Harry O’Brien; Footballer, Collingwood Magpies
This was a presentation I enjoyed even as I boggled. Part of me is an extremely cynical American who on the face of it took parts of his talk to be: I’m all about promoting myself above anything. The other part of me found him very genuine and thinking he probably did a lot of good work, promoted a lot of worthy causes and didn’t flaunt his efforts to make those charities about himself. There was a RMIT journalism student sitting at my table who was a huge fan of O’Brien. He asked O’Brien for his autograph and O’Brien was really nice about it. If you get the chance to hear O’Brien speak on this topic, it is worth it. He was asked to speak about social media from the athlete perspective.
- Denying social media is denying the multitude. Social media is a vehicle for sharing the message that you want to share.
- Why should athletes use social media? To share the message that you have. Harry was asked by Web Guru to contribute to the Collingwood site. This developed into his website, Harry’s World.
- Social media can effect positive change.
- If social media is good enough for Barack Obama and Julia Gillard, then it is good enough for him.
- Harry did his first interview in December 2004 after he was drafted. He used the interview with The Age to share is ideas and beliefs. He stands for sharing hope through positivity.
- Players complained to him about their privacy being violated. He thinks fans just want insight, glimpses into his life in a controlled manner.
- People started uploading pictures of him all over Facebook. He ran out of friends. He was overwhelemed. Then he moved to Twitter. He now loves Twitter. Then he started his own website, which was his dream: Having people here what he has to say.
- Social media is unfiltered. It gives you the essence of a person. He’ll always have insight into the Collingwood Football Club. He can share pictures, videos and eventually merchandise.
- People want Harry to speak! Social media allows him to share his message.
- Harry O’Brien doesn’t really follow sport stars on Twitter, but is aware of what they are doing. He has his own style and doew what he feels is right based on guidelines and a path.
- People are made u of energy. Science has proven it.
- Some one dated $50,000 to one of his charities after hearing about his work. He uses social media but he is not always aware of the real world impact of it.
- Harry O’Brien doesn’t care about other players ranting about service they get. O’Brien studied sociology. Just because you’re a sport person and society values that, it doesn’t mean you should be treated special. You should be proactive, not negatively complaining about bad service.
- O’Brien says football is his profession. Football is like the bait, so he can share his message. His football comments are so general that the club doesn’t have a problem with his activities. If the club wanted to use him more for inspiration, good luck to them as motivation should come from with in.
And that’s it. Those are all the presentations.
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These are my notes from the first two presentations.
Ed Wyatt; Journalist, SEN
Ed Wyatt was the first speaker. There were a couple of things I thought were worth noting.
Twenty years ago, the world was not digital but tape and typewriter. (We’ve come a long way in the past 20 years.)
Ed first got involved on Twitter about a year ago in order to help develop a digital media strategy for the South Dragons of the NBL. When the team folded, he changed the name of the account and took the followers with him.
The NBL digital platform limited some of the options available to the South Dragons. This included doing things like podcasts. The platform wasn’t flexible enough for their experimenting.He also showed a video. While I found his talk interesting, I was less impressed with the video as I had seen it, or a variant of it, before. These conferences have people with different skill sets so getting information that you already have isn’t unexpected. It just has its moments of annoying.
Jeramie McPeek; Vice-President of Digital Operations, Phoenix Suns
I probably took more notes for this speaker than any other because he gave a lot of specific examples of things that the team had done. It wasn’t an Australian speaker but he was able to talk about Australian fans of his team. His team’s history might also be interesting to contrast against Australian clubs.
20 years ago, there was no e-mail. People used memos through inter office mail. They also picked up the phone to call some one.
In January 1999, the NBA sent around a memo that said teams have to have a website. The original websites were outsourced. In 200, website management was brought back in house. In 2008, the NBA website was again outsourced to Turner Television, who had taken control of NBA.com. Teams still had control over their own sites.
TV Companion has helped improve during game website traffic for the Suns. It has also helped increase overall impressions and helped sponsors.
The NBA, through Turner Sports, has been good with mobile apps.
The Phoenix Suns are probably the strongest of all teams in the NBA when it comes to video. They were the first to include video on their site in 1997. They were the first to stream a press conference live on their site in 2004. They held the first talk show for their team in 2004. Fans find the behind the scenes video content useful. The club works to provide unprecedented access that that the press does not have.
The Suns had initial fears of putting content on other sites like YouTube. Originally they put content on MySpace and YouTube. In the fall of 2008, the club created their own social network, Planet Organge. The goal was to keep the fan community in house. One of the early purposes of social media was to drive traffic to in house sites.
Phoenix Suns fans from New Zealand and Australia met on the Suns network and did a ten game road trip to watch games at different locations, with the final game being one at home for the Suns. The team loved this and introduced the AU/NZ fans to the gorilla, the team and introduced them at a game.
In the past 18 months, traffic has been down to Planet Orange. This is possibly because the audience has shifted to Facebook.
The Shaq Effect on Twitter: November 2008 was when he got on. The Suns quickly followed suit. They use TwitPic to upload pictures. Fans love this type of inside access. The team also gives away tickets and other content on Twitter. They have used Twitter apps like TwitDraw to hold contests.
Interaction is key to the Phoenix Suns strategy. Social media is not a one way street. The team does random of “orange” where they give away things to their followers. Teams follow strategy is to follow people who say positive things about them.
The Suns have a Twitter roster: 8 players, 30 front office people, head coach, and assistant coach. They are ambassadors. The goal is to use these ambassadors to help build the brand. 150 total people outside the players work for the team and they are trying to get more on Twitter.
Players have not been recruited much to get on Twitter. Rather they got on it themselves in response to what they saw others doing. Players are also big users of text messaging.
Jared Pudley is a player who really does social media. He is on Twitter and uploads videos that appear on his stream. He does 10 second clips that give additional behind the scenes insight that fans like.
The NBA is up to 2 million followers on Twitter.
The Phoenix Suns took over the fan page on Facebook as originally it was run by a fan. They did this because they didn’t feel like they had a choice as they wanted to provide the best content for their fans. They gave the fan a lot of free stuff in exchange for the page. Unlike some teams, they did not pay the fan to run it for them. There was no drama involved in taking it over.
The Suns use Facebook like they use Twitter. They update less on Facebook because there is a different culture. They also find that they get more negative comments on Facebook than they do on Twitter. The Suns try not to moderate Facebook that much: If fans are respectful and negative, the comment can stay. If it is profane, overly personal and disrespectful, the comment will be deleted.
How do you measure ROI? The Suns are still not sure.
The Suns created their own Facebook application.
In January 2008, the Suns had the first Tweetup in the NBA. 100 people showed up. 250 people showed up to the second one, this when it had a higher price point for tickets.
Facebook night had 300 people show up to it.
All social media events are sponsored, which increases revenue streams for the Suns.
Teams are trying to figure out how to use Foursquare and Gowalla. The New Jersey Nets did a promotion with Gowalla. The Suns don’t have as many checkins as the MCG.
What’s next? The Suns do not know.
The Suns are the only team to have an analytics coordinator. The team also has a DB and e-mail manager.
The teams use demographics from social media sites when talking to sponsors.
Player use of intellectual property has been changing over the years. The NBA has been trying to help players more.
The Suns do not manager players usage of social media. There are guidelines in the NBA for players and teams like how many minutes before and after a game you cannot use social media. Individual teams also have their own guidelines. The Suns rules are based on common sense.I found this talk interesting, especially when contrasted to what I know of the rules and policies for player usage for the Socceroos, Canberra Raiders, Canberra United and Melbourne Victory. It was also interesting to hear how their usage of social media differed from these teams.
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