One of my focuses over the past few weeks has been to look into how we can utilise athletes in helping the business with its goals.
This is the same quandary for clubs and federations as they look to enhance their reputations in the digital world. Many have now set up Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages and a few are doing a great job in engaging with their communities.
A club has the great advantage of being a tribal cause to people whilst federations and companies struggle to give their brand a personality and draw a sizeable audience.
A great way to achieve this is to look at what you have to work with. Clubs, federations and companies all have athletes who are contracted to them and themselves tend to have online followings already.
What we are seeing in the UK is that the people at the top don’t understand what social media is and become scared of what can go wrong. Yes, it is new and cock-ups will happen, that‘s life.
A brave few are coming through and working out that their employees can help spread news about how great the sport/club is, usually better than bodies themselves. I feel that many know this but don’t know how to approach it.
What many athletes are short of is time and expertise in the field and so are their management companies. This presents a great opportunity to step in and help educate those involved. It is not a matter of making them do and pushing marketing messages to them to shove to their followers. That would be enough to put them (and their fans) off for a long time.
It’s about providing a solution to a problem. They are aware of the potential on the whole and are pretty tech savvy. They are also aware that any trip ups will be punished and can do a great deal of harm.
They need to shown the do’s and do not’s so that they feel comfortable with it. Is it Facebook, Twitter or YouTube (or blogging) they choose – what suits their strengths, what best brings out their off the field personality?
They will need showing what technology they can use to speak to their fans (Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, co-Tweet, Twitter iphone/BB app, vimeo, wordpress, facebook page, etc). Work with them on how do they best engage with fans, how to run competitions, etc.
Once they are up and running then there will be a need for ongoing support, whether it be them, their management company or their family that run the page.
It is a huge opportunity both the athlete and the company/federation/club to develop a great working relationship, support structure, fan engagement and marketing platform. But athletes left to find it out by themselves will not give much support and will invariably make mistakes.
If we can be there to help them along the way with all of them then the opportunities are massive. If you are a club with season tickets to sell then at the moment you have standard marketing methods plus send out tweets/updates to your few hundred or thousand followers.
As Australia cricket captain Ricky Ponting put it; “It is your job as international players to promote the game and be the best you can for the game. And if we can use social networks, if that brings people closer to the game, brings people through the gates to play, then that’s what it is all about…. you won’t see us banning our players from doing that sort of stuff.”
Add the athletes to the mix and if they say ‘come and support the team next season, a few season tickets still available. Be great to see you in the crowd when we come out” to their thousands of fans then the message is amplified massively.
Fingers crossed I can have some early successes in the next few weeks – education of different people is going to be key but am sure it will be great!
Hi Will. Thanks for the great comments. Judging by the number of RT's of the article it is something that is generally interesting to those in the sports business.
What I would say on your endorsement comment is that I dont see it as an arena for blatant sales plugs. It has to be in the voice of the athlete and fit with who they are. It is more about building up an awareness of the brand, linking it closely with that particlar person.
If you can build it over a period of time with regular mentions of thanks or photo's, etc of photo shoot appearances or advert filming this will resonate better with the fan. I think a particularly strong message is when a player shows of their new cool kit/watch/item with a pic. Its a great way to biuld up that 'must have' element and brings in peer influence.
A good mention of social media weith athletes would be for me, the UFC. Their athletes have received several days of training and have 24/7 support as the main objective is to raise awareness of the sport and events. To this extent they have succeeded hugely.
We shall see how things transpire in the UK….
Great article Daniel, I've actually been working on something very similar for another network in recent weeks, which suggests that we're not the only ones with these thoughts.
I feel that athletes have huge room for growth in their use social media. In terms of fan engagement many are already performing functionally with unique content, regular updates and everything else that a fan wants from their favourite sports stars.
In terms of brand endorsement I feel there is a great opportunity for sponsors and parent clubs to get their names involved in their players Tweets, status updates, blog articles, YouTube videos etc. However for this to start happening, I feel players club contracts/endorsement deals must have some kind of social media requirements written in to them.
The danger is this… Social media works for athletes by giving fans an insight into their natural persona, unhindered by their club or sponsor's internal PR machine. This honesty and realism is what appeals to the fans, in a world of edited newspaper interviews and fabricated press conferences. If athletes are actively promoting their brand partners through social media, this entire element may be lost on the public, who are notoriously insincere with their fanatical support (think Wayne Rooney in recent weeks, hero-to-villain-to-hero again in some Manc quarters).
Current thoughts suggest social media is best practiced organically. Maybe it is best to leave it that way. We will see…