I’ve written before that sports franchises have a unique opportunity to take advantage of web 2.0 tools to engage their fans in meaningful conversations. Unlike other brands that are struggling to create conversation, sports teams already have a rabid fan base and are using tools like ESPN.com’s commenting system and twitter to speak their mind. For teams, the challenge is figuring out how to join the conversation and use web 2.0 tools to strengthen team loyalty during good and bad season. Who knows, they might even be able to make a dollar or two out of it.
This field of sports marketing 2.0 is relatively young but already has some accomplished executives leading the charge. One such exec is Pat Coyle, Executive Director of Digital Business for the Indianapolis Colts, author of the Sports Marketing 2.0 blog, founder of the mycolts.net social network and organizer of the Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit. That is a pretty nice resume. ☺ Over the coming weeks, I will be referencing a lot of his posts and giving my take on how his thoughts apply to the NBA. Pat is a thought leader in the field and team executives at every level should read his blog.
One web 2.0 tool that I am hoping teams and players embrace is Twitter. If you are unfamiliar with Twitter, Wikipedia has a pretty good definition. According to Wikipedia, Twitter is “a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users’ updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.” People use twitter to promote their blogs, give reactions to current event, tell their followers what they are doing and have conversations with their followers. For NBA teams and players, twitter is a potentially phenomenal tool to keep fans up to date on training camp, life on the road, tough games and championship dreams. As a Knicks fan, I would happily follow an official team twitter account that is updating me multiple times a day on training camp, injuries and team morale. This kind of “team streaming” (as opposed to life streaming) would be fascinating to follow.
I don’t have too many readers yet, but would love some comments on how you think your favorite team could use the web to interact with you.
on Nov 10th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Nice post. I’ve actually written a few articles on teams and social media, and one tonight about the lack of teams using Twitter. Would love to hear what you think.