It’s always easier when the team is winning. The engagement rate goes up, the growth surges, and it seems like every post and piece of content performs.
But, as anyone that works in sports business knows, counting on a winning is not a strategy. Brandon Naidus knows this all too well. Naidus led social media for the Arizona Cardinals and Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL, but ignominiously never experienced a season with a team better than .500. So, yeah, he knows a thing or two about social media strategy without the benefit of a winning team. It’s the challenging times, however, that reveal the roots of why fans care for the team, and how social strategy ultimately comes to down stories.
Naidus learned quickly as he got going in Jacksonville. The Jags weren’t winning a lot, but Naidus knew there were things happening on the field every game giving fans reason to cheer, and the team was in a good position to use social media to augment and frame the story they wanted to tell about a young, talented team on the rise.
“When you have those disappointing seasons, the focus then becomes what are your storylines?,” said Naidus, who noted the Jags had exciting players like wide receivers Allen Hurns and Allen Robinson to go with just-drafted 1st round quarterback Blake Bortles. “It was the story of telling the story of this young team…It was an exciting time in the sense that those guys were putting up big numbers.”
It was a much different story when Naidus got to Arizona – the Cardinals were perennial contenders and weren’t far removed from coming oh-so-close to winning a Super Bowl. They were poised, and picked by many, to make another deep playoff run the season Naidus arrived. But seasons don’t always go as predicted. Losses and injuries piled up, and Naidus and the social media team had to scramble a bit out of the pocket.
“So people were kind of (saying) their window is closed, so the optimism was definitely down,” he said as the team began to fall short of the preseason positive expectations. “It’s – ‘What are people talking about that we can talk about?’ 2016 it was [running back] David Johnson, 2017 it was [linebacker] Chandler Jones.
Most sports biz pros will agree that even the angriest, loudest fan base is better than a silent one. And Naidus noted that the fans were indeed vocal, but not all positive. So, he had to be savvy when activating storylines on social. You still work for the team and want to portray your players and team in the best light possible, because those are the players you work with every day on content, too.
“Obviously, there are other things they’re talking about that we’re not going to talk about” he explained. “…I always try to lean toward being as positive as possible, because you always have to have those relationships within the organization…”
Every season will have its winning teams and its losing teams, its pleasant surprise teams and those that disappoint. The playing field is further affected by varying sizes, budget, and overall resources for social media teams. But most coaches will tell you that you have to worry about your own team first, to get the most out of your players, resources, and stories. And that’s how Naidus approached social media strategy with his clubs, executing a successful game plan that fit their teams, their goals, and their fans. It’s your team’s story to own, to tell, and to craft the best way you can.
“I think the best thing you can use analytics for is how to implement in your own strategy rather than comparing yourself to everybody else…” said Naidus. “I think every team has different objectives and different resources [which can skew comparing with other teams, even more so when team performance is accounted for].”
Every team enters the season with plans to go 16-0 and then make a run to the Super Bowl, right? But, for the love of David Tyree, no team has yet completed that goal. So the only thing we can count on is our ability to find and craft stories worth telling. That transcends wins and losses.
Digital and Social Media Sports 