In New York City? Check out Girls, Inc. on Thursday to see womens sports leaders

For those of you who may not know this, Wednesday (Feb. 3) is National Girls and Women in Sports Day. To celebrate, women’s sports bloggers throughout the WomenTalkSports.com network will be posting about local events and activities.  This is an awesome example of how online communities can  support a social movement for female empowerment (through sports).

If you’re like me and you live in the New York City market, there’s a great being event held the day after (Thursday) with Girls, Inc., which might be worth checking out (or at least promoting). Below is the press release.  Some cool sports chicks will be there!

Girls Incorporated of New York City to host National Girls and Women in Sports Day

New York, New York

Based on research conducted by the Women’s Sports Foundation showing that females who participate in high school sports are more likely to attend college than those who did not participate in sports, Girls Incorporated of New York City will hold their 2^nd Annual National Girls and Women in Sports Day event on February 4, 2010 in partnership with The Urban Assembly.

Seven outstanding women leaders including Phaidra Knight, a USA National Rugby Team member, Amanda Kraus, founder and Executive Director of Row New York, Kristina Marchitto, founder of the Yoga Project, Erika Mehalick, head softball coach at The Stevens Institute of Technology, Crissy Van Meter, Associate Editor for ESPN Action Sports, Kim Puntillo, the first woman to run a marathon on every continent, and Agatha Wasilewska, action sports writer for Transworld. The speakers will share their experiences, promote careers in athletics, and encourage a healthy lifestyle with the girls.

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NCAA and social media: Friends?

I’d like to extend a huge “welcome!” to NCAA collegiate athletic departments – it seems that this year, you may have finally realized the power of technology in bringing fans into your stadiums. Well, at least some of you have.

What am I talking about? Well, apparently, a panel of [experts?] convened at an NCAA education session and came up with the following finding:

“Programs willing to invest in effective communication can reap far greater support than at any time in their history.”

Couldn’t agree more. I’m just left a little confused as to why it took a panel of experts AND so much time to figure this out. These tools have been around forever. The only thing I can come up with is that there are some weird regulations out there that I don’t know about. Or athletic departments weren’t willing to lose control of their information. But now they don’t have any choice, and control is being relinquished. I guess that’s innovation?

NCAA institutions (especially schools which have strong female programs) should be doing everything they can to get fans, even if that means going online. Free tools exist, starting with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. These are ways to connect with people and keep them engaged, and sports fans are some of the most faithful users. Embrace it.

So I have to ask the question -  sports information directors, where the heck have you been?

You’ve got a lot of work to do. You need to show me why my friends and I should care about you. What makes you different and cool? What makes you indispensable?

The NCAA panel was right – unlike any other time in history, there’s a huge opportunity here. But like the millions of Americans who are out of work or suffering in the economic depression, you’ve got some proving to do. Here are a few things to think about:

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Womens professional soccer engages over 200,000 Twitter followers

While most of us in digital marketing know that corporate use of social media is not, by any means, a popularity contest and the number of “followers” you have is by no means a measure of success, the Women’s Professional Soccer league (WPS) achieved a milestone this week when its Twitter account, @womensprosoccer, reached 200,000 followers. In fact, they’re ranked fifth behind the NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL for leagues with the most followers.

The overarching reason WPS achieved the 200,000 fan milestone is because they built social media into their communications program as a fan-engagement mechanism. Not everyone understand this concept. Here are a few ways WPS engaged their fans this year which I believe have contributed to their overwhelming success.

1) They participate.

As you can see from their number of @replies, re-tweets (RT’s), and #hashtags, WPS actively participates with and contributes toward ongoing conversations. This is not something every company, league or brand knows how to do or why they need to do it. Actively participating in conversations with your consumers brings you closer to them. You develop what we call relationships, by actually talking to people. Relationships and conversations, over time, turn into loyalty. Loyalty turns in to word-of-mouth… and, over even more time, word-of-mouth turns into increased sales.

2) They provide value.

Now, look at the content of the league’s tweets. It’s actually valuable. They’re not overtly pushing their own agenda, meaning, they’re not posting links to where consumers can buy tickets and pushing it down their throats everyday. Instead, they’re posting content that soccer advocates would find useful such as newsworthy articles about the league and information about the sports industry.

3) They’re human.

One huge win, in my opinion, is the fact that WPS shows who they really are as people and teams. They also do an excellent job of cross-promotion; the league actively promotes the Twitter accounts of various teams. In fact, sometimes, they use Twitter as a way to communicate between each other.

Couple cross-promotion with the fact that they’ve created Twitter lists for WPS staff, teams and players. These show that WPS respects and trusts its staff and players enough to allow and even encourage them to be online tweeting about the league. Suddenly, the world sees that WPS is a living, breathing institution made up of some funny, personable people. WPS clearly values its consumers and employees enough to talk to them and show their staff’s human personalities.

These tactics all work toward a strategy that was built into the league from the very beginning: engage directly with new fans through the online medium. As we can see from their recent milestone, I’d say they’ve achieved significant success. Congratulations, WPS!

Can’t wait to see you in my Twitter feed…

1/11: Update:  Also, I forgot to add, WNBA has a great Twitter following as well, with 150,000. Stay tuned for a post on their significant efforts online later this week

What can Twitter’s geotagging do for sports?

This week, Twitter launched their Geolocation API, giving users the option to have their messages contain their exact locations.

Now, I have to admit, I my first impression was that this feature is a bit creepy, and I do think it may be one of those tools to makes us all a little “too close for comfort.” But there are also lots of useful things that can be done now, too.

Think about the type of power it can give sports fans. Think of yourself having scored tickets to the 2004 World Series championship when the Red Sox beat the Yankees. Or, maybe you witnessed the ever-so-famous 1999 World Cup penalty shot by Brandi Chastain in Pasadena, CA. As a fan, you could break the news quicker than anyone else in the world using your cell phone, right from the stadium, and everyone would know exactly where you were sitting and when. Archived for eternity. Priceless.

Here are some more ideas:

If the stadiums themselves got creative, they might just be able to build some type of API to allow people to communicate and know each other’s geographic seat location. (Maybe we’re not there yet, I don’t know).

Maybe a biker could tweat his specific location on the Tour de France. You can see how he’s doing, what he’s thinking, and where he is. All in real time. Cool.

Or how about something for recreational athletes. Maybe they tweet out their location and receive a message back that tells them where local leagues are. (Similar to a “responsive version” of the WomenTalkSports map of camps, leagues and clinics for women).

Think about sports news – maybe you sent out a tweet to an application that responds with the local scores of games or tweets within 5-10 miles of you. Very cool.

Think about how fans can track their favorite players as they travel around the country and world. For example, geotagging can tell a cool story for those WNBA players overseas right now.

More ideas can be found using your own imagination and reading this ReadWriteWeb post.

NCAA career development program for women

The NCAA is holding a career development program that’s targeting women, announced today. It’s going to be held on December 17 in conjunction with the women’s volleyball championship at the St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, Florida.

Here’s the kicker: Registration is limited to 35 participants and is currently open to female students and student-athletes from any division and sport.

Ok, so you’re targeting women. But only 35 of us? How exactly is that intended to make a realistic impact in getting women involved in college sports careers?

If you’d like to voice your opinion (or get more information), contact Karen Morrison, NCAA director of gender initiatives, at kmorrison@ncaa.org.

Person-to-person-to-person (in sports)

Social networks - photo credit: Gotchance.com/blog

This blog post is part of my ongoing weekly series discussing the role of social media and female athletics. My latest reading is 

Person-to-Person-to-Person: Harnessing hte political power of online social networks and user-generated content, published by the Institute for Politics Democracy & The Internet (various authors). This is an assignment for a class I’m enrolled in as part of John’s Hopkins University’s Digital Communications program.

Person-to-Person-to-Person is a great publication. It’s a document intended for any organization who wants to build an online community around a specific cause. The booklet 22 chapters published by a wide variety of authors in the digital advocacy world. The total document is over 100 pages long, so what I’m going to do is provide the key lessons/tips and then deconstruct how a few specific ones can benefit the female sports online community using a few examples from the book.

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Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and sports advocacy (Part 2)

 

This blog post is part 2 of a series dicussing my experiences with Facebook, Myspace and Twitter as they relate to  advocacy issues that highly affect the women’s sport sphere. This is an assignment for a class I’m enrolled in as part of John’s Hopkins University’s Digital Communications program.

Facebook:
I’ve decided to “ramp-up” my networking power by joining an event for a local group called Women In Sports and Events (WISE). It’s a “how-to-network presentation and panel discussion with some of the top executives within the D.C. Sports & Events industry,”  taking place this Tuesday at 6pm.

How did I RSVP? Through Facebook, of course. So far there are six attendees (WISE is a local thing – there are groups in every major city). I’ll be sure to look at this panel with an advocacy perspective and check back with any learnings that I find.

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“Mobilizing Generation 2.0…” in the female sports world

Today marks the first day that an assignment is due for a digital political advocacy class that I’m enrolled in as part of my John’s Hopkins Masters of Arts in Digital Communication degree.  As such, I’m required to post blog postings about our readings. To put a unique spin on my writings, I decided to integrate the concept of digital advocacy with my current blog promoting women’s sports. 

This combination, I hope, will present a new understanding of female athletes - one which is quite different than the sports industry of male athletes. I hope new strategic insight will mobilize an entirely new community to support  our industry.  

My first assignment is to read and reflect upon a book titled Mobilizing Generation 2.0: Technologies to recruit, organize, and engage youth by Ben Rigby. It’s important to note the youth focus, because it’s a unique one that I’m not always exposed to. However, I feel young female athletes of America are the answer to the ongoing question of “who is our market?” in women’s sports.

Below are some of the top strategic insights I pulled from the book that apply to engaging America’s female athletes with the women’s sports industry…

1) Understand Web 2.0 technology is “a conversation”
To reach the youth audience, I strongly agree with Rigby that the answer is NOT to simply integrate Web 2.0 technology as “another communications outlet for content/information that already exists.” Rather, leaders in this industry need to first understand the fundamental principle that Web 2.0 is ”conversational media” - meaning that it’s “authentic, immediate – more human.” (p. 52)

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Tackle football: A place for women?

In short, the answer is yes.

Only their season isn’t during the fall like we’d expect – it’s in the spring. How do I know this?

I read a great article today on Associated Content titled The IWFL and the History of Women’s Tackle Football. The Independent Women’s Football League is, quite simply, a league for women who play tackle football.

Representing my area (Northeast) of the United States are the Boston Militia, New York Sharks, Philadelphia Firebirds, New York Nemesis and Connecticut Crushers. If possible, I’m going to try and catch a Philadelphia game this season to check out the sport – it’d certainly be a first time experience for me.

What’s particularly interesting to me about the league is the IWFL’s success… in generating not only sponsors and fans, but participants. It simply shocks me that this many women are interested in playing and supporting women’s tackle football.

For example, the IWFL has 22 teams on its tier-one level (that’s right – there’s three different tiers of teams with a total of 51 organized clubs participating). Compare that to pro fastpitch softball which continues to struggle with only 5 remaining teams.

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Female athletes head to college and beyond

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Sports Industry: Women and Minorities Wanted, Future Sole paves the way for sneaker designers

As a minority woman, recent college graduate and an aspiring sports journalist there is only one thing I am searching for; an opportunity.

This post is about opportunities for minority women in the sports industry, and it touches on a special sneaker design contest called Future Sole. While the registration deadline for this contest has already passed (6/1/09), there is still an opportunity for you to participate by voting for the winner. This post (hopefully) will give you reason to do so.

In order to paint the picture for how important this program is, I decided to share a little bit about my own life.

I posses a strong desire to make a name for myself in the sports communication industry, and by myself, I mean a strong African- American woman with a high passion for sports.  The last couple of weeks I have been searching day in and day out for a fall internship. “Sports Journalism”, were my initial keywords that I typed in many search engines, which then opened my eyes to other career paths, ones that I wasn’t aware of.

I stumbled across the NCAA career center, where I discovered the sports information director profession. Immediately I took a strong interest in the position, the job sounded appealing to my interests. However, I will be honest; the fine print at the end of all of the job descriptions grasped the majority of my attention and ignited my confidence.

The fine print read somewhere along the lines of ‘women and ethnic minorities strongly encouraged to apply’, which seemed to good to be true. After more internship searching, this statement became a reoccurring theme.

There is a lack of women and minorities in the sports media industry.

As an African- American woman that is striving to become successful in the industry that I love, I plan to be a force in breaking down the barriers, race and gender combined. I am confident that  I have the same dream as many other young female athletes; when I was young, I wanted to be a professional basketball player, until recently I realized the odds of that happening were slim to none.

I  decided not to give up; I just made the decision to take another road to the same goal.

I discovered my passion for writing, media, and sports. I switched my college undergraduate major from Health and Physical Education to Journalism, because I love to write I played basketball my entire life on the high school and collegiate levels.

I now have my B.A. in Journalism at the age of 23, and can proudly say that I’m the first in my immediate family to achieve a college degree. My brother (pictured with me above) is close behind, too, set to finish his degree in the next couple of years.

This is an accomplishment that I am very proud of, however, I will always look back and wish there were more opportunities and exposure along the way to guide me toward my dreams.

With a lot of hard work and some help from others on the way, I made out alright. But as a child, or teenager, they were non-existent.

I believe one of the keys to making a way for women in sports media is opportunity. My community and childhood surroundings didn’t introduce me to women’s sports; actually my middle school didn’t even have a basketball program (those opportunities came later – in junior high, high school and college).

But one thing I learned is that it isn’t too late to make change.  I plan to give back to the young ladies in my community, which is predominately African- American, and help them broaden their horizons.

On a larger scale, there are still individuals who have become successful, and are providing chances for the youth. Future Sole is an example of such an organization.

Future Sole is a sneaker design contest that was created in 2007 to give youth the access to the footwear design industry.

“When I was growing up, there wasn’t a forum to learn about the sneaker design industry or a community to share design ideas,” said Edwards. “Many kids don’t know a career in footwear design exists, so with Future Sole I wanted to open their eyes to the possibilities and show them how they can achieve it.”

- D’Wayne Edwards, Jordan Brand Footwear Design Director

Future Sole is a nationwide high school footwear design competition co-sponsored by Nike. The contest is in its second year, and the registration ran until 6/1/09. High school students between the ages of 14-19 were eligible for the contest. While the deadline for this has past, you can still participate by voting for the winner.

Why women? Because there are only 2% women of color collectively. The contest hopes to close the demographic gaps in the industry.

Lisa Leslie of the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks is a sponsor of this program, and this really speaks to her ongoing support of minority youth trying to make it in the industry.

“I believe this program will  impact many kids lives in a very positive way. I think this is an awesome opportunity for any child who’s creative and loves to draw. I am happy to be a role model and have the opportunity to give back especially in my own community!”

What that says to me is there is another avenue for creative women (especially colored women) in the sports industry to take. Last years winners were two males, while that is awesome, maybe this year can be different, and two women can win the contest.

I can remember a good friend of mine always drawing pictures of cool sneakers when we were younger; he wanted to design sneakers. If he had access to an organization like Future Sole back then, he may have been able to pursue this dream.

For more information, please visit www.futuresole.com. To vote for a winner, click here.

Congratulations to Lauren O’Donnell, new head women’s swimming coach at Juniata College!

I’m proud to announce that one of our blog contributors, Lauren O’Donnell, has accepted the position of head women’s swimming coach at Juniata College in Huntingdon, PA.

Lauren is a former two-time All-American swimmer and six-time NCAA championship qualifier with five years of collegiate coaching experience. Lauren and I went to The College of New Jersey together, and we both share a love for female sports.

Congratulations, Lauren, and I’m excited to see some women’s swimming content in the blogs this year. If you want to read more about Lauren, her experience, and what she’s bringing to Juniata College, click here.

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