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:

Read more

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.

Twitter lists for sports advocacy

This blog post is part 6 of a series discussing my experiences with social media 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

This past week, Twitter announced their Twitter Lists functionality. If you want to see exactly what Twitter Lists are and how they work, read this post on The Next Web.

Essentially, Twitter Lists also make it easier to curate tweets and follow people in specific niche communities. In my opinion, the functionality allows me to find “people like me.” And when it comes to sports advocacy and building a community for grassroots movements, Twitter Lists are very, very valuable.

Here are some unique functions of Twitter lists in the sports world that I’ve seen so far:

• The Huffington Post used Twitter Lists to cover the World Series. As you can see, they broke it down by “baseball writers,” “New York Yankees” and “Philadelphia Phillies.” Very, very cool.
• The National Hockey League uses Twitter Lists to build social network for fans of teams in each city. Proves the NHL is way ahead of other leagues in the social media world, which earned them the well-deserved and very viral article on Mashable.
• Building upon Twitter’s simple List API, Listorius has established itself as a database of the most popular Twitter Lists. Check out some of the top ones in sports, including NHL and NFL players.

Twitter says, “We believe Lists will be a new discovery mechanism for great tweets and accounts.”

…That’s exactly what we’re hoping will happen with women’s sports fans online. Check out Twitter users in the women’s sports community here.

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and sports advocacy (Part 4)

This blog post is part 4 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.

The theme of this week’s post is “learn from example.” Because our female sports feminist sisters seem to “have it together” politically, I went searching for a good site which asks readers to take action on Twitter, MySpace or Facebook. Immediately, I found one: Women’s Voices. Women Vote.

It’s a simple site that was clearly created around getting women to register to vote during the 2008 Presidential election. But beyond the seemingly “expired” nature of the content, they have a unique presence in YouTube (13 videos, page which is unbranded – not bad), MySpace (customized page with 33 friends – kindof low, but clearly shows widgets and publicizes videos), and Facebook (345 fans, but a blank wall). Seems to me like they got their basics down. They just needed a little help with public engagement.

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.

Read more

Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Title IX (Part 1)

So another assignment for the class that I’m taking is to post at least once/week about my experiences with groups, conversations, and other opportunities on MySpace, Facebook and Twitter (related to politics and issue advocacy). (yes, I’m going to have to dust off my MySpace account)

Keep in the sports twist, I’m going to try and relate my experiences to Title IX (political advocacy issue), but apoligize as I’m somewhat skeptical that I’ll come up a bit light on my search and experiences in the Web 2.0 world. I’ll be doing this on a case-by-case basis each week, reflecting upon my immediate conversations about Title IX on social networks.

1) Facebook
First place I looked for info about Title IX on Facebook was the Women’s Sports Foundation Fan Page (has 725 fans – not bad, but not good either). First thing I noticed: I thought their call to vote on Sportswoman of the year is a great way to engage their fans. However, when I clicked the link to vote, it didn’t work. Yikes. BUT they allow my comment to appear below it. So I have a voice. That’s good.

Read more

5 reasons female athletes should engage online

If you’re a female athlete (or you represent female athletes), I have provided five key reasons you should get online and start talking about your life, your sport, and maybe even your brand.

1) You’re creating and controlling your own voice. Today, athletes can no longer rely on traditional media to cover their stories and extend their brands. Instead, I’m afraid you have to do it on your  own, ladies. Some of you are doing it really, really well. Even when you  get cut.

Take for instance Chantelle Anderson who tried out for the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream and got cut. She, prior to getting cut, not only created a name for herself by blogging on Yardbarker, but also continues to voice her opinions about the situation  to a huge audience of followers. Personally (and I know this is not right) but I think the Dream should have kept her, in addition to her talent, she has a following that (maybe) could have transitioned into ticket sales and increased attention, something the struggling league desparately needs.

Read more

WomenTalkSports.com welcomes you to the “Twitter Lounge”

As many of you know, I am one of the co-founders of WomenTalkSports.com, so I am a bit biased when I write this post. However, our site has grown tremendously, and our new Twitter Lounge resource is so good that I felt the need to write about it in an effort to spread the word.

If you’re not already aware, WomenTalkSports.com is a female sports blog network that was created in early February of this year by myself (chief marketer), Ann Gaffigan at Steeplechics (chief tech director, who literally built the site from scratch) and Jane Schonberger of Pretty Tough (chief editor).

We created WomenTalkSports.com because we knew that there was not much discussion of female athletes online or offline, and we wanted to come together with other advocates and provide that voice. Each day, we acquire new members to our community (we’re now over 30 blogs), and together, we represent  a variety of sports, professions and interests in the women’s athletic industry. Read more

Twitter: A huge hit in sports, especially for women

When Jayda Evans of the Seattle Times called me a few weeks ago and asked me what I thought about Twitter’s role in the future of women’s sports, I told her that it could only be a good thing.

Jayda, a Seattle Times blogger and writer, later published an article titled “Sports go mad for online pastime with Twitter.”

I love how Jayda wrote this article. Instead of focusing upon huge Twitter celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal and Lance Armstrong, she gave some credit to the ladies who have recently been stepping up to the plate, including Natalie Gulbis (@natalie_gulbis) and over 13 WNBA players. Read more

Fair pay and athletics: The gender disparities continue to loom

This post is part of an initiative by the National Women’s Law Center in honor of Equal Pay Day — “voices are rising up across the web in support of fair pay for women.” All day, they’ll be promoting blog posts about fair pay and tweets with the hashtag #fairpay.

The reason today is Equal Pay Day: April 28, 2009 marks the day when the average woman’s wages will finally catch up with those paid to the average man in 2008 (note – that was last year). Here’s where you can find state-by-state data on the wage gap.

So what can you to help? Well, if you’re a blogger, register here and blog about it. If you’re not (or you don’t want to), then urge your Senators to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.

In keeping with my theme, I wanted to share some interesting information about fair pay in athletics. Some may think that these days, women get paid “very similar” or even “close to” men. But that’s hardly the case, as you can see… Read more

2009 WNBA Draft: A journey back to my love for women’s basketball

I’ve played basketball my entire life.

Ever since I was little, l knew that I loved the game. From eighth grade all the way through graduation from my NCAA Division III college, I pretty much obsessed over rankings, new prospects and players of the week, desperately trying to mold my role somewhere in the middle of it.

I remember when the WNBA started in 1997. I was 12 years old. It was a really exciting time for women’s sports. I read books written by big names like Pat Summit and Nancy Lieberman, attended basketball camps regularly, and was a subscribed reader to Sports Illustrated for Women. I knew deep down that I wanted to be a part of the future of the game. So I worked very, very hard as a player. Read more

Next Page »