Geolocation has been the smash hit in the social media scene of 2010. Coming from relative obscurity in early 2010, Foursquare alone now boasts over 3 million users. With the NYC start up recently breaking it’s own record for most new users in one day, the social media darling has recently took funding to the tune of $20m while reportedly also turning down a buyout offer from Yahoo.

With Foursquare beginning to assert its authority in geolocation, one of it’s biggest possible rivals decided to step in. Earlier this month Facebook announced ‘Facebook Places’, the social networking heavyweight with over 500 million users took geolocation from niche into the mainstream overnight.

Where as location based services Foursquare, Gowalla, Hot Potato, Yelp and others relied on social networking to spread their message, Facebook turned the tables and are now trying to stamp its authority in the geolocation game by creating its own platform 

With all these recent developments, let’s look at the big players in the game right now, what they currently offer, what they may offer in the future and how sports marketers should be trying to take advantage of geolocation.

Thought geolocation was just for geeks? This billboard in Times Square begs to differ.

Facebook Places

So far Facebook Places is yet to really show its hand, while currently only available to users in the United States, the social media giant hasn’t actually released full details on how businesses can take advantage of the platform, but let’s start with a few titbits from what we know so far.

You can claim your location: Whether it’s your ball park, your front office or your training facility, you can now claim it and anything else you own. If it’s not already there, feel free to create it yourself.

You can link your Fan Page to your ‘Place’: You are able to link your Facebook ‘Place’ to your Fan Page, so do that ASAP.

Yep, that’s about all we really know so far.

For more info on Facebook Places, check out the slide below for a full introduction.

 
Facebook Places for Advertisers
 

Why Use Facebook Places?
This is one for the future. With very few features available so far, it is very hard to tell you to focus on Facebook Places – as being in such an early phase of its development it’s impossible to tell where it will go – but once the platform finds it’s feet, it will be crucial to your digital marketing plan.

Possible additions?

• Facebook Places ads: Ads that target you due to your location
• More game aspects: Features similar to mayorships, rewards, etc
• Hot Potato features (which are covered further down) this includes in-venue messaging

Foursquare

Currently the number one place for all your geolocation needs. It has the most exposure, has the biggest userbase (specifically for geolocation) and also allows you to take control of your venue. Not only these factors, but we have case studies. Manchester City, from the English Premier League, was the first team in all of professional sports to have an official presence on Foursquare. They had their own sub-page on the foursquare.com website, as well as the ability to let their fans “follow” them on Foursquare and become fans.

So you finally convinced management to allow you to get into social media, you’ve set up your Facebook and your Twitter account (hopefully a few others too) and the people are flocking to your accounts. Now what? How do you find out what people are saying about you and then get into the conversation yourself?

Social Media Monitoring

The conversation is happening out there on the internet, with or without you, so it only makes sense for you to get involved. There are plenty of places that your sports brand gets talked about not just on Facebook or Twitter, there are blogs, podcasts, message boards etc. It’s up to you and go and find them. Not only is it up to you to find them, but you must decide if it is worth intersecting in the conversation.

Eliminate the noise 

There are two types of tracking going online right now. Generic brand monitoring, where the brand mention is found and catalogued in a database, but the latest trend is now in sentiment tracking. They track the brand mention but then analyse whether they are being talked about in a positive or negative light.

What are some useful tools to get you started in monitoring your brand?

Brand Monitoring

Twitter Search

Yep, simple right? Twitter Search is the easiest and most effective way to start out when monitoring your brand on Twitter only. You can type in usernames to catch all the @ mentions, specific words or phrases or #hashtags to monitor as well. They used to index up to seven days worth of tweets but with Twitter now hitting up to 3000 tweets per second there just became too many tweets, and now they only index around four days worth of tweets. Why is it extra awesome? You can save your searches on to your twitter.com homepage and never have to come back to the search site.

SocialMention

Probably the best way to start. SocialMention is a great way for you to punch in your brand and see how its being talked about on social media platforms, blogs, videos, audio, events, comments you name it you can track it. Not only does it list all your brand mentions but it does also give a little taste of sentiment tracking, but we’ll touch on that later.

TweetReach

TweetReach allows you to track anything; phrases, websites addresses, usernames, whatever you want. It’s a great service to track the status of a campaign you’ve recently launched or an event you’ve just had. Say you’re a local cycling federation and you want to track the conversation around the Tour De France hashtag #tdf simply type in #tdf and voila. You can track the total amount of impressions the hashtag had, who has the most followers that are engaging in the conversation and from there you can use a service like Klout to follow up the influential ones (we’ll touch on that later as well). But remember, just because they have the most followers on Twitter doesn’t mean they are the most influential.

We love infographs 

TweetReach will give you an example size of 50 impressions, and from there you can purchase the full report for $20. For example, the screenshot above only showed 50 tweets out of a total of 1500.

Sentiment Tracking

Yep, they can now track how you feel. No longer is just capturing the tweet good enough, there are now automated systems to track the sentiment of your tweet, is your brand being talked about in a positive or negative light? Here are some of the best free sites to use for sentiment tracking.

Twitter Sentiment

It says exactly what it is, it shows the positive or negative sentiment of tweets about your brand. While still in beta testing, Twitter Sentiment allows you to save your searches, shows you a pie chart and also bar chart graph in % and total tweets and allows you to register for an account.

Twitrratr

This is easily the most visually appealing of the bunch that I could find. Twitrratr allows you to ‘view’ each individual tweet and then follow up and identify the influence of that person. It also highlights the words that they feel are key to identifying them as positive, neutral or negative tweets.

Tweetfeel

Tweetfeel is a really simple service. You type in your key word and then it comes up with a green smiley face or a red sad face, pretty simple really. Apart from that there’s not much to say, it’s very easy on the eyes and lets you follow the individual tweets.

Monitor their influence

Social media influence is becoming a real barometer of the importance of the online persona of individuals. Let’s say you had ten people commenting negatively about your brand, is it realistic that you would reply to all ten? Probably not. But what you can do is do some quick research on all ten and find out who has the most influence online (a great way to do this is via a Twitter influence tracking site Klout -want to find out your influence? Simply go to www.klout.com/yourusername).

We can’t spend our day online from 9-5 on social media, so staff can reduce their time spent on social media platforms by highlighting the influential people and respond to them, as their voice and opinion counts for more in the online space than the others.

You’ve contacted them, but you still can’t convince them? Offer them something that others cant. If you’re a team, offer them a VIP experience or the chance to meet their favourite player, if you’re a sports apparel brand, give them a discount at your store or a behind the scenes tour of your factory. Win them over, and your brand will reap the benefit online. Sports is a unique entity compared to regular businesses, so leverage that when you’re trying to influence the influencers.

Conclusion

Being a part of the conversation where all social media is trending, no longer can brands get away with having their head in the sand while the conversation goes on around them, and without them. These simple tools in brand monitoring will allow you to at least monitor the conversation, even if you don’t want to get involved. Now, with  these new services like sentiment tracking still being new, they won’t deliver perfect results everytime, but it does allow you to get a general overview of how your brand is being talked about.

Whether it be on or off the field in sports, we’re all trying to out do one another. Let’s face it, we wouldn’t be in business if we weren’t, we’re here to compete and to win.

One of the most competitive parts of sports is the marketing behind the teams. How can fans be reached, without feeling like they’re being put under a full court press of advertising? “Selling your ideas, not your tickets” is a blog post that tries to encourage those in the business of sports, and in particular ticket sales, to focus on events or trends in the greater community, and less on the ticket you are selling. In the article Josh talks about how we can sell ideas first, and then tickets. I’m going to take it one step further, I’m going to try and tell you can we can sell trends first, and then tickets.

Ask around the general populous of the web, and what do people want? Multimedia. Whether it’s a podcast, a video or a flickr stream, people want to interact with things, they’re done with words. Aside from Google, YouTube is the world’s largest search engine and data taken from March of this year shows that there is now 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

The tribe has spoken, they want video.

So, getting back to sports, can we now sell our tickets via video? The video below is about Australian rugby player James O’Connor. James is an up and coming star in the game of rugby, so much so I highlighted him as Rugby’s player to watch this decade. The video is essentially a two minute profile video, but whenever you interact with the video and click within it you are able to choose from either A) A bio of James or B) Purchase tickets to an upcoming series of games the Australian team is playing in.

To start, click the video below. Some ad blocking services such as AdBlock Plus will block the following video, you may need to open Internet Explorer to view it

We’ve long tried to figure out the most effective way to sell tickets to fans. In the early 2000’s, StubHub completely changed the way the US sports fan purchased tickets, as it gave them the power to fans to sell their own tickets to other fans. StubHub were so popular, eBay quickly swooped in and snapped up the company. With their success, StubHub quickly saw copy-cats enter the industry and now the fan has a wide variety of options where they can buy their tickets from.

For James O’Connor and rugby fans alike, this video could certainly go viral, leading to further sales. I wrote an earlier post on viral video as this seems to be another trend for businesses in raising awareness of their brand, whilst allowing consumers not feel like they’re constantly being pitched.

As we look to new ways to innovate the industry, and try and outdo one another, could in-video ticket sales be the new answer?

Since social media started to gain popularity in sports around 2008, we have seen the same question asked to leagues and teams “Do you have a social media policy for your players?”.  Do teams tell players what they can and can’t tweet?  Until now, we weren’t really sure.

There  has been players fined for criticising the catering of training camp, and last years NBA and NFL guidelines on when players can tweet, but never have we seen a policy on what to tweet.  Taken from this Mashable article, New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis tells us how the Jets handle it with their players:

There are certain things both the NFL and the Jets try and prep you on with how to use Twitter.  Some people still say whatever they want and that gets you in trouble sometimes … There’s also some people just don’t want to interact with fans and at first I wasn’t even on Twitter.  But I started seeing how it was progressing and people were showing it to me so I got into it.  I was missing out.

Thanks to @JSHU06 we found out one way the Jets try to implement a policy with their players.

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I set out a challenge for myself for this weekends UEFA Champions League Final. I wanted to see if I could let only the internet and social media keep me up to date with the game. The TV was in the next room, but I wasn’t going to let myself off that easy, I spent the next two hours on the computer to see if I could emmerse myself in the moment

Here are the best bits.

Twitter

I logged into Twitter, and it told me straight away what was on the tip of the tongue of the sporting world. Promotion battles from the Championship in English soccer where fairytale story side Blackpool were promoted, and also the lead up to the Champions League Final.

Twitter.com Trending Topics 

Trending Topics

Next part of call was to find out the trending topics from around the world. First worldwide, then from soccer crazy Mexico, and equally crazy London.

How do trending topics differ? 

When Diego Milito finally scored the first goal of the match, it took only 5 minutes and 15 seconds to appear as a trending topic in Sao Paulo, Brazil which was the first place in the world for it to become trending.

Goooooooalllllllllllll! 

And Milito became a worldwide trending topic, 29 minutes after the goal. Without having a global superstar playing such as Ronaldo, Messi or Rooney, it hurt the ‘trendability’ of the game as those players would have easily become a trending topic. This showed in the lack of a prominent player in Twitter’s trending topic. As you can see below, Arjen Robben from Bayern Munich without even scoring a goal, was a more popular topic worldwide than the goal scorer.

Diego Milito enters the world psyche 

There is no doubt the game also suffered in it’s lack of team star power that Manchester United, Barcelona or Real Madrid would have brought. They would have brought fans from all over the world, in particular Asia, and sent the teams trending higher. By the end of the game, region specific players began trending, like Argentine Cambiasso from Inter Milan.

Argentina is near Sao Paulo… 

Even England managed to find the only thing relevant to them in the game…referee Howard Webb.

Boo Webb 

Company Promotion

Nike were more than happy to promote their stars, Nike sponsor the Inter side on the whole, but also a few individual players.

#Hashtags for all 

Search

Finally just by a quick Twitter search, you find out what’s hot. At the end of the game, after his second goal, Milito was piping hot in Twitter searches.

20 new searches every 15 seconds after the final whistle. 

Other Social Media

Both on Facebook and SocialMention I was monitoring the action.

Tweeting about Maicon, Nike took you to Facebook. 

SocialMention.com tries to find all the mentions of your search keyword across all social media platforms as well as blogs. Here were the search results for Milito

Too much info? 

Gowalla

Yep, Gowalla rose to the occasion too, getting on board with the graphic artwork for the stadium.

Go Walla-being awesome! 

Great artwork as always by Gowalla 

Web

That old Dinosaur. I used Soccernet at ESPN to keep up to date with play by play coverage, and then took that info back to social media to get the feeling of the average punter.

Two teams, one cup. 

Shouldn’t he be in Paris? 

Two Screen Theory

There is a thought in both the TV and digital industries that viewing has now becoming a multiple-screen experience. The two screens could be a TV and a laptop, a TV and an iPhone, a TV and an iPad, a TV and a kindle, whatever it may be there are two screens in your vacinity at the same time. Formerly when you watched a live sporting event you could only have a discussion with those in your room or on the phone, with social media you are now having that discussion with the world. You are watching the game, whilst doing a tweet, blog, email, MMS, whatever takes your fancy but you are interacting with two devices at the same time.

Not a glowing reviewThis is making watching live sport without a TV much easier and a more interesting experience for the end user.

Social media does give the immediacy I was looking for, with-in seconds of his goal I had tweets and Facebook statuses telling me about it, and 5 minutes after Diego Milito scored the goal he was a trending topic in some parts of the world, which was almost immediate enough for me, I almost felt like I was there…

Obviously I could have streamed the video or audio of the game, but I wanted to remove that from the game and see if I could still get involved. I was following general banter on Twitter as well, sadly most of it was negative.

So I’m almost glad I didn’t see the game, but all in all the experience was a great experiment.

When you think of local footy you think Saturday afternoon, catching up with mates, reasonably priced hot dogs and some very cold weather. Technology doesn’t come into it, but that is starting to change. The Caufield Bears from the Southern Football League are one of the few local football clubs that have put an emphasis on digital technology.

Why social media can be so beneficial for grass-root sport is that it’s free and to succeed all you need is somebody with a little technical know how and plenty of motivation. There is no reason why local footy clubs can’t have an online presence just like professional teams do, and Caufield has proved this. Not only is the team fantastic with social media, but the league’s President is on Twitter too.

When looking at Caufield’s approach to the internet and social media, what do they believe are key areas to succeed?

Website

Steve Hewla has recently taken over management of Caufield’s website with a goal of offering new content on the website every other day. Apart from the news you expect to hear such as the weekly selected teams every Friday and then match reports every Monday after the game, he also includes player profiles, sponsor information, special offers as well as general news stories.

Twitter

Steve recently set up the Bear’s Twitter account. What is so great about Twitter for local footy clubs is that they can push out the latest news as it’s happening. If there’s a team announcement on the Friday they can give a link directly to the club’s site, if there’s a team change it can be announced via Twitter on the Saturday before the game. The immediacy that Twitter offers the Bears’ fans and members is something that local footy has never had before.

It’s all happening at Caufield!

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Gold Coast Football Club are the latest club to enter the AFL. As they prepare to enter their first year in the league, whilst still playing in the secondary league VFL, how do they establish a new fan base?  Can they use social media to reach others in the football community that weren’t previously aware of them?

Anthony Alsop recently sat down with Greg Price from GCFC to find out.

Anthony Alsop: Hi Greg, tell us a little about yourself, what is your role for Gold Coast Football Club?

Greg: My name is Greg Price and I am the General Manager – Marketing, Communications and Community

AA: How did you end up in this role?

Greg: I was the communications consultant for GC17 Bid which successfully bid for the 17th AFL licence for the Gold Coast. Prior to that, I had worked in sports marketing & management, corporate affairs, media and public relations roles.

AA: When looking at an overall marketing strategy, how important is social media to GCFC?

Greg: Social media is a key component of our overall communications strategy. Since we are essentially building an AFL Club from the ground up, we need to build and engage our fan base at the same time as we build a team or a stadium. We need to spread the word about the Club – what we stand for, the region we represent, and the challenges ahead of us, and social media provides a great platform for us to do that. It also allows our passionate fans to spread the message for us, making them an integral part of that journey.

For most sporting organisations, social media is a great way to communicate with existing fans and bring them closer to the Club – this is a the main strength of social media. However for GCFC, we also see it as one of the primary tools we have to connect with new AFL and GCFC fans, particularly in the Gold Coast region, by using social media to tell our story throughout the broader community.

Social Media Integration on goldcoastfc.com.au 

AA: What initiatives have GCFC taken to achieve social media success?

Greg: Our social media plan is really based around our website, and the content plan that sits behind it. We have worked really hard to create a platform that gives our fans, and the broader AFL community, a place to regularly visit that keeps them very up to date with the Club’s progress. The result is a really impactful site that continues to grow in traffic, and has had terrific feedback from our fans and the industry in general.

From there, we have recently launched some specific social media tools on the site to make it as easy as possible for our fans to engage with the club and it’s content, and also to share the story with their friends.

Our social media platforms are just extensions of this communications strategy, allowing our fans to keep up to date with the Club on their platform of choice, such as Twitter and Facebook. But I wouldn’t say we have yet “achieved success” – I’m not sure you ever do in this area, as the opportunities continue to quickly evolve, just like our Club. For example, when we start playing in our new stadium next season, some location-based social media programs will allow us to give our fans an even greater connection.

AA: Who have the club looked to in other sports, for inspiration in social media?

Greg: That’s a difficult question to answer – you try to take in as much as you can from other sports and clubs, and you end up taking the best ideas and trying to build them into your own approach. In terms of sport in Australia, there are some AFL Clubs that are doing a great job at using social media to give their fans an insight into their own team.

At our club, Jeff White (former Melbourne FC ruckman) is the club’s ruck coach this year, and is also passionate about the role social media can play in sport, and has been a great in helping the Club recognise some of these opportunities.

Behind the scenes Twitpic taken by ruck coach Jeff White. Don’t worry folks, he’s a coach.

On a recent trip to the US, Anthony Alsop caught up with Nick Monroe, who is the Head of New Media Development for the Milwaukee Bucks.  He was nice enough to answer a few questions about the team, his other roles at the Bucks and how the Bucks came to be in new media in the first place. 

Anthony Alsop: Nick, how did you come to work at the Bucks?

Nick: I graduated from college with a degree majoring in Internet-Based Marketing, so I’ve always had an interest in the internet. I arrived at the Bucks the same summer Andrew Bogut was drafted. I started in the sales department where I sold season tickets.

AA: What is your current role at the Bucks?

Nick: My main job right now is the senior lead of season ticket sales and retention; I help manage the team that renews our season ticket holders. I am also the head of New Media Development which social media is a major component of.

AA: How did the Bucks get started in new media?

Nick: We kind of fell into it in 2008, when I started the @Bucks Twitter account. I was using Facebook and Twitter at the time, but the Bucks had no presence on either of these platforms, so I thought why don’t I start the official Bucks accounts? These days, if you see me around the Bradley Center (Milwaukee’s home court) I’ll more often than not have two phones out, updating either the Facebook or Twitter accounts. It’s great to keep our fans up to date with what’s going on. Twitter is a great platform to reach our international fans, or those around the US who can’t get access to the game via the internet, TV or radio.

Nick is a busy man on game nights 

 AA: Tell us about a typical day for you?

Nick: I’ll arrive at the Bradley Center around 830-9am, and prioritize my day. In terms of new media, I use an application for our Twitter account that allows me to set up automatic tweets, so I can do 10-15 tweets in as many minutes in the morning. This allows the account to be active throughout the day while I do other things. For each home game, our PR department puts out news and notes, and I like tweeting some cool facts or figures from them. I’ll also aim to get two or three Facebook status updates as well.

For my non-new media work, I look after my clients in the season ticket department, so I’m handling additional ticket requests and returning lots of phone calls.

AA: What benefits have the Bucks seen from their involvement in new media?

Nick: I love hearing feedback from the fans on Twitter, so I’ll try and reply to as many tweets that I can. Social media has definitely driven more traffic to our website. Whether it’s for a game preview or for ticket sales, we’ve definitely seen increases in both as our presence on social media grows. Being able to send our fans to specific parts of our website through links on Twitter, is quite powerful. If there is a sale on tickets or merchandise, we can tell them exactly where to go on Bucks.com.

We’ve also been lucky that Jim Paschke (our long-time TV commentator) has been willing to do some videos for Bucks.com. We see the market demanding more video as both the internet and social media evolve, so it’s fantastic for us that Jim is willing to do some video content for the site.

AA: Do the Bucks have a social media policy for their players?

Nick: We brief all our players on social media and web strategies, but our players are smart enough to know what to say and what not to say. The NBA has their own Social Media program in their induction week for rookies, so we don’t need to do too much on our end. I think we have one of the most active teams on Twitter. You can find Andrew, Brandon Jennings, Charlie Bell, Danny G, Luc Mbah a Moute and Royal Ivey all on Twitter.

AA: What impact does social media have on your international fan base?

Nick: With one of our best players coming from Australia, you can imagine we have a pretty good following from down there. But it’s not only Australia, we also have players from Cameroon, Argentina, Slovenia and Turkey. In terms of international fans, our biggest market place is Australia, and then South-East Asia – we have over 10,000 fans from the Philippines alone and we’re also quite popular in Malaysia.

We’ve never really had an official channel to greet these fans before; I doubt these fans could point out Milwaukee on a map, but they can tell you who the Bucks are and who their favorite player is. That’s really cool.

AA: In terms of mobile, do the Bucks have a presence in the mobile app market?

Nick: We sure do. The NBA has released an official app for each team and you can get them for your Apple, Blackberry or Android mobile device (pricing depends on which country you are in).

AA: Tell us about your #FearTheDeer social media campaign

Nick: That came about from a mention on SportsCenter, and we heard about it and we ran with it. On Twitter you can set up a movement or a slogan by adding a hash symbol to a phrase, so we added a # in front of “FearTheDeer” and it kind of became our slogan by default. It’s been great though, the fans have backed it 100% and we’ve just released some merchandise with the slogan. We also just launched a “Jennings 4 ROY” Facebook fan page to help promote Brandon Jennings’ fantastic rookie season, and we have 55 reasons why he should win.

Everyone is embracing #FeartheDeer 

AA: Has the team’s recent on-court success lead to social media success off the court?

Nick: Absolutely. The more the team wins, the more people want to know about the team. Whether that’s content on our website, tickets for the game or merchandise, we’ve seen our overall web traffic really take off since the All-Star break. This has come about as we’ve had a great run of success on the court. We also run weekend web specials for ticket sales, but we’re seeing a ten-fold year-on-year increase for ticket sales via our website; the demand just grows every year as our brand awareness increases.

The wins on the court definitely lead to more success in social media as well; our Facebook and Twitter accounts have added a few thousand fans in the past few weeks, fans that weren’t in our community before. When the team is winning, everybody wants to get involved, and we’ve managed to see a financial return on that as well, which is fantastic.

Live Streaming has done a lot for the word of sports, whether it be legal or illegal streaming, viewers can watch their favourite games live no matter their location. The demand for streaming of Australian sports is an issue the local market is beginning to face too, and with a couple of the major digital rights deals coming up for renewal soon, live streaming in sport will be a key talking point.

If you were to look to overseas leagues,  I can legally watch MLB on the internet or on my iPhone, as long as I pay up. You can even stream MLB games on your PS3 if you so desire. The AFL dipped its toe slightly into this with their AFL iPhone app, but they only offer video on demand highlights after the game, there’s no live streaming just yet.

Over the weekend Tennis Australia, one of the best sports organisations for social media and digital technology in Australia, streamed live coverage of the Australia v Japan Davis Cup series.  With regular host TV broadcast network Channel Seven not contractually obligated to showing this particular series, they didn’t, so fans flocked to the internet to see their heroes. They offer their own commentators (with some borrowed from Channel 7) and offered round the clock coverage of the matches.

This is not the first time they have used live streaming as a communication channel, they also offered it during the ‘December Showdown‘ which was a playoff for entry into this years Australian Open. It was a week long tournament watched each day by only a few hundred people in person, but a few thousand online, thousands that wouldn’t have been able to watch it otherwise.

The tournament is held only for Australian players, and is a great place for tennis fans to see the up and coming stars of tomorrow that don’t get regular matches on the top-level tour around the world.

Not only are Tennis Australia one of the leaders in giving their fans a great web experience of their sport, they also open up the conversation to the fans. With the recent Facebook Developer news about how Facebook wants to open up the web, the implications for developers are endless, especially for those in sport. Tennis Australia took these changes and ran with them, heavily integrating Facebook into their live stream over the weekend.

Once you logged in to the Facebook chat, your questions weren’t only displayed on the site, but also on your Facebook profile and would also appear on your friends’ news feed.

In down time between points, the commentators regularly answered questions sent in on the Facebook chat. They often mentioned that they wanted questions to come in via Facebook connect, and encouraged dialogue between the stream and the commentators. After noticing the surname of one Facebook user, they asked her “Are you related to a member of our team here today?” And she was! This is another great example of way social media connects sports to their fans, and it’s only going to become more popular.

With the way Facebook is opening itself up to the web (just look at the ‘like’ buttons on this page) and Twitter attempting to go anywhere and everywhere, expect these social media integrations to become the norm