Jonathan Simpson; Digital Marketing Director, Essendon Football Club
I was really keen to hear from an AFL team about how they handled social media and fan engagement as this pertains to my research topic. It was one of the three presentations that I found most useful.
Social media needs to be a long-term strategy. Essendon created an action learning group specifically to address this issue.
Essendon has a virtual connection strategy group and a match day engage action learning group. Match day engagement was important considering the issue of venue sharing.
People need to be able to be multilingual, be able to explain ROI, know how to speak to and listen to fans. They need to be able to explain these issues to different audiences.
Essendon has 60,000 Facebook fans. Essendon has a department of Fan Develop. They brought in all the departments in the club and explained what this meant to them in order to get a corporate buy in across the system.
Essendon has been about allowing fans to follow them on the platform of their choice. That can be Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Social media is 24/7. You’ve got to be on it at all times. It gives voice to fans and as a member of a sport organization, you need to understand why this is important, why you’re doing that. It is a great opportunity to get feedback from fans.
You have to make money with social media and the web. It isn’t just about money though. It is about building sustainable long-term transactions and relationships with fans.
Facebook contests: Try to run them. Include forms for people to fill out. Use the data from Facebook contests to monetize the data.
Essendon has used Google Ad Words. It has an advantage that the results are trackable and much easier to manage in terms of ROI.
Essendon is the only team with an independent website.
The team has worked on trying to make it their multiteam stadium more personal and dedicated to their team. They do need an offline presence as community development works hand in hand with fan development.
In order to do social media in sport, you’ve got to love what you do.
Just get out there and do it. Roll with it. Try new things and measure the ROI. Then continue with what works.
Essendon was big with developing fan strategy.
6 or 7 people worked on the development team.
Social media needs to be more than just press releases.
Essendon shut down the Facebook fan page that was run by a fan. They had repeatedly try to contact the fan but they did not get a response. They felt that they had no choice but to take it over in the best interest of their fans.
Attempts at selling merchandise on Facebook have not been that successful.
Anthony Harrison; Digital Marketing Manager, Cricket Victoria
To be honest, I wasn’t that interested in mobile content and Harrison’s presentation. I can’t really get population data off of most of it. I can’t really track growth. It just doesn’t connect as much with what my interests are, except as platforms connect with places where I can get data.
There is 115% mobile penetration in Australia: People often have multiple phones.
There is 80% Internet penetration in Australia.
The Bushrangers find it a struggle in the Melbourne Market as it is really footy centric.
It is important to know your customer.
Peter Jakulovski; Managing Director, AFL Dream Team
This presentation was more interesting than the one on mobile content. I’ve just found it problematic at time to mine data from these types of sites and interest in fantasy football isn’t something I’ve always found translates into interest in a team. So for this speech, more notes than the last one but still not that many.
350,000 people are playing in the AFL Super Coach Fantasy Football League.
They play in head to had leagues, based on salary caps. Fans do not play using a draft style.
32.5% play fantasy sports to socialize with like minded sport fans.
52.3% play to compete.
Fantasy sport fans are male.
26% of players are under 18.
Fantasy sports is expanding to mobile platforms.
Two of the major fansites for fantasy AFL are fanfooty.com.au and dreamteamtalk.com.
Fans love interaction. They’ve been really successful with their iPhone application, which they sell for $3.99.
Super Coach and Dream Team can co-exist.
Finn Bradshaw; Chief Online Editor Sport and Racing, Herald Sun
This was a really interesting presentation from the perspective of a company that is trying to monetize interest in sport for their own purposes.
One guy originally looked after the Herald Sun and Super Footy websites. The attitude since the early website days has really changed.
Herald Sun sport are trying to get its reporters on Twitter and other social media sites.
Is technology killing newspapers? No. In the past, this may have been more true but not any more.
Super Footy gets 50% more traffic than the Age. Some of this is because people who are working for Super Footy really support the site.
For journalists, it really is about getting validity. Social media and the web can spread that along. Breaking news can be on a site quickly, as fast as 10 minutes.
Management needs to equip journalists with thick skins. 98% of people are nice but 2% are hugely problematic. Expectations need to be managed.
Break news and credibility are one thing that newspapers are good for. They are also good for a newspaper’s traffic.
You can’t sell your stories hard enough! Let users know what is there and why it is exciting.
Herald Sun traffic is growing.
WSJ has like a million subscribers.
Backing your own brand is very important.
US provides more opinion in the sport pages. Australia provides more information on players. The AFL gives more player access.
If teams/clubs can engineer unique content ideas, then the media may pick it up if they think the story can become viral. This is something important for smaller clubs and leagues in bigger, more congested media markets to realize.
Darren Rowse; Pro Blogger
A lot of this presentation was about monetization. When I went through my “Let me try to make Fan History into a legit start up!” phase, I learned a lot about this sort of thing. As a result, it felt like a lot of a rehash. Added to that, I found it a bit generic and not that applicable to most sport organizations. People I talked to really found it helpful though so my perspective may just be a bit jaded.
You don’t need credentials to be a blogger.
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