Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

An athlete holds a valuable asset at their finger tips in which most do not utilize. There has always been a disconnect with Professional Athletes and how to quickly and precisely reach their fans in real time. Whether they have a web platform to interact with their fans on a regular basis, there is still a need for “real time” updates. Our athletes do this effectively through their personal blogs but there always seems to be a time lag in when athletes can actually post to their site.

Social Media can be simply defined as media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. [Wiki- Social Media]

Below are the Top Five ways (my opinion) for Professional Athletes to use Social Media:

1. Twitter: Twitter has became pretty popular among athletes within the past year and gives fans a real time advantage on knowing what their favorite athletes are up to. Shaquille O’Neal does this very well. He actually incites fans to meet him out pre-game and passes out tickets to the first person to touch him. And plus he pokes fun at people sometimes. Pretty innovative if you ask me. Props to him.

2. Facebook: Facebook has easily over taken the whole MySpace craze and actually has great “credibility” in athletes’ eyes. Not only can they have their own personal pages but now more athletes are jumping on the Fan Page bandwagon. The great thing about fan pages is that they are indexed by Google and will show up in a fans live feed every time their Fan Page is updated. Group pages on Facebook do not offer these options. Pretty powerful tool if you ask me.

3. Email: Email is NOT dead!! Let me say that again…Email is NOT dead!! We are just tired of reading text unless it is a subject we have sincere interest in, right!?!. The great thing about athletes is they don’t have this problem. Fans always want to hear what they say, good or bad. Now it’s different for businesses such as mine. I have to constantly find innovative ways to keep my following interested in what I have to say. Tough task for us, not so much for an athlete.

4. Video: LOVE, LOVE, LOVE using video. This probably will be number one within two months. The only reason it’s not is because we cant get video into the hands of fans as quickly as text (for now). There is Twit Vid and Protege Brandings’ athletes do utilize this but that’s only one platform. If an athlete shoots video through their iPhone they can upload it to their You Tube channel but who how long it will take a fan to find it? Every fan loves to see video. They love it even more because there is no reading involved. Here is an example of Jamie Varner discussing his upcoming fight (shot from his iPhone).

5. Blog: The only way this is successful in my opinion is using the blogs’ RSS feed. There are other effective ways to get information in front of fans through an athletes’ blog but it’s typically done through the methods listed above. Protege Brandings’ clients typically have a great following and fans will get updated through their feed once a new blog is posted. Plus, you complement this by posting through their other social networks to make sure a higher percentage of fans receive the notification.

The main component of keeping fans in the loop is constantly updating them with semi-personable doings in real time. Lets assume that the majority of athletes either own an iPhone or Blackberry, these phones allow athletes to update the majority of the avenues listed above in real time in a matter of seconds. The only one that is difficult is the email updates. You technically could send an email from your phone depending on the type of email marketing platform you use. It’s just not as time efficient as Twitter or Facebook postings. All of Protege Brandings’ athletes are using Word Press and can easily post to their blog from their phone using the Word Press Application. Jamie Varner is one of our clients that does this beautifully.

I would love to hear some feedback on this article as I am interested to hear what your thoughts are on the subject. I hope you enjoyed the read.

Till next time,

Chris Gruler