We’ve never had more idle time. The quarantines and sheltering has caused social media usage and messaging to increase massively in the recent months amidst the pandemic. Meanwhile, sports teams, leagues, and media brands have exhibited incredible creativity, devising new ways to engage their fans and get them to interact with content and interact with each other. But while many users are eager — using platforms more than they ever have, maybe for the first time in ages, and trying new features and new apps — it’s important to not take for granted that all those fans know what to do with a Snap code or Instagram effect or find your Instagram Live. If we can make fans better at social media, if we can help them do more of what they want to do — create cool posts and messages, while being a fan of the team – we can unlock a ton of value. And unleash a ton of fangelists into the field.
That integral importance of social media in the absence of sports means that activating fans is key to keeping fans engaged during this tough time. So many of us are stuck at home and scrolling our feeds yearning for the sports and sports stories that keep us engaged with our favorite leagues, teams, and players 24/7/365. It’s why now is the time to empower and educate fans on how to use social media to keep the power of sports alive, even in their absence.
This is a call to treat educating and empowering fans on social media as an imperative. What does this mean?
Fans are still fans, but without games and storylines to argue about, it’s harder to activate one’s fandom. Furthermore, people in general, many confined to their homes, are desperate for human connection and for something to post about on social media or message their friends and family. How can sports teams and brands help this?
Become a resource for your fans when it comes to social media, become their coach and their enabler to manifest their fandom while giving them an ‘excuse’ to post or create something on social media! This can take several forms:
- Think like a teacher. Teachers have resources, they have lesson plans, and they create assignments and projects. Think about the spectrum of social media users among your fans — there are some who may have never posted before, some that want to become more of a master, and some that want opportunities to showcase their skills. Create the 101 content for the relative newbies and show them (with videos, with screenshots, with articles) how to do things like:
- Post an Instagram story and use your team’s stickers
- Subscribe to your YouTube channel
- Create a great TikTok
- Use the filters and effects on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat
- Find your team GIFs when posting to Twitter and even when texting or messaging privately in iMessage and WhatsApp
- How to use hashtags and why
- How to use lists (and even help them follow your players with a List on Twitter, for example)
- As noted, teachers also assign projects to give students an opportunity to practice the knowledge they learn. Teams can do the same! As you teach your fans, give them opportunities to put those skills to use! Create contests or sweepstakes that involve using your IG filter or GIF sticker, or to participate in a TikTok challenge, to post a photo or video of an in-game experience, and much more!
- Give fans an excuse to post. Fans are eager and anxious to share content, but they often need a reason to do so. Once you educate, then empower and mobilize them! Brainstorm clever and unique UGC contests — as simple as submitting a pic of them at a game and advancing to best use of your filter, making a meme, or using your stickers. Or try to find your star students and talented fans by having them submit an edit of a photo or recreate a photo, play or trick.
- Empower fans to connect. One of the most important parts of sports is community and shared experience. Without the live experience of a game or watch party, fans can be anxious to recreate that feeling of connection. Teams can create ways to help fans connect with each other while we all wait for games to come back.
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- Find the niche communities within your fans (gamers, families, diehards, X’s and O’s nuts, super fans of ‘x’ player, trivia buffs, fans from ‘x’ country, fans that also play the sport, etc.)
- Create opportunities for shared experiences. That could be ‘watch parties’ online with classic games, a gaming or trivia tournament, a fan pen pal program, or many more fun ideas. When fans can virtually communicate, congregate, or even digitally ‘high-five,’ some sense of that community is created that will keep fans together during this time.
- Create conversation among fans. Think like a barbershop and bring up those fun debates that fans can go back and forth on, whether related to the team or the sport. It’s clear that nostalgia has value here, too.
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- Help fans become storytellers. Your fans are full of personality and incredible stories of their experiences with the team. Leverage and activate those stories! Ask fans for their memorable player encounters, their first memories of going to a game, about the relationships they formed over the years via their fandom, their crazy traditions and trinkets, and much more. Then, don’t just retweet them, but enhance and activate them.
In this uneasy, uncertain time in which fans have little to connect to and to stoke the fires of their fandom, it is so important to embrace social media more than ever. The ones that play offense and seek to put their fans into position to succeed will come out of this better than ever. It can start today. It has to.
A couple great examples here from from Bleacher Report
Bleacher Report continues to find new ways to engage fans on each platform.
Their latest IG Story fun. This is original and creative. And also perfect for the right sponsor. #smsports pic.twitter.com/p3chy3eyzp
— Neil Horowitz (@njh287) May 14, 2020
Probably one of the best uses of Instagram Stories I’ve seen from #smsports in a while.
Terrific use of the giphy feature on Instagram.
I’ll also note it was way harder than I expected. 😅 pic.twitter.com/JIo4CJlArD
— Jeff Mason (@JeffWMason) May 3, 2020
Digital and Social Media Sports 