Bit of bad news…Social Media doesn’t scale. If you are successful company then you will have more customers than staff. Social media in its purest form should facilitate people to people communications and that means talking to your customers on a regular basis, so you don’t need a degree in mathematics to work out the disparity!

Jeremiah Owyang writes an excellent post on the process to create a customer advocacy program which can extend the available resources for companies active in social media. Coca Cola’s Facebook Fan Page is still run by two fans, BMW have just taken control of a Fan page set up by a fan (now with over 1m fans) and will now use it for customer engagement, so there is evidence of customers taking on the role of brand ambassador and organizing like minded individuals around consumer brands.

This applies to all organizations but I think is particularly apt for sports and entertainment brands, as for them the volume of interest and interaction is magnified. For example, Man Utd have about 600m fans worldwide…even smaller sports brands will have hundreds of thousands fans who are all potential customers and active participants on the official social channels.

What is their biggest asset can also be their undoing in social media. They have armies of people gagging to talk to them and wanting their content. This is great news but creates a massive issue if you are going to engage with them on a regular basis. The answer is…use them. Empower them. Consumer brands would pay a King’s ransom to have such loyal customers and sports brands can create advocacy programs much easier than their counterparts. Here are some simple steps to go about it

Find the influential voices in the community

They will already be active on the forums, unofficial networks and supporters’ club groups. Spend some time in these communities and see who looks like a good ‘signing’!

Bring them into the organization

Empower them. You won’t need to remunerate them…they love your brand and the value they will get is not a financial one. The ‘badge value’ they will attribute will, in most cases, be all the reward they need.

Let go of control

To make social communications scale, brands have to comfortable with customers doing their job for them. Make sure you have vetted them and they have signed up to the clubs’ social media policy (create one if you haven’t already) but the more freedom you give them, and others in the community to take the brand message and spread it in their own way…the better.

Run competitions

Once the brand advocacy program has got some legs, you can increase the activity and look for the next club Facebook admin, team tweeter, message board admin. By making this a competition you will be increasing engagement with the community.

Let the community self support

Apple’s support community is almost entirely self-supported. No one gets paid for moderating Wikipedia. People on the web like to contribute to projects which mean something to them. Sports fans will be up for this, so with regular content from the official sources coupled with an army of brand ambassadors…all of sudden you can have a social media ‘team’. Sure, they will need to be managed, but it is going to be a far more efficient use of your available resources.

What examples do you have of brand advocacy programs being successful. What do you think some barriers to this working might be? Would love to hear from you….

Last week I sat on a panel at the Social Media & Sport Summit in London. With my fellow panelists, we (hopefully) covered off some of the  strategy and planning questions that sports organizations should have a look at before choosing which social platforms to use. The keynotes were all delivered extremely well and there were some valuable case studies from the likes of Liverpool FC, Lotus Formula 1 team and Adam Vincenzini finished the day off with an indepth look at how the NBA have established themselves at the top of the tree in terms of fan engagement through social media. You can check out some of the presentations here .

Looking specifically at the case studies from the teams, Liverpool FC and Lotus F1, it was evident that some basic business rules had been applied that other organizations could certainly learn from when starting out in social media.

Objective #1 should be to engage with the fans (or customers)

There are loads of opportunities for sports teams in social media and the specific KPI’s over time may well be focused on selling more merchandise or offering deals and promotions but the underlying motivation for being active on social platforms should be to bring the club, team or organization closer to the customers – the fans. Without them, there won’t be a team. Liverpool know the value of their fans and Lotus know what its like to start from scratch with no fans! Both of them have realized that the fans are their biggest asset.

Think like a fan

Both Matt Owen from Liverpool and Tom Webb at Lotus are fans of their team…and that makes it a hell of a lot easier to come up with programs which other fans will buy into. Obviously not everyone in an organization is a fan of the brand or team, but putting yourself in your customers shoes at the strategy phase and asking “what do our fans or customers want” and “how can we improve our service to them” will set you on the right track.

Don’t marry a tool

Well, that’s just good advice, full stop! Seriously though, it’s a common mistake that many organistaions make with social media, when they decide all their communications will go through just Twitter, or just Facebook. That is focusing on the technology not the communications, and in most (major) sports teams’ cases they need to engage in more than one place. Their fans are diverse individuals brought together around a context (the team) but they will hang out in the myriad of social platforms available…so fish where the fish are.

Engage

Don’t just pay lip service to engagement…actually do it! Talk to the fans, answer their questions, raise them up on your platform so their voice is heard and amplifies the official team’s communications. There is no quick win here unfortunately and it will take man hours to pull it off but the authentic chat from both Liverpool and Lotus that undoubtedly makes the fans feel like they are part of the inner workings of the team is worth its weight in gold from a brand advocacy perspective.

If you can’t get your fans to engage with you on social media…you’ve got real problems!

That was a (rough) quote from Matt Owen at Liverpool FC and its a gem! I have to agree, sports teams are at a huge advantage over consumer brands when it comes to social media, they really want to hear from the team, be involved, be heard, get exclusive content and share the content. With such a willing pool of potential brand ambassadors, the onus is really on the teams to start putting the leg work in to get the most reward out of their social programs…and the rewards are certainly within reach.

Please share any other lessons you have learned about building successful social programs, for sports teams or any other brands, in the comments.

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at the inaugral Social Media & Sport Summit in Nottingham. It was a positive half day event looking to address some of the barriers that face sporting organisations looking to use social media for their communications. Following on from that, the UK Sports Network are bringing the event to London and running a full day’s event this Thursday. Some details from UK Sports Network…

Social Media: Maximising Opportunity & Managing Risk

Liverpool FC, Lotus Racing, Marzell Consulting, Paratus Communications, Spearfish Labs, DM Media Consulting, Field Fisher Waterhouse, We Win Games and  #TruEvents are all speaking at this fantastic event.  This is the 2nd Summit to be held after the success in Nottingham on the 1st July which has been described as “one of best social media events I’ve ever been to…and I’ve been to lots!”.

With such a strong speaker line this is great opportunity for agencies, clubs, associations, leagues and anyone else with a business interest in how social media can work in sport.

Liverpool FC has over 1.5m Facebook ‘likes’ and 83,000 Twitter followers, Lotus are famous for building their brand online as a new team in Formula 1 especially on Twitter, the NBA will be profiled as one of the best examples of sport using social media to its full potential.  We will also be looking at the strategy and thinking that needs to go into the planning of social media, as any communications or business strategy does.

There are of course the legal implications of becoming involved in the field, we will be trying de-mystify some of these with the help of the experts from Field Fisher Waterhouse.  There will be ample opportunity to network and discuss how it will affect your business throughout the day.  We aim to involve you as much as possible through out the day and it not be just one way communication.

Details:

Date: Thursday, July 15th 2010

Time: 9.30am Registration – 6:30 pm End of Networking

Location: Field Fisher Waterhouse, 35 Vine Street, London

Press Passes: A limited number of press passes will be granted. Please apply here for press credentials

Includes: Full day conference, light breakfast, Mezze lunch, snacks/beverages all day, Wine/beer/soft drinks networking hour

You can still register for the event here . If you are going to be there, come and say Hi. Look forward to seeing you there.

The World Cup in South Africa has dominated the airwaves (social and traditional) for the past month and much of the recent conversation has been around the ‘ambush marketing’ tactics we have seen from non official sponsors like Nike and Pepsi and how they stole a march on their official sponsor competitors, Adidas and Coca-Cola. While the balance seems to have now been addressed it was interesting to see how the media landscape has shifted in the last four years (since the last tournament) to such an extent that sponsorship of a major event is no longer enough, on its own, to command the lions’ share of audience attention and WOM.

This is the first World Cup that we have had established, organized social media channels  and they have moved the goalposts in terms of what is needed to be covered in corporate marketing mixes to own the airwaves and conversations between fans. Sponsorship used to be all you needed to do to ‘own’ the conversation and dominate WOM. You now need a fully integrated program that covers all the channels and that includes social media along with TV, offline and exposure in the stadiums.

Nike showed, with their ‘write the future’ video, that you don’t need to be a sponsor to create viral content around a context and get the same or increased return…plus they bought well placed 30 sec ad slots in the key games encouraging viewers to head online to see the full version. In contrast, Adidas focused far more on social media at the expense of heavy TV ads…and this may be why Nike were able to steal the jump on them so early in the tournament.

Commercial partners of sporting events, or any other event for that matter need to cover all the bases. Use the exclusive relationship they have with the event to generate exclusive content that they can give to their online audience as well as realizing the traditional channels should not be ignored but rather weaved into the overall communication strategy. Being a major sponsor for an event is a huge advantage and one that can provide significant value over the competition…but it isn’t enough on its own anymore.

Last week I spoke at the social media and sports summit in Nottingham organized by the UK Sports Network. The name of the half day conference was ‘Breaking down the barriers’ as many in the UK sports industry are still tentatively feeling their way into social media. Keeping with the same theme, here are five of the barriers I have encountered when talking with sports clubs, but they apply to any organizations that are new to social media.

1. Too much hype

It is getting very hard to ignore the social media bandwagon. Each day brands and organizations are being bombarded with stats showing that Facebook now has more users than there are stars in the sky, businesses are making millions of pounds through Twitter and more people are watching YouTube than TV. The result has been many organizations jumping on the bandwagon without doing the necessary planning to work out how social media can help the overall business . It is easy to see the opportunities with social media and sales and marketing teams are always going to jump on these, but taking a step back, developing a clear strategy for social to: help sell more stuff, create better dialogue with the customers or improve the service will be far more valuable in the long run.

2. Social media is mislabeled

The boss still thinks social media is something his teenage daughter wastes her time on when she should be studying! Sound familiar? I think social media is currently mislabeled and (hopefully) will eventually become another channel that businesses use to connect with their customers. Businesses need agencies and consultants to come to them with business or communication strategies and programs that use social technologies to deliver better customer experiences, not social media campaigns. While it is seen as an independent program, it will be treated with skepticism by those who haven’t grown up with the new social tools.

3. Shiny object syndrome

This ties in the with hype problem. All we hear from the ‘mainstream media’ is the tools – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Foursquare and the phenomenal growth they are enjoying. This leads to organisations and brands focusing on developing strategies based around the technology, when they might not be the most effective channel to the customer. Organisations need to do their research on their customers and find out which networks their customers use, how they use them, what content they like producing and sharing and who is influential. Once they have this knowledge and have done some internal planning on what resources they have, then they can choose the technology platform(s) which best suit their needs. Also, be wary about marrying your communications to one channel. As we have seen with MySpace, Bebo and Friendster, the network of the moment can quickly shed users or change focus.

4. Culture

The biggest barrier to adoption at the moment is for businesses to become more social.  For centuries, business has been used to communications being a one way street and companies have constructed their internal processes accordingly. Successful social media adoption means a cultural shift away from controlling messages and staff communications and letting go of some of the notions that shaped the media landscape – brand identity, press releases, corporate policies. Yes, it sounds scary and yes, new processes and technology need to be used to help it scale but organizations need to buy in to the reality that customers are going to dictate how and what they want to buy and the type of service that is necessary for them to become a brand advocate and spread positive WOM. Once that sinks in, then social needs to be integrated from the top down or bottom up (depending where the spark happens!).

5. Confusion over measurement

There are no universal metrics for measuring social media yet, and there might never be. Measurement of social programs has to be in context to the individual business, it is not as simple as impressions and clicks. What equals success for one company might not for the next and that makes universal metrics very hard to establish. However, if you have done your planning and know what your business objectives (sales, foster dialogue, increase customer engagement, gain market intelligence) are, then you can track these metrics and work out what equals success for your business.

There also seems to be confusion over ROI. This could be a post in itself, but if you are confused about ROI of social media then check out this presentation by Olivier Blanchard. He explains it better than I ever could!

What have I missed? What other barriers have you experienced to social media adoption? I’d love to hear your thoughts…

We usually look at how sports teams and organizations can use new technology to provide a better user experience for the fans and although it is all still very new, the take up in the last six months has been positive. Technology can enhance the experience, augment the feeling of connectedness, give fans access to wider and richer volume of content.So, why oh why does the most popular sport on the plant leave itself open to ridicule by being the only major sport that does not use technology in the GAME ITSELF!!

This is not a sour grapes post because England were denied a second goal at a crucial time in their game with Germany, it actually would have been a travesty if England had drawn level in that game…they were that bad! But, during the course of an otherwise awesome World Cup, it has happened to the USA, Italy and Mexico .

What we are debating here is whether we should get important, game changing decisions right . You can throw in all types of hurdles like, where do we restart the game from? How far back does the replay go? We need to implement it in all levels of the game? Answers to that are, I don’t care and stop being stupid! We are talking about getting key decisions in a game right or wrong and, up until now, FIFA have been ok with getting it wrong. Thankfully Sepp Blatter has said he will look at this again, and this morning seems to be taking it a step further .

One quote which stood out was “Naturally we deplore when you see the evidence of refereeing mistakes,” …well wouldn’t replays and goaline technology eliminate that completely? You won’t get referees making important mistakes if they can simply ‘go upstairs’ and get it checked. Plus it will get rid of the ugly scenes of players surrounding and verbally destroying the ref when they think a decision has unfairly gone against them. What’s to argue about if the ref can simply say “I’m going to check with the video ref…get out of my face”?

We aren’t even talking about the need for goal line technology, which admittedly can be expensive to implement in professional leagues, we are talking about replays, the same as Rugby and American Football. We have had replays for decades! We actually got an example of how it could work in the Mexico game when inadvertently, the replay of Carols Tevez’ clearly offside goal, was replayed to the whole stadium…and the official’s had to stick with their decision! This is seriously amateur outlook for supposedly the most professional game we have.

Minor rant over! As you were…

This is a guest post by Anthony Alsop. Anthony is a blogger and consultant at sportspiel.com.au. He has worked previously in both the IT and Sport sectors. Anthony is from Melbourne, Australia was was recently named the sporting capital of the world and he has consulted with sporting organisations both in Australia and in the United States. You can find him on Twitter @anthonyalsop or via email anthony@sportspiel.com.au

Since social media started to gain popularity in sports around 2008, we have seen the same question asked to leagues and teams “Do you have a social media policy for your players?”.  Do teams tell players what they can and can’t tweet?  Until now, we weren’t really sure.

There  has been players fined for criticising the catering of training camp, and last years NBA and NFL guidelines on when players can tweet, but never have we seen a policy on what to tweet.  Taken from this Mashable article, New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis tells us how the Jets handle it with their players:

There are certain things both the NFL and the Jets try and prep you on with how to use Twitter.  Some people still say whatever they want and that gets you in trouble sometimes … There’s also some people just don’t want to interact with fans and at first I wasn’t even on Twitter.  But I started seeing how it was progressing and people were showing it to me so I got into it.  I was missing out.

Thanks to John Shumate @JSHU06 we found out one way the Jets try to implement a policy with their players.

It’s interesting to note that their first point is “Verify Your Account”, as their own star quarterback Mark Sanchez is on Twitter, and he has not been verified. It’s easier said than done to get an account verified as Twitter are notoriously picky as to who they verify and there is no public knowledge as to how they truly give out verified accounts.

With 9 boxes on the wall and titles like “Do It”, “Do Not”, “Great Tweets” and others, the Jets are laying out simple and effective guidelines for their players to follow.

What do you think they might be saying?

• UK Sports Network set to host Social Media & Sport Summit at Notts County FC on Thursday 1^st July
• Sports specialists from Nottingham area meet to discuss social media in sport and to exchange thoughts on a wide range of sports

Notts County’s Meadow Lane ground will host the first ever Social Media & Sport Summit in Nottingham next month.

The oldest football league club in the world hosts the half day event on Thursday 1 July from 8.30am and is open to anyone involved in or interested in the business of sport and social media for just £50.

The event brings together speakers from leading Nottingham PR agency Macesport, international sports governing body UK Athletics, regional sports body England Athletics and cutting edge social media agencies Made By Fudge and Spearfish Labs.

Presentations and discussions on strategy, case studies and some of the obstacles being faced will take place.  Macesport will be giving an insight into their work with Derby County midfielder Robbie Savage and his venture into using Twitter during the last season.

UK Athletics and England Athletics will be giving a joint presentation on the role of their shared Social Media Officer and how the challenges they faced to get to this point.  Agency ‘Fudge’ will be showcasing their work with England Squash & Racketball and look at why governing bodies have been so reluctant to take the plunge into social media.

“The Social Media & Sport Summit in Nottingham is a great opportunity for those involved in the business of sport to find out more about social media in sport with some great case studies and lessons from some of the region’s most influential and successful practitioners,” explains UKSN founder Daniel McLaren.

“The UK is playing catch up when it comes to utilising the best in social media and our aim is to help everyone achieve their aims by developing a unified online presence and openly helping each other move forward to make the UK sports community one of the most progressive, most interactive and most envied in the world.”

The UK Sports Network was founded by sports enthusiast Daniel McLaren in November 2009 and has seen its member numbers swell to over 1,000 across the UK and Europe in just six months.

Tapping into the social networking media phenomena of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, the UK Sports Network has grown organically since its creation with the addition of an informative and insightful website back in January.

The site, www.theuksportsnetwork.com, contains unrivalled news, views and opinion from some of the country’s leading specialists, including former FA technical director Les Reed, ITV’s football web editor Mark Segal, World Cup specialist Karl Lusbec, Formula 1 PR man Chris Hughes, rising social media expert Ash Read, marketing guru and author Ardi Kolah and Gadget Show producer Alex Armstead.

This is a Guest Post by Chris Hughes. Chris is Head of PR and Communications at Sine Qua Non and has extensive experience in the motorsport arena. You can follow him on Twitter @chrishughespr .

There is an increasingly common misconception about ‘social media’. It is a phenomenon that is still rather loosely interpreted and with sufficient uncertainty surrounding its true meaning to warrant the need by some firms to segregate it into a separate box within its annual marketing and PR plans.

This has led to an influx in recent years of specialist digital PR firms, experts and social media strategists, all of whom are – quite legitimately – finding new business with brands or companies who are not truly au fait with all that social media entails. But sometimes even the most expert of experts cannot fully capitalise on the various social media opportunities that arise hour by hour, day by day.

In Formula 1 circles, there has been a notable increase in the use of Twitter as a communications platform this year, which has been a huge step forward in bringing Formula 1 fans closer to the action on track and behind the scenes. This revolution has been sparked by the need for journalists to satiate the immense hunger of the F1 fanbase who are always after the next morsel by laying claim to the next big story or the most insightful backstage feature.

It has also been helped in no small part by the openness of the new teams and their drivers who have embraced social media unreservedly. While the new teams have adopted social media as their communications tool of choice, it is unlikely that they have a specific strategy on how it should or should not be used. And that is no bad thing. In my own experience of social media, the moment you start to stifle it is the moment you start to go wrong. With anything as open and engaging as, say, Twitter, there comes an unwritten invitation for the public to criticise, to deride and to attack the brand, but in equal measure there is the opportunity to praise, commend and – most importantly – recommend.  Ah, yes, the power of an endorsement.

An excellent example of an organic social media success story in recent weeks was with the tongue-in-cheek GrandPrixDiary.com and German race driver Timo Glock. Below is a brief background to the story and how Glock’s team Virgin Racing used an out-of-the-blue social media opportunity to bolster its own reputation online. GrandPrixDiary looks at the world of F1 from a very sarcastic viewpoint. Its founder has made no qualms about the site’s sincerity, but instead offers a light-hearted and comical look at Formula 1.

When Virgin Racing driver Timo Glock started to use Twitter, there was an overwhelming culinary feel to his content. From a quick coffee to lunch in the motorhome to dinner in a restaurant, Timo would always tweet a photo. GrandPrixDiary pounced on the subject and quickly developed a column called Ready, Steady, Glock! (for those not familiar with the TV show Ready, Steady, Cook! its premise was to challenge chefs to cook a meal from an unknown bag of ingredients in under 20 minutes).

The column reproduced Timo’s Twitter images and presented them as if from his own German recipe book. Cue meals such as ‘Pizza mit der ham und mushrooms und olives’ to ‘Double chocolate cake mit Ice Cream’. After the Turkish GP, GrandPrixDiary challenged Timo (via Twitter) to participate in F1’s first ever online cookery show, Ready Steady Glock, offering Twitter followers the chance to submit recipes for Timo and his girlfriend Isabella to cook during the weekend.

Succumbing to a barrage of online pressure, Timo agreed. In fact from here on in, it was Timo’s own enthusiasm for the challenge that really propelled it forwards. The winning recipe was selected and announced on Twitter through the @grandprixdiary page, as well as through @realtimoglock, with suitable fanfare, and thus the shopping trip was set.

The winning entry, submitted by Kathryn Bird, was Marinated Chicken with Virgin Olive Oil followed by Timo’s Truffle Chocolate Puddings. Timo promised to tweet photos of the shopping trip as well as images from the cooking challenge itself, which he duly did. Credit also to @VirginRacing who recognised the growing stature of this online competition and agreed to supply a prize to the competition winner. The team has agreed to cook the winning recipe in its hospitality area for team members and guests at the weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.

As Rob Sinfield of GrandPrixDiary.com explains: “Ready, Steady, Glock! would not have happened were it not for a combination of Virgin’s laid back style and Timo Glock’s now obvious sense of humour. We never set out to be cruel but we do like to prick the precious F1 bubble. So, referring to Glock as ‘the 5th best German in F1′ and then writing the cookery column in an ‘Allo ‘Allo style could have easily offended him but once he got into the idea it was he that drove it. The photo diary of the day is hilarious, he even decorated the fridge.

Once Virgin saw the fans response they too embraced it. The feedback I have had about Glock has been immense; he has scored a hit here. Now he has turned the tables, organising his own competition via Facebook where I have to cook a meal of HIS choosing with the winning recipe provider getting the cap he wears at the Canadian Grand Prix. A whole lot of fun has been had by all.

F1 must encourage this sort of participation with its fan base.” The outcome has been a hit for all concerned: – The GrandPrixDiary site has a heightened profile with endorsement from Timo Glock and Virgin Racing – Timo Glock has engaged directly with a website who were portraying him in a comical light and turned potentially negative comments into a massive positive – Virgin Racing has used an impromptu social media competition between one of its drivers and a Formula 1 fanbase to derive positives for its team – Formula 1 fans have been able to gain a closer connection to both team and driver via a social media portal and to have a bit of a laugh along the way.

So it doesn’t always need a carefully honed social media strategy to enhance a brand’s reputation online. Sometimes, it just takes a sense of humour and a willingness to engage socially.

The UFC ‘do’ social media as well as any sporting organization in the world. There was a good post from Greg Ferenstein at Techcrunch today explaining that, when the mainstream media were shunning the sport as being too violent or not something they wished to associate with, UFC president, Dana White turned to grass roots, word of mouth and social media to harness a following for his organization and made MMA the fastest growing sport in the World.

You can read more about UFC’s strategies for building their brand on social media here and here . Sure, they partnered up with Digital Royalty who have a good track record when it comes to building fan engagement programs, but the secret (if you can call it that) seems to be two-fold…

1. The CEO is championing social media. This is a huge one as most brands are still looking for the concrete evidence that social media will improve their bottom line before assigning the appropriate resources to make it effective, whereas Dana White is telling the fighters to “Tweet their asses off”

2. The athletes are given the freedom to express themselves and engage with the fans. Again, huge if you want to be successful in social media and the very thing that is scaring the shit out of most mainstream sports. They are terrified of an athlete or employee breaking ranks and going ‘off message’ that may impact their perceived brand. What Dana White has cottoned on to here, is that every one of his fighters that promotes themselves, their fights, MMA, the UFC brand or any sponsors is adding to his marketing clout.

It would be great to see more teams, athletes and CEO’s being as frank with the media and fans as Dana White is in the below video. It is probably an unfair comparison as he is clearly an outgoing, fan centric guy who loves his job and the sport, and they are rare…but it is a good example of what can be done by letting go of control and allowing authentic, un-spun communications with your fans or customers.

Any up and coming, developing sports or organizations should take note!