sport & leisure industry - session 9 - social media

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media Marketing

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - Objectives

1. To understand what social media is and the types of social media in existence.

2. To understand the opportunities they present to us as marketers.

3. How to take advantage of the opportunities social media present us.

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - What

Traditional media are static, one-way, broadcast technologies.

Social media, or new media, technologies are two-way.

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - What

1. Blogs

2. Microblogs (Twitter)

3. Social Networks (Facebook, LinkedIn)

4. Media Sharing Sites (Flickr, YouTube)

5. Social Bookmarking and Voting Sites (Digg, Reddit)

6. Review Sites (Yelp)

7. Forums

8. Virtual World (Second Life)

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - Why

Social media has leveled the playing field.

Previously the marketing budget, as much as anything, defined a promotions scope.

Now, it’s content, customer engagement and creativity/relevance that matter; not necessarily budget.

Small brands can make big names for themselves.


- Customer contact point.

- Conversation, not a promotion.

- Part of the relationship.

- Easy to identify prosumers.

- Specific, targeted marketing.

- Know what people are saying about you. Good and bad!

- Placeless.

- Opportunity to express visual and verbal identity.

- People get to know ‘who you are’ to a much deeper degree.

- Add (hopefully!) perceived value through positive brand equity.


Trust

Recommendations from people known 90%

TV 62%

Newspaper 61%

Magazines 59%

Online banner ads 33%

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media

1. Blogs

2. Microblogs (Twitter)

3. Social Networks (Facebook, LinkedIn)

4. Media Sharing Sites (Flickr, YouTube)

5. Social Bookmarking and Voting Sites (Digg, Reddit)

6. Review Sites (Yelp)

7. Forums

8. Virtual World (Second Life)

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - Blogs

A type of CMS (Content Management System) that makes it easy for anyone to publish articles.

‘Bloggers’ publish, generally, short articles and every organisation should have one!

They speak about current trends or exiting occurrences in the industry in question.

They are often conversational in tone.

Comments sections, Blogroll and like/twitter buttons make them two-way.

A company blog should speak to it’s consumers as real people; they’re not the place for corporate jargon or ‘employee speak’.

The most popular blog posts are often lists, how-to’s and posts about controversies.

55% more website traffic for brands who blog - http://blog.adidas-group.com/

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media – Twitter / Microblogging

A limited size blog. E,g Twitter with its 140 character limit.

Used to promote blog posts, products and services. To share industry info, to converse with customers and to keep them up to date with what you’re doing with them and for them.

The more ‘followers’ an account can gather on twitter, the greater their message will reach.

Accounts with handles without _’s attract 15% more followers.

Accounts without numbers attract 35% more followers.


All tweets, avavtars, bio’s and backgrounds should conform to your brands visual and verbal identity - https://twitter.com/adidas & http://www.adidas.co.uk/

The avater for an organisations account should be their logo. It’s recongisable!

The account’s Bio has 160 characters available to tell the world who you are. Use key terms. Buzz words.

Accounts with bio’s have more followers than those without.

Bio’s with emoticons in them have less followers.

https://twitter.com/adidas

http://www.adidas.co.uk/


Retweets increase the scope of a tweet & your brand. Asking for them (Please RT) helps by 5.5%. Don’t ask all the time though – it’s annoying and seems needy!

RT’s occur more often between 11am and 6pm.

Most RT’s contain a link. (Practical value!)

Talking about yourself (your brand) won’t get you many retweets – use the 80/20 rule.

You’ve only got 140 charatecrs to play with so shorten URL’s using TinyURL, Bit.ly or Ow.ly

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media – Social Networking

Places where people connect with friends. Offline friends and online only.

Facebook & LinkedIn dominate.

As an organisation ‘add’ people who use ‘groups’ that show their interest in your industry. Then your updates appear in their news feed.

A picture says a thousand words! Get others to take photos of your product in use or photos of themselves enjoying your events.

Running an event? Then set up an online event. Invite people to it who you’ve identified as being interested.

Don’t just repeat things from your website on social networks. Customers should feel it’s personal to them when reading your status updates.

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media – Media SharingAllows you to create and upload multimedia content. Sometimes called UGC (User generated content.)

These have the potential to become your brands own (very, very cheap) TV channel or photo gallery.

Make sure they follow the visual and verbal identity of your brand.

Have a conversation. Encourage comebacks, thoughts or similar videos/photos (Organic content).

Use lots of tags and fill your contents headline with buzzwords and key terms.

Ensure the thumbnail is appropriate and your content is open-license.

Video’s 2-3 mins in length have a spike in sharing. Video’s beyond four minutes are five times more likely to be shared. Why do you think this is?

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media – Social Bookmarking & Voting

Users submit and vote on content. Links, video’s, pictures, etc.

Digg and Reddit are the most popular.

Getting voted ‘up’ puts your content higher up the rankings, exposes your brand and drives traffic to your website = potential sales!

You need to submit content to these sites – this doesn’t happen automatically. You need people to do it for you. It is frowned upon by users to submit your own content. So, on your website or company blog add links for your readers to upload your content to Reddit, Digg, etc.

Fill your headline with buzzwords, and key terms and ensure your content is great, otherwise it will get voted ‘down’!

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media – Social Bookmarking & Voting

Upload your content 22 hours before you want it to be popular.

Reciprocity is rife.

Lists (top tens etc) are always popular! As is breaking news and links to browser games.

Amazon reviews and similar are in this category. They are two-way remember. Yelp is one of the world leading review sites. Aid your reputation by responding to reviews in an appropriate manner.

Small local businesses rely on review sites for their word of mouth.

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - Forums

The oldest form of social media. Forums are the new form of community message board.

They’re great because they are often niche and you can find the ones which your potential customers inhabit quite easily.

Users talk about a certain topic of interest. In a linear, conversational style.

Users are often wary of those plugging products and dislike advertising on their forum from members.

Join as an expert and offer advice. Don’t peddle your product or service; they won’t like that!

‘Lurking’ offers a great way to get to know your target market.

Integrate into the community. Don’t be a ‘hit and run’ poster.

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - Advice

- Monitoring social media

- Responding on social media

- Social media campaigns vs Ongoing strategy

- Integration

We’ll address:


Monitoring

- Followers, likes, RT’s etc are easy to monitor – you know how your doing in that department. Be more in depth though – look out for spikes in likes after certain posts. Then use that tactic again. Look for which type of Tweets get you the most RT’s. Which posts/tweets get the most clicks (CTR).

- Google is great – analytics (Where from & bouncing or sticking?) & alerts (For you and your competitors brand and products).

- Which blog posts were ‘up’ voted?

- Search for your organisation, your brand and your products on ALL social media. Do this for your competitors as well.

- Think of social media as the world biggest and best focus group.

- Monitor using Klout.


Responding

- When you identify a conversation about your brand/product you must decide whether to join in.

- If it’s a negative conversation err on the side of joining in, but be sure that your presence in the conversation doesn’t draw unnecessary attention to the negative comment.

- Don’t get defensive or angry with the customer. Their experience is their experience; it’s how you deal with them from here on that determines their intangible beliefs about your brand.

- Respond in kind (Tweet to tweet. Video to video. Post to post.)

- Dominoes response: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-gvs2Y2368


Campaigns vs Ongoing Strategy

- Strategy and campaigns are different.

- Your Social Media Strategy is the things you are doing all the time. E.g. Blogging, tweeting, lurking/posting on forums, etc. Every organisation doesn’t do all of these. This is building your brand every day.

- Campaigns are seasonal or timely events that look to create a buzz/website hits/sales related to a certain product or event.


Integration

- Link all of your accounts together.

- Someone on your company website needs to easily find you on Twitter, Facebook, G+, YouTube, your blog, etc. If it isn’t easy they won’t do it.

- Make sure there are direct links to your website in all of your online bio’s.

- Make sure your blog posts have links for readers to tweet them, post them to facebook, or vote them ‘up’ on Reddit or Digg.

- Again, make sure EVERYTHING is integrated into your brands visual and verbal identity. Social media sites offer a good level of customisation – use it!

- NBA: https://twitter.com/NBA & http://www.youtube.com/user/NBA

https://twitter.com/NBA

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media – STEPPS

Remember, if you’re posting anything online it’s got a better chance of being shared if it includes one or more of these:

STEPPS

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Social CurrencyTriggersEmotionPublicPractical ValueStories

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - Objectives

1. To understand what social media is and the types of social media in existence.

2. To understand the opportunities they present to us as marketers.

3. How to take advantage of the opportunities social media present us.

Sport & Leisure IndustrySocial Media - NSS

Unit code: SPO 028-1

sport & leisure industry - session 9 - social media

Documents

leisure industrysocial

media sharing

social media

social networks

social bookmarking

voting sites

blog posts

review sites