Re-telling a story I told during my time with the Anaheim Ducks in Fall 2012…
Fans on social media are willing and potential “Brand Ambassadors” and they are superfans who want to help spread your message and brand so utilize them! Here’s an anecdote from Wednesday night –
1) Using Twitter Search to find hockey and/or team-related tweets within a stipulated radius of our arena, I located a fan tweeting [with a few of our superfans we follow no less] about ‘choosing’ a SoCal hockey team.
2) Followed potential fan from team account
3) Replied to potential fan with comment and link to one of our pages highlighting our Social Media friendliness/aptitude.
4) Fan noted the following and reply and superfans chimed in touting the team’s general awesomeness
5) Fan follows us, begins using multiple team-related hash tags, tweets he now loves this team, and, since the team account began following him, I was able to see him make plans to attend a game or two and make a trip to the Team Store to buy a bunch of team merch.
Don’t underestimate the power of social media and your superfans wanting to spread the word. These exchanges can be amplified on social and encouraged, whether they’re happening in a cyber or physical environment. Active listening + empowering and enlisting and engaging brand ambassadors + showing fans you care/value them matters and can lead to direct $$ through merchandise, game attendance and, even better, getting a fan on the first rung of the fanhood scale, on their way to becoming a superfan too!
Posted by Neil Horowitz
