Comments on: Should teams look beyond Facebook & Twitter?

By: The “Buzz” about Madrid | The UK Sports Network

The “Buzz” about Madrid | The UK Sports Network — Tue, 25 May 2010 07:05:18 +0000

[...] This is another great example of how Real Madrid is looking to connect with fans online, and it’s great to see a team getting involved in an emerging social platform. [...]

By: JF

JF — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:57:35 +0000

No one does it better than the Canadian Football League Calgary Stampeders and this special social media website. The combine their own content alongside fan content on blogs, facebook, twitter, flickr and youtube.

http://www.stampsconnect.com/

By: tweetadder review

tweetadder review — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 11:59:47 +0000

Starting new to twitter may be frustrating but when you truly utilize it as the compelling marketing tool it can be it will certainly pay off in the long run. I believe twitter is a great way to drive traffic to your site.

By: Ash Read

Ash Read — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:07:22 +0000

@Jason – Thanks for the comment, great points as always. Teams should be looking at what they want to achieve and then choosing the correct platform to achieve those goals.

@Sam – If a British Basketball team even has a website it’s bonus! Cheers for stopping by and commenting.

By: Sam Neter

Sam Neter — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:16:23 +0000

As more and more social media platforms emerge I think it is going to become up to teams to pick and choose 2 or 3 of them to focus on and plough all their energies into. It is physically impossible to have a good social presence on every emerging platform out there.

In terms of British basketball, to even have a Facebook page and a Twitter account is a HUGE start! Haha.

Of those emerging platforms mentioned, Flickr I think has the most potential, and is very much underrated. There are so many bloggers/webmasters that use photos from there under the Creative Commons license giving attribution to the picture owner. It’s an awesome way for account holders to get backlinks and drive traffic back to their site.

Ustream has potential, in terms of players doing Q & A’s with fans etc-ex NBA player Jalen Rose does a great job of this.

Tumblr I’m not a huge fan of, but who knows what’s gonna happen in the future…

By: Jason Peck

Jason Peck — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:15:15 +0000

Shane- thanks for the shoutout on my article about looking beyond Facebook.

The important thing to keep in mind is figuring out what your goals are and what time/resources you have. Once those are set, then it’s time to look at where you should be engaging based on where your audience is, based on what they want, and based on generating the results you want.

Facebook, Twitter and some other services can be great. But at the end of the day, it’s about generating revenue for teams. Some things can be better accomplished on Facebook and sometimes they can be done better on a team’s main website or other places. So yes, I think they need to look beyond Facebook and Twitter. There is much more to social media than just those sites.

By: Ash Read

Ash Read — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:32:10 +0000

How involved teams can be in different platforms is always going to rely on how much time and resources they can put into social media. While it can be hard (near impossible if you have a large following) to reply to all fans – teams should make the effort to reply to as many as possible. I agree with you that Facebook isn’t the most engaging on a personal level, although it is a great tool to reach a mass audience and create buzz. Currently I feel Twitter is better for one on one engagement with fans via @replies and DM’s, and as I mention in the post I feel emerging an niche platforms open up many engagement opportunities too.

I’ve read Jason’s article and can see his point, I think team owned communities have potential, however, I’m not sure I would keep up with a team owned community as often I as would a Facebook page or Twitter account etc. – of course that’s just my personal opinion.

Thanks for sharing the Olympic Flickr account – there’s some great images in there. Hopefully there will be on set up for the World Cup this summer!

By: Shane Harmon

Shane Harmon — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:32:24 +0000

It really depends if the organisation really wants to engage. There are so many prosports out there who have built up large fan bases on twitter and facebook, yet treat these platforms as extensions of static websites and simply push content out. Many do not respond to resulting fan queries as they don’t have the time or resources. (I believe having a dedicated Community Manager is the single biggest success factor for a sports organisation in the social media space). In addition, for all its appeal as a platform with critcial mass, facebook is not the most engaging of platforms for fans. A thumbs up does not equal engaged fan. Jason Peck wrote an excellent article on looking beyond facebook (and its limitations) http://bit.ly/9rrLeI. facebook is great for the “eyeballs” segment but I agree there are better platforms for conversing with fans further up the engagement ladder.
Completely agree with you on flickr. It is a much richer experience than facebook photos. I see the IOC has recently lanuched a flickr photo group http://www.flickr.com/groups/olympicphotos. The beneifits of using flickr are enormous. For each major event it can provide a wonderful snapshot of history but from the fan perspective.

By: Ash Read

Ash Read — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:01:49 +0000

Will, thanks for your comment. I can completely understand your perspective, Facebook and Twitter do have many of the features that other emerging/niche platforms offer. However, many people use niche platforms as well as mainstream ones – For example: whilst Facebook offers photo sharing features plenty of people prefer to use Filckr for this – it’s user base may be small compared to that of Facebook but it still offers plenty of engagement opportunities and can provide great value for both fans and teams.

Also, I’m not trying recommend wholesale changes – teams should currently be focusing the majority of time on these major platforms as it’s where the largest audience is, I just feel there is huge potential to utilise niche and emerging platforms alongside Facebook and Twitter.

By: Will Simpson

Will Simpson — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:27:33 +0000

I personally don’t see the need for anything other than facebook and twitter at the current time. These platforms offer all the resources necessary for 99.9% of sports fans. Until the time comes when the masses are looking elsewhere for their social media connections, it seems a waste of time for sports executives to be looking at other avenues. The public are fickle, as much as they like niche areas why would they go to a site with a smaller user base to provide them with social tools? They wouldn’t and until facebook begins to charge/downgrade or gets hacked/goes bust I can’t see things changing anytime soon.

I’m not saying don’t keep an open eye, but wholesale changes are surely not yet necessary.