Here’s an experiment for sports teams and organizations – Substitute the word ‘fans’ or ‘supporters’ for ‘customers’ and see how that impacts the thought process behind getting into social media and which departments should be involved or ‘own’ social media. Also, try replacing the word ‘players’ or ‘athletes’ with ‘staff members’ or ‘employees’ and then think how their participation could make a difference to your business operations.

If you remove the technology barrier from social media and accept that it is a new communications channel that lets you interact in a real, human manner with your customers then much of the confusion and fear can also be removed. Organisations know that customer service is the corner stone of any successful business so the ability to build better relationships with your customers and talk to them on a regular basis should be an opportunity rather than a threat.

There is a nice post here from Felix Wetzel asking some similar questions and looking at how sports teams need to realize they are businesses and that means aligning all your assets (especially your staff) for the good of the business…not the individual.

Sport is an unusual industry in that players have a very different role to play in the organization than in a ‘normal’ company, but they are still on the payroll…and clubs need to ask themselves what is more important, the team and players or the club. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive and if they work in tandem then the results can be far more powerful. Filling the ground isn’t or shouldn’t be the focus for sports teams. Most of them enjoy the luxury of being the local team and have the brand loyalty that comes with being the nearest place to watch live sport. With social media and the ability to connect and spread content to the community, they should be looking at how they can fill the ‘virtual’ stadium on a regular basis, how many fans can they reach on a regular basis?

Integrate Social Communications

Customers of corporate brands want to be able to interact with the people behind the company. Business is social, whether its B2C or B2B, it is about the people. The companies who are successful in social media have recognized this and are integrating social communications in as many customer touch points as possible.

Sports teams are at a huge advantage in the sense that their fans (customers!) desperately want regular interaction and the more authentic the better. They are used to reading the press releases and ‘official’ statements on the websites, if you can get more of the departments such as the playing staff, the backroom staff, the ticket office, the club shop etc active on these platforms, and not just the marketing and PR teams then, it extends the available resources…and takes the engagement effect to a totally new level.

The football and rugby seasons are drawing to a close in the UK and while some teams are battling it out for honours and trophies, there are others who will spend the summer regrouping after being relegated or underperforming during the season. Those who have been successful may be developing their marketing strategies to focus on recruiting new fans, growing their membership, increasing their brand reach and improving sales of merchandise. For those at the other end of the spectrum they should be focused on one thing – Customer retention.

Some companies have realized that, sometimes, the best people to market to are your current customers. It generally costs a hell of a lot more to acquire new customers than it does to retain current ones. Sports teams need to think “How much is an ‘engaged’ fan worth to us?”  There is a natural tendency for clubs who have dropped a division to try and squeeze as much revenue from as many sources as possible but if they think first of all, how to provide value to their existing fans then they will be in a much stronger position to increase their reach and financial activity when the tide turns.

As a fan of a beleaguered club, you probably aren’t feeling too hot about spending hundreds more pounds on renewing your season ticket or buying the club’s new kit for the kids, so the clubs need to think how they can reach out the fans and create a ‘we are in this together, lets get out of it together’ mentality. Offers, Deals, Promotions are great…but also giving them exclusive content and more importantly, a platform to voice their opinion and a better ‘user experience’ when interacting with the club. A lot of the time, human beings just want to be heard or noticed – especially when you are as passionate as a sports fan, the smallest amount of interaction or connection with the club can have a big impact.

The brand equity that clubs could win by making the fans believe they are important to the club, their opinions do matter and ideas they have can be implemented, would be a good start to retaining their loyalty (and revenue) for another year.

For years, corporate brands have spent vast amounts of money sponsoring and aligning themselves to celebrities to accrue reflected value from the fans who are loyal to them. The theory is obvious, “people love this singer, actor, athlete etc…so if they become our brand ambassador, they will love us too”. In the past, this was easier to manage but in today’s world of ubiquitous information and social media, the pitfalls are just as obvious.

This post from Doc Searls captures the problem perfectly. In the wake of the Tiger Woods scandal “his biggest corporate sponsors, such as Nike and Gatorade, saw as much as $12 billion wiped off the value of their shares in the wake of the scandal.”

In the current business world, brands aren’t human beings. They should be, and any social media practitioner worth her salt will be working damn hard with their clients to try and make them more so, but as it stands they are companies, corporate vehicles which are not set up to deal with human error…the kind we are all susceptible to, especially some high profile celebs.

Some may seem perfect, Tiger Woods being the obvious example, but as we have seen, no-one is going to be perfect all the time, they all have transgressions, which as a human is fine…well, most of the time! Other human beings by and large will forgive mistakes from others. However, when one makes a mistake which is seen as representing a company then its not so easy. Companies can’t claim human error.

If companies want to get the most out of these relationships, they need to accept that these people are just that, people and there will be times that they step out of the corporate line. From a social media angle (sorry, got to bring it back to that at some point!), celebrities who are active on social channels in an authentic way, may be a better bet for corporate endorsements. If the public ‘know’ the person behind the celebrity better, they may be more forgiving when the curtain gets ripped down or the celeb is beaten with the proverbial golf club by his proverbial wife. Some celebs use social media for good – Shaq, Lance Armstrong spring to mind and, no doubt their corporate sponsors do very well off them…but these companies need to be aware what they are potentially setting themselves up for.

Corporates need to let go of the term ‘brand’ and all the connotations it brings when they are working with celebrities. When they hire the celeb, they think that person is now representative of the brand…something which humans can’t do! They can be themselves and if the company is comfortable with whom they are and what they stand for as a human being…then there is value to be derived by association. Expecting the person to fit into the perceived brand of a company is a recipe for (potential) disaster.

Would love to hear any thoughts in the comments.

“Of all the amazing new technologies that are opening up possibilities to communicate and connect in the digital space, video is the one that holds the most promise” (Valeria Maltoni – Conversation Agent)

Human beings are visual creatures and the experiences we get from seeing someone or something is far deeper than reading text or hearing audio. The good news, is social media and the web in general is becoming more video friendly. It is easy to make videos, easy to upload them to sites with potentially millions of viewers and easy for those people to share them. With the search engines and advertisers now more interested in engagement levels and time and depth of a site visit, it is a bit of no brainer for media owners and brands to not harness this.

You hear online video and you think YouTube, and why not? There are over 400m people per month watching between 6-9 million channels! Impressive. Also, we have the social networks who have their own video upload platforms and streaming sites such as Ustream or JustinTV. A recent, and very interesting entrant is Vpype. I saw them in action at SMWF on Monday and think this has some real legs from a fan engagement perspective.

This is truly social video . Sure, you can watch a video on YouTube and comment on it or watch a live event or broadcast on Ustream (even with some nice social chat features running alongside) but the ability to run a live, unscripted, ‘meeting’ or ‘party’ with your friends or fans is a far more engaging and authentic proposition.

Features include:

-          Live chat alongside each video

-          Chat History and storage

-          Viral tools to promote broadcasts on Facebook and Twitter

Bring out the Celebrities

I think the real winners in this will be celebrities or brands who have a community of advocates such as bands, fashion designers and especially sports teams and athletes. The ability to provide an experience such as Vpype to fans, embedded into a platform where they are already investing a huge amount of their online time is one that they should be seriously looking at.

Too many media owners are still thinking they need to use this type of golden content as a way to drive traffic to their ‘official websites’ or require a two page registration form before you can access this good stuff. You don’t need to put your audience or fans in a headlock before giving them what they want! The tools are available to provide remarkable experiences outside of official sites and it will be interesting to see who starts putting some stakes in the ground and experimenting.

For non-football fans, Andrey Arshavin is Russia’s most talented and flamboyant player, currently plying his trade with Arsenal. His talents on the pitch are there for all to see but a recent article in the Evening Standard highlighted his willingness to engage with his fans in a far more personal and human way than many (if not all) of his Premier League counterparts.

His official website is not the most cutting edge in terms of design and interactivity. There is no ‘real time’ features in the way of chat rooms, forums, or integration with social media. The questions in the ‘Ask Andrey’ section have been vetted and then written and posted on the site, so the authenticity could be questioned, plus some stuff may have been lost in translation!

Humanising Celebrity

However, the personal nature of the questions and answers shows a willingness to engage and give his fans a window into his life outside of football. The text in the header is a good mantra that many other athletes could adpopt,  “On the pages of this website you can learn a lot about me. Not only as a footballer, but as an ordinary person. I’d be glad if my website helps you to communicate with each other”

Give Mr Arshavin some better tools (Facebook, Twitter, live streams) and I reckon you could have a new web celebrity on our hands…check out Chad Ochocinco , the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver , for the benchmark of what mega talented, ever so slightly insane, athletes can do with social media.

To non-fans, it may seem banal to want to know what colour Arshavin’s bath sponge is, his thoughts on extra terrestrial activity and body art….but to his fans, this is the type of stuff they want. You won’t get this type of content on a Sky Sports press conference or posted on the Aresenal official website and that is probably a good thing, but as a fan, this type of personnal connection is what creates a bond that is intrinsicly hard to break. The same goes for athletes who engage in an authentic manner on Twitter and Facebook – check out Shaq. Now compare that to what many of the Premier League footballers have allowed to happen to their pages on Facebook – Fernando Torres, Steven Gerrard and Wayne Rooney for example.

Personal Branding

These pages should not be used as ‘bear traps’ to move traffic to generic football news websites, they are a potentially golden piece of real estate for the players to build their personal brand – not just their professional one. Ignoring all the commercial possibilities which are flying out of the window for the players, their agents and their sponsors…. they can be used as a way to raise awareness for the good causes and charity work they do and be a trusted communication point for when things go pear shaped.

The real time web and democratization of content means that whether, these athletes like it or not, it is now impossible to ‘control’ the spread of information about them, good and bad. Ask John Terry, Ashley Cole or Tiger Woods. In the past, with a press gagging order in place, any runours would gradually vanish…not so anymore. Athletes are always going to find themselves in some kind of trouble during their careers (we wouldn’t want it any other way!) so creating a channel where you have a loyal group of engaged advocates who feel they know the person behind the celebrity can be a powerful tool when having to rebuild your personal brand.

Let me know in the comments any athletes you think are using social media for good, evil or nothing at all