through corporate Twitter accounts and stay in sync while doing so. It helps to keep employees on the same page and organized.

HootSuite is similar to Co-Tweet in letting you manage multiple account at once, and it also tracks your success on Twitter by showing you how many people have clicked on your tweet URLs.

Interested in all the other awesome platforms and sponsors that showed off their goods at this conference? Click on the following link for more official TWTRCON info.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that I always have a poll running on the right side of the page. If you don’t already, please vote! I try to change the poll every 1-2 weeks and the results can be quite interesting. On that note, here are the results from some of the recent polls, which I will continue to post semi-regularly. Remember, the more people participate, the more valuable the results will be, so please vote!

This poll went along with my series of Twitter-related blog posts from early March.  This was right around the time when Twitter started exploding in the sports arena, so I wanted to see how many people were already using Twitter to consume sports-related content.  As you can see, about 2/3 of the participants said that they did use Twitter for this purpose.  I realize that my “sample” is probably not representative of the entire sports fan population, since most of my readers are connected to the business side and may have learned about Twitter before the rest of the mainstream public. However, I bet that if I ran this poll again just a couple of months later, that the Yes vote would be closer to 75 or 80%. 

Don’t Forget!  Tonight is The Business of Sports Networking Event in NYC! You can see all the details here, and we can still accept last minute RSVPs. Hope to meet some of you tonight!

I recently interviewed Dani Muccio (also know as @dani3boyz on Twitter) regarding all of the NHL Tweetup events (www.nhltweetup.com) that have been taking place throughout this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs.

How did the idea for organized NHL Tweetups start and how did you get involved?

It all started with a single tweet. Even in that first tweet, I tagged it #NHLtweetup. After getting my first taste of networking outside of Twitter’s 140 character limit at a tweetup in my area, I thought it would be great to try and gather some of our “Hockey Tweeps” for a gathering in a central location (NYC). Getting like-minded people together is something that I’ve always enjoyed doing through my volunteer work in my community. The idea really took off and quickly evolved into an international event with 23 locations planning events for the first playoff games  The experience of coordinating these events on an international level, revolving around a sport that I love, has really been incredible. The best explanation of what happened after that first tweet was put together by Angela Robson (@goaliegirl) in her blog post which can be found here. I have continued to be the contact person/coordinator for NHLtweetup events. I monitor Twitter for mentions of NHLtweetup and reach out to people who are interested in hosting an event in their area. I supply them the info they need to get started and gather information I need from them in order to help them promote their event via nhltweetup.com and @nhltweetup. Angela Robson created and hosts nhltweetup.com and continues to serve as the site’s administrator.

What has the attendance been like at the various locations?

Attendance varied greatly from location to location. The smallest was in Belfast, Ireland which was dubbed “The Littlest NHLtweetup” with two very enthusiastic attendees. The largest were the first round events  in NYC at the NHL Store and in Nashville, which topped off at about 100 people. All over the US and Canada you could find events that had anywhere from 10-30 attendees.

Have the events grown in popularity as the playoffs progress?

Yes, they have been extremely successful in getting hockey fans together and have gotten quite a bit of media attention. The most exciting, was a mention in USA Today. A quick Google News search of NHLtweetup brings up pages and pages of articles. Each write up touts NHL fans as the most tech-savvy of any major league sport with these events as an example of how social media is being used to connect with and extend its fan fan base.
 
Some locations, such as Washington DC, have had 5 or more events since the inaugural night. Other locations like NYC, Pittsburgh, Denver and Chicago just to name a few, went for Round 2 and Round 3 tweetups and are already discussing a NHLtweetup for the final. Currently, there are two more events that I’m directly involved in that I will attend – one in Farmingdale Long Island on 5/27 and another (maybe two) in Montreal for the draft during the weekend of June 26th. Other events in Seattle, Denver and Cincinnati will take place this week. As soon as the final schedules are released, the planning will start for those games as well.

Are there any plans to organize events like this next season?

Absolutely. I’ve been told as soon as the 2009-10 schedule comes out, I better hold onto my BlackBerry very tightly because a number of cities are going to want to have NHLtweetups during their team’s first away game. I expect the beginning of the season to be pretty big. I’m looking forward to it. This is something that I’ve enjoyed doing and will continue to do so as long as the demand is there.

What have you learned from NHL Tweetups that other teams/leagues could benefit from?

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that hockey isn’t “celebrated” the same way in all markets. Whereas some areas, such as NY and NJ, have “social hockey fans” that will get together to watch just about any team play, other areas such as San Jose, Detroit, and most of the Canadian market, are team loyal and are mostly interested in their local teams and not the NHL overall. Identifying these differences and marketing appropriately would be beneficial to the fans as well as the teams and league.

Also, the league and teams should not dismiss social media outlets such as Twitter, or the fans that utilize it. NHLtweetup is proof that this is a powerful tool for for connecting with the fans and bringing them together. These outlets are also a valuable tool in drawing attention to the sport and raising interest in the more passive fans or creating new ones altogether. The events that were supported by the NHL and/or their local teams had the best turnout and were more likely to have follow up events.

If you want more info, you can visit:

• http://delicious.com/angela/nhltweetup (List of links that contain mentions of NHLtweetup)
• http://www.blogtalkradio.com/PredsOnTheGlass/2009/04/28/PredsOnTheGlass-Radio- (A podcast with Dani and Buddy Oakes from PredsOnTheGlass)

Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Brendan Wilhide, creator of the website Sportsin140.com which covers sports on Twitter and features the “Sports on Twitter” directory of confirmed athletes and teams:

The number of professional sports teams on Twitter has exploded in the last six months. New teams join each week as word of Twitter’s use as a marketing tool grows through the media and throughout the sports industry. As teams join Twitter, they discover new ways to interact with and engage their fans and their audience. In the last few months alone, Twitter users has seen their favorite teams embrace Twitter through unique contests, giveaways and promotions.

We caught up with two early adopter teams: the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream and Minor League Baseball’s Lakewood (NJ) BlueClaws and asked them how they use Twitter as a marketing tool. Both the Dream and the BlueClaws made waves on Twitter in the last few months with unique promotions and giveaways.

The WNBA regular season doesn’t start until early June but the Atlanta Dream front office is already busy. The team maintains a social networking presence on Facebook, Myspace and, as of early January, Twitter. Dream Vice President of Media Relations Tonya Alleyne says using Twitter was the last piece of the team’s online marketing puzzle. “One of the many reasons we chose to use these [social networking sites] is because of the grassroots appeal it has with our fans and more importantly our potential fans,” Alleyne says.

The promotion was simple: the Dream would give away tickets to the team’s May 27 game against the Connecticut Sun if roughly 1,000 people became fans of the team on its Facebook page in one week. When the promotion began, Alleyne says, the Dream had roughly 500 Facebook fans and the team reached its goal of 1,500 total fans in less than a week. Once the promotion ended, the front office set out to fulfill over 1,000 free ticket requests for the May 27 game and for that, the team once again turned to Facebook.

The Dream created a Facebook message blast informing fans how to redeem their ticket by filling out a special form on the team’s website. Alleyne says the team will set up a special Will Call window at the stadium box office specifically for fans redeeming tickets from the Facebook promotion and will do the best to accommodate fans that wish to purchase additional tickets.

Alleyne says the team’s ticket giveaway is just the first of many unique social networking promotions for fans this season. Last week, the team hosted its first ever “Twitterview” in which Atlanta Dream star Chamique Holdsclaw answered fan questions live on Twitter. Alleyne says the team expects to host more “Twitterviews” in the future.

“[Twitter] has given us a way to directly connect with our fans in a place where they are already comfortable,” Alleyne says. “Folks are already using these sites for their personal use and enjoyment and as an organization we want to be where our fans are,” she says.

The challenges of marketing to fans is not limited to major league franchises, something that Lakewood (NJ) BlueClaws Media and Public Relations Manager Greg Giombarresse knows well. “You always have to find new and creative ways to..reach both our fans and prospective fans or you risk falling behind,” he says. “We really made the decision [to integrate Twitter into the team's marketing efforts] in the last few months and we’ve seen Twitter grow at a rapid pace over that period.”

The BlueClaws are an affiliate of the World Champion Philadelphia Phillies and play in the low-class A South Atlantic League. Giombarresse says the BlueClaws intend to use Twitter frequently this season as a way to reach their fans quickly and effectively. “It’s free and it’s simple. Our fans can go to our Twitter page and see a running log of what we’ve been releasing, what’s new and what’s coming up, with links back to our homepage for quick reference,” he says.

Even though the BlueClaws’ season is less than a month old, Giombarresse says the team has already seen the benefits of using Twitter to communicate with the fans. One successful idea was born on a rainy Monday just hours before a rain-threatened home game. The team set up a banner on its website directing fans to the team’s Twitter page, where it offered constant updates on the weather and the status of that night’s game. “We decided to capitalize on that and said that fans that printed out our Twitter page [that night] received a free all-you-can-eat bracelet for the next night’s game.” Giombarresse says over 25 people redeemed the team’s offer. “It was a big hit.”

While the BlueClaws have had success using Twitter, Giombarresse is quick to add that Twitter does not replace the need for a team website. “The one thing about Twitter that is a little scary is you don’t want to get people into the habit of going there instead of your own website,” he says. Giombarresse says the BlueClaws will host giveaways via the team’s Twitter page in addition to its official blog and Facebook page. “You have a great program with the ability to reach a lot of people very quickly, and steer them back to your own website or blog.”

Be it major league basketball, minor league baseball or any sport in between, Giombarresse thinks sports teams have only scratched the surface of using Twitter as a promotional tool. “I think the future is very bright. The far more personal nature of Twitter and other social marketing sites is certainly a welcome change that we all have to keep up with as best as we possibly can.”

With the rapid increase in popularity of Twitter among sports organizations, I thought this was the appropriate time to document what I refer to as “The Four C’s of Twitter.” I believe that if you follow the basic concepts I’m going to review, that you can use Twitter to  your advantage:

The Four C’s of Twitter

1.  Content: Ultimately, all communication channels are only as good as the content that you provide. Twitter is no different. Just because you are using a micro-blogging system with a 140 character limit doesn’t mean that you can’t create interesting and engaging content for your readers. Twitter users are particularly interested in content that they might not get via other traditional channels, such as insider news, early access to information, behind-the-scenes access and unique perspectives that they cannot get elsewhere.

2.  Character: By character, I mean personality. Whether the Twitter account has a specific person’s name on it or not, followers want to know that there is a real person behind the account, and the way to do that it by letting your personality shine through.  The last thing that Twitter users want is “the company line” – they can get that anywhere. If you can put a personal touch on your content, the interest level will jump dramatically.

3.  Conversation: Twitter was designed on the concept of following other people’s updates and being able to respond back and engage with your Twitter friends. Simply pushing a message down to followers without conversing with them will quickly get tuned out. Hopefully if you post something interesting, you will get a few replies back. When that happens, reply back to those people and start a dialogue.  Others will see what is happening and join the conversation. Now your followers aren’t just reading about you, they are engaging with you. Also, if someone follows your account, follow them back. Even if you’re not actively reading their posts, they’ll appreciate the reciprocity and be more interested in looking for your updates.

4.  Community: When you succeed in the first three areas, the number of people that follow you (and you in turn follow back) will quickly increase.  Before you know it, you have hundreds and thousands of people that are looking for your tweets.  And if they decide they want to look for other fans of your team/league/sport, they’ll search through your list of followers to find others they can connect with.  In essence, you’ve created an entire new community on Twitter based around your brand.  More people will start conversations about your organization, even if you don’t post anything yourself.

These concepts can be applied to any Twitter account, whether you work with a team, league, consumer product, or you just want to start your own personal account.  If you follow all four ideas, your account will quickly become a success.