Last week Mashable put up their list of who you need to follow on Twitter during the Super Bowl. That list is very well done and is more than worth a read. It was so good, in fact, it gave us the idea to create our own list of must follow Sports Twitter accounts with a Sports Networker twist.
From Sportsbiz to inside information to pure entertainment, this list of Twitter account is sure to make you the social media czar of your Super Bowl party and ensure you don’t miss a minute of the behind-the-scenes action at Super Bowl 46!
So without further ado, here is Sports Networker’s 20 (Plus 1) must follow Sports Twitter accounts at Super Bowl 46:
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Steve is a recent graduate of Penn State University with a degree in Sports Journalism from the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. He is currently working as a marketing and PR intern for Sports Networker.
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Several different qualifications are needed to be crowned as the King of the NFL Facebook Pages and overall number of “likes” does not guarantee you a spot on the most engaging NFL players on Facebook list. In order to be the NFL Facebook master, one must entertain and amuse, while engaging with their fans, providing insightful opinions and being the source of inside information. Energy is required and displaying a lighter side is desired.
Social media is where the most loyal and passionate fans come to connect with their favorite athletes. It is a platform for athletes to build their fan base, while rewarding them at the same time. Facebook is a perfect way for athletes to be more influential than ever and connect with millions of fans worldwide. The following ten NFL figures are at the top of the mountain:
Most Engaging NFL Players on Facebook
Known for his popularity on Twitter, OchoCinco has also become proficient on Facebook. No one can accuse Chad of not being candid. He expresses himself as openly as can be on a daily basis, but also challenges his fans to think. He is cutting edge with what is new and in vogue. He covers all bases, whether it be speaking Spanish to his subscribers, telling jokes he heard on the street or inviting random fans to attend the next Patriots game on him. Like him or not for his on the field antics, OchoCinco is a storyteller and an innovator when it comes to social media and his near two million facebook subscribers tell quite a tale.
He may be recognized as one of the most feared defenders in the league, but Polamalu is a gentle giant and his compassion comes through clearly on his 2 million+ subscribed Facebook page, the most in the NFL. He shares with his subscribers on a weekly basis, whether through inspirational stories or offers for free tickets, autographs or even a chance to ride a limo with him to a charity event. Polamalu never fails to update his following and he knows that consistency is important. He displays it on the field and on his Facebook fan page. [click to continue…]
Jon Schulman joined BDA Sports Management in September of 2008. At BDA, Jon’s responsibilities include implementing social media strategies for clients as well as working closely with sponsors, league and team social media departments. Jon also has direct contacts at Facebook, Twitter and Youtube along with several private social media companies. Prior to joining BDA Sports, Jon worked for the Los Angeles Lakers Development League team, the Los Angeles D-Fenders. His sports background also includes time spent with the UCLA Basketball department and the San Diego Riptide of the Arena Football League.
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The Australian Open Grand Slam tennis tournament, which has reached half way stage as I write this, has built on the progress of previous years to establish a strong, recognizable and credible online brand. According to Sam Laird, in a recent post on the US website Mashable, the Australian Open ‘may just be the most digitally connected major sporting event of all time’. High praise indeed.
So why is the event in Melbourne attracting such accolades for its digital presence?
In my opinion, what the Australian Open is doing so well is leveraging digital assets to create deep and meaningful engagement with fans, while at the same time integrating its sponsors. Many sporting events, clubs and organizations across the globe strive to simultaneously achieve these two goals and the Grand Slam for Asia/Pacific has, arguably, pulled it off. [click to continue…]
Chris is a strategic programs analyst at the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) focusing on, amongst other things, sponsorship research, analytics and acquisition. He holds a MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Business (AGSM). Chris took part in the school’s exchange program by completing a semester at Stern business school, NYU where he studied sports marketing and sports economics. Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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Here in Australia, sporting clubs are only just realizing the massive potential of social media and beginning to understand the new opportunities they have to connect with their fans.
This week I decided to have a chat to Sean Callanan, the Founder of Australian based digital sports company
Sports Geek. Sean is one of the premier guys in
social media in sports scene in Oz. He works extensively with athletes, sports executives, business owners and leagues to help them develop, or improve, their connection with their fan base to deliver results.
Er, so I’ll start a Facebook page then?
Finding the right tools and platform
The first step to getting involved in social media in sports is to figure out what exactly is the best network to use. It might be necessary to use a combination of networks, but if you are only going to focus on one, it’s crucial to use the one that fans use most.
Once the platform has been chosen, Sean says sports companies or events teams need to know how best to use it and understand what they want to get out of it.
“What’s the goal? Why exactly do you want your club to get involved in social media. Is it to build a fan base? Is it to grow membership numbers or is it to better promote sponsors?” he said.
He believes integrating social media tools in the right platform is essential to maximize opportunities. There’s no point having a presence in social media if it’s not kept up to date or actively in use.
“You have to get fans to like the FB page or follow the Twitter feed, get them to comment and then drive them back to your website,” he said. “Think of fans as long term customers. Essentially you are in a relationship with them – but you’re more of a friend than a sales representative. Key numbers are active fans, it’s important to be engaging them, not just collecting them”.
Claire Kelly is a freelance writer, communications consultant and Australian beach volleyball player based on the Gold Coast, Australia.
Experienced in social media marketing, conducting interviews, ghostwriting, editing, generating publicity and photography, Claire is passionate about about helping athletes and businesses grow through the power of the media and the internet. Follow Claire on Twitter @clairelkelly
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The world is changing rapidly and from now onwards the speed of that change is only going to further increase. We’re daily bombarded with thousands of images. Every photo can be worth a thousand words. But which images are the ones that stick and make a difference? Which (and whose) story is being told (and where) has almost become as important as the quality of the image. Choices about which professional images are created are increasingly made by executives, not necessarily creatives. At the same time, anyone can now take pictures. The quality of a sports photography image is no longer defined by its resolution or razor sharp focus. A picture made by a fan can travel all over the world and end up on the international front pages before you can say ‘bong’.
This post covers the changes in sports photography from the perspective of the photographers, media, sponsors, fans and athletes. Its not intended as a philosophical reflection of the value of a photograph. The digital revolution, which this blog is dedicated to, has resulted in lasting behavioral change as well as the way sports imagery is produced, distributed, and ultimately consumed. How do photographers find their audience, how do sponsors maximize their visibility, and how do athletes manage their exposure? [click to continue…]
Thomas studied Communications in Amsterdam and has been working in international sports for over 15 years. He started his professional career at the Amsterdam Admirals in the NFL Europe and moved to Dutch professional soccer champions PSV Eindhoven in 1997. In 2001 he moved to Southern Germany to join Adidas. He's filled a variety of roles with the sporting goods brand, including 'Head of Global PR'. In 2011 he moved into the role of Global Brand Director.
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It can be argued that the best teams should have the best MLB Facebook Pages. If a team is successful on the field, you’d expect they’d be able to capitalize on fan fervor and strengthen their fan connection online. On the flip side, it might also be argued that the worst teams have nowhere to go but up and therefore have a lot more to gain by engaging their fans on Facebook.
What Makes Up A Good Facebook Fan Page?
Before we compare the top and worst MLB Teams Facebook Pages, let’s first consider the qualities that make up a good Facebook fan page. According to Inc., here are some highlights of what makes for a great page:
- Appearance
- Conversation between the moderator(s) and fans
- Offers and discounts
- Contests/trivia
- Videos
- Meetups or other opportunities for fans to get connected offline
- News
Ignite Social Media suggests the best Facebook Pages are measured by “total fan actions (meaning comments, likes and wall posts.)”. So, without further adieu, let’s take a look at the top and worst teams from the 2011 MLB season and see how they compare.
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Sam Miller is the founder of SamsDreamBlog.com. A graduate of the University of Illinois, he worked with various teams in sports information and received the Freedom Forum – NCAA Sports Journalism Scholarship for his achievements. At the University of Illinois, Miller regularly wrote feature stories about the football team. He has also served as communications intern for the Angels’ Triple-A affiliate. Prior to that, he worked as a communications intern for USA Basketball and as an associate reporter for MLB.com.
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This is a guest post submitted by Keith Beise
Fans are always the best marketers of their teams–wearing team colors, talking about events, and bringing their friends to games.
The problem for teams is they often have no input on what their fans are saying, don’t know who their fans are, and are not able reward them for the buzz they generate.
Baylor University partnered with row27 Studios to create a Social Media Fan Rewards Program that helps address those issues by engaging Bears fans on their social media accounts.
Once fans sign up for the program at baylorboldrewards.com and connect their Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare accounts, all rewards points are automatically updated when they “like” things on Baylor Athletics’ Facebook page, tweet with specific hashtags and check in to athletic events, which are just a few of the ways to earn points. The only reason fans would need to go to Baylor’s rewards site is to check how many points they have earned and see how they stack up to other Bears fans on the leaderboard.
At the end of the year, the leading three point earners win top prizes, including the grand prize of getting to lead the Baylor football team out onto the field for the first game of the 2012 season and receive an iPad2. However, fans of all levels of engagement will have incentive to participate in the program year-round as they can redeem their points for various prizes ranging from a BU decal to a fleece jacket. [click to continue…]
Photo courtesy of www.pitch.com
In the wake of seeing what a lockout can do to a league, Major League Baseball has decided to peacefully and quietly get their Collective Bargaining Agreement done and guarantee baseball to it’s fans through 2016. While some things in the agreement seem superficial, like a “no tobacco tin in the back pocket while on the field” rule (no offense Raul Ibanez), there are also some important things to come out of this CBA. One of those is a new MLB social media policy that will be subject to all players.
While the policy has not been released to the public, as is the standard for the MLB, there is a policy in place for managers and executives that was released earlier this year. After looking at that policy the Twitterverse can only hope the new one for the players contains more than six “donts”, as Wendy Thurm at SB Nation writes.
What the new MLB social media policy means going forward
While a simple list consisting of not displaying disparaging content or not using the nickname of any MLB entity as a Twitter handle may seem obvious at the surface, the new MLB social media policy should be considered very dangerous for Bud Selig and friends as a brand. Major League Baseball constantly fails in the social media world where the other big sport leagues succeed, mainly on YouTube and Twitter.
There is no better example than in this year’s World Series, widely considered one of the best in the last decade, when Joe Buck brought baseball fans a nostalgic moment by remembering his father, Jack. After David Freese’s dramatic game 6 walk-off home run Joe simply stated, “We will see you tomorrow night,” emulating his father after Kirby Puckett did the same in 1991 . How well did the MLB handle that? The mashup videos of Joe and Jack’s calls were taken down by the next morning for absolutely no one to enjoy. In contrast, the NBA has an official YouTube page where they post game clips, commercials and videos. They also let fans post what they have missed without the thought of taking it down 4 hours later.
MLB Social Media Policy – The Twitter Effect
An extension of the failure to communicate with fans by the MLB occurs on Twitter, where they have a million fewer followers than the NFL and 1.5 million fewer supporters than the NBA. This will certainly not be helped if they use the same policy in place now on the players and hinder the creative minds of players like Logan Morrison or the humanitarian efforts of players like Cole Hamels. Social media is quickly becoming the way to meet celebrities (the mention tweet is the the new autograph!) and if the MLB social media policy falls behind it’s big sport competitors it won’t belong before they find themselves behind in every other fan-following area as well.
What are your thoughts about the new MLB social media policy? Comment below to get the discussion started!
Steve is a recent graduate of Penn State University with a degree in Sports Journalism from the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism. He is currently working as a marketing and PR intern for Sports Networker.
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With the world in a constant state of upheaval these days, sports business is not exempt. Below are the sports business leaders who can bring clarity to the topsy turvy landscape.
Sports Business Professionals: Tweet Leaders
When you have read an article called “My 13 Golden Rules of Twitter,” written by someone with more than 143,000 followers, you should tack it on your refrigerator. No wonder Rovell earned Sports Social Media Professional of the Year.
Heitner tweets often but not too often. He mixes it up between links, stories, advice to students, retweets and other worthwhile content.
Keene, of Octagon Sports Marketing, does a great job conversing with her followers. Though I don’t see many links or retweets in her recent activity.
Gainor is up for the business awards circuit this year, and I can see one reason why. He provides his followers with a variety of links, he interacts with them and he promotes. Unfortunately, for followers, Gainor varies between tweeting a lot or a little.
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Sam Miller is the founder of SamsDreamBlog.com. A graduate of the University of Illinois, he worked with various teams in sports information and received the Freedom Forum – NCAA Sports Journalism Scholarship for his achievements. At the University of Illinois, Miller regularly wrote feature stories about the football team. He has also served as communications intern for the Angels’ Triple-A affiliate. Prior to that, he worked as a communications intern for USA Basketball and as an associate reporter for MLB.com.
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Movember is here! ‘Movember’ (a portmanteau of “moustache” and “November”) is an annual, month-long event involving the growing of moustaches during the month of November. It has become a global celebration of furry face furniture all over the world, and helps to raise money and awareness to combat one of the biggest killers of young men – prostate cancer. What do you think– are you man enough to Mo?
Movember Athletes
Besides the fact that quite a few remarkable athletes proudly wore some pretty awesome moustaches AND the obvious fact that Movember supports an extremely important and wonderful cause (your participation or support would be awesome) there are 3 main reasons for covering the initiative on this blog:
- Movember is hugely social media driven, rapidly increasing in size and fully depending on sponsors. It presents a wonderful cause marketing benchmark. So please do tune-in and check it out.
- One in two men will develop cancer at some point in their life. One in six men is diagnosed with Prostate cancer in his lifetime. It’s the most prevalent form of cancer among men 15 – 34. Prostate cancer is over 90% curable right now, provided is detected early. Most men – sports enthusiasts in particular – “love the balls they play with”. Why not check yours today gents?
- Sports are an essential element to staying fit. Many athletes have been a great source of inspiration by actively using the power of sports to support the fight against cancer. This is a wonderful opportunity to highlight and celebrate those initiatives.
Thomas studied Communications in Amsterdam and has been working in international sports for over 15 years. He started his professional career at the Amsterdam Admirals in the NFL Europe and moved to Dutch professional soccer champions PSV Eindhoven in 1997. In 2001 he moved to Southern Germany to join Adidas. He's filled a variety of roles with the sporting goods brand, including 'Head of Global PR'. In 2011 he moved into the role of Global Brand Director.
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