There is no social media strategy that’ll please everybody. There is no social media strategy that’s perfect for every brand.
It’s easy to get lost in a sea of best practices, adopt tactics that’ll drive any engagement, and try to be everything to everyone. But especially in sports, where dozens of local (though concurrently regional/national/global) brands are all marketing very similar products. They have fans who fell in love with the brand before color TV existed and fans who weren’t alive in a world without Instagram. There are teams with rich histories and those just getting started, some are perennial winners while others seem to be perpetually rebuilding.
Zach Galia has navigated all parts of this challenging world across NASCAR, NFL, and now MLB, and, through it all he’s learned the importance of understanding audience, platforms, and creative, intentional strategy and execution.
It was — relatively — in the beginning. When Galia started his career at Michigan International Speedway, a track that hosts NASCAR races, their goal was to reach, well, demographics and psychographs that basically lined up with Galia himself. So if the content appealed to him personally, that was a good sign that it’d appeal to their target audience. It was largely similar when he started with the Pittsburgh Steelers, a team he’s been a fan of for life. But when he got to Arizona, to lead the Cardinals’ social media, he faced a new challenge.
“I think with the Steelers it was similar to NASCAR. I was marketing to me, like a Steelers fan. I knew the lingo. I knew what the Steelers stood for because I had a lifetime of following along and understanding and knowing the history and knowing the players,” said Galia who was the Steelers’ first full-time social media hire before moving to the Cardinals right after the NFL Draft.
“Going from there to the Cardinals, where I wasn’t a fan and I didn’t know the history, I didn’t know the fan base…I picked up what I was planning to do for the Steelers [during the offseason camps and training] and dropped it in Arizona and said, here’s what we’re going to do. And it didn’t work. It didn’t have the same impact. It wasn’t the same…
“That was the first kind of, Oh, I’m not marketing to me anymore. Like, I need to learn the fan that I am marketing to. Different markets, different teams, different fan bases, you had to learn and figure out what they wanted to see and who they were and what they cared about…”
Galia didn’t grow up a Cardinals fan and didn’t know the Arizona market, nor did he come in on day one with a deeply rooted understanding of the history and brand of the Cardinals. But he learned. And through the process Galia was able to grow his acumen in strategy and social, gaining thoughtful understanding of who they were trying to reach with what messaging and why.
“That was a great exercise to like how social is grown,” said Galia of balancing tactics to reach and engage various fan segments. “You obviously want to do right by those diehard fans, but the more people out there that are talking about the Arizona Cardinals, the better.
“So you want to find casual fans, you want to find Suns fans who are looking for something to do on a Sunday, you want to find NFL fans who are like, Oh, that’s a funny video by the Cardinals, maybe I’ll follow along. So it’s like you want to create content that’s kind of accessible across the board, but also doesn’t — not offend, but it doesn’t patronize your diehard fans. So it’s a much more wide range of content.”
Leaders like Galia can (and do) research and learn about fan bases and teams over time, just as any marketer does for their respective brand and industry. But in an increasingly diverse and fragmented cultural and media landscape, with trends, tactics, and platforms that evolve so rapidly, it sure helps to have a diverse team that can contribute perspectives and help keep up with it all. Galia is smart and humble enough to know that it’s more effective and efficient to help others help him than to dictate with omniscience and omnipotence. So as Millennials gave way to Gen Z for that ‘young’ demo, Galia worked to empower and entrust his team to keep up with the kids.
“It started with me marketing to me, but now I’m 38 years old and I need to make videos for 16-year-olds on TikTok to make them interested in the Pirates,” said Galia, recalling the difference in perspective as he progressed through his career and the years passed. “That’s clearly not marketing to me anymore.
“So how do you do that? How do you empower your team, the people on your team that are closer to that age group to do that?… You have to build that trust with the people on your team because [they’re] going to know so much more about who we should be talking to in that age group than I do…So it’s always great to have people like that, and I have them on my team now, where it’s like, tell me what’s cool, and if you think it’s right, let’s go with it and let’s see what happens.”
Understanding the platforms and cultural zeitgeist unique to fan segments and demographics is but a piece of the pie, however. The NFL has 32 teams with 32 distinct brands and fan bases. The shift from a historic organization like the Steelers, for which fans across generations can close their eyes and see NFL Films montages of 1970s glory, to the Cardinals, which has only been in Arizona since the late ’80s and lacks a similar legacy, is a good illustration of the diversity across the league. The same cross-team distinctiveness prevails in most sports leagues around the world. For every Hollywood LA Lakers, there’s a grit and grind Memphis Grizzlies — and a plethora of others. The way fans look at their teams, and experience the seasons, aren’t just for media-driven narratives and social media debates — it affects how teams present themselves and market to their fans. Galia articulated this insight and described how it played out for him at the teams where he worked.
“I think you go back to the Browns when they were just awful, like 0-17, but [former Browns Social Media Manager] Allie Raymond, one of the best in this business with the Chargers now, everything they did was amazing. They had this lovable loser persona, and it just took on a mind of its own,” said Galia, who has had experience with winning and losing teams alike. “Whether you like the [Browns] or not, you loved their content and who they were. That wouldn’t work with the Pirates or with the Steelers, because the fan base is not going to be humorous about losing and performance like that. So it’s knowing and understanding and learning that.
“Same with the Cardinals,” Galia continued. “Like, you couldn’t be the lovable losers with the Cardinals because if the team wasn’t good, people had other things going on [and] just didn’t care. They would go to Suns games, they would watch the D-backs; like, it wasn’t a big deal. Whereas Pittsburgh, for better or worse, our fans care like crazy and they will let you know when you’re not doing well or when you are doing well and you’re still not doing well enough. Like, Pittsburgh fans care. The Cardinals fans, when they weren’t good, it was like, Oh, just let us know when you’re good and we’ll follow along again. So there are little kind of things that you have to learn, and the only way to learn is to be a part of it…
“So you can’t just be tone-deaf and be like, Oh, well, here’s a bunch of memes and it’s really funny because we’re losing and other teams do it so our fans will like it too. I don’t know if that’s the case.”
After spending the first several years of his career in the NFL, Galia made the move to Major League Baseball, going back home to the Pittsburgh Pirates — and going from 16 or 17 regular-season games to about 10x as much in baseball. So while a big win or a big loss in the NFL can color an entire ensuing week, and represent ~ 6% of the entire season, an incredible victory or devastating loss in MLB is a paltry 0.6%, for better or worse. It was a stark change for Galia, who recognizes the condensed windows for celebrations in baseball means they have to capitalize quickly when moments hit.
“In football it’s like you win on Sunday, you have until next Sunday to tell the story of every single thing that happened in the entire history of that game, you can highlight it in every way you want,” said Galia, who is the Director of Social Media and Content Strategy for the 100+-year-old Pirates franchise. “In baseball it’s like, okay, well, how do we do this effectively and quickly because as soon as the lineup goes up for the next game, no one cares what happened the night before.
“So I think it’s not necessarily a blessing and a curse, but like that’s the good and the bad about the baseball schedule is you get to turn the page really quickly, but sometimes you wish you didn’t have to turn the page so quickly. It’s tough.”
The packed MLB season also ups the ante to keep fans engaged and interested game after game, with the specter of monotony looming each day. Fans will scroll right by when daily content starts to become predictable and blends together from one day to the next. It’s not feasible to produce some masterpiece every day, but Galia and his team know that even small tweaks and little surprises and flair can capture attention consistently and ensure fans don’t fly by or tune out while being ready for unexpected opportunities.
“One, you got to keep things fresh,” said Galia, who has been with the Pirates since 2022. “Our creative team does an amazing job. We talk and plan on every template that could possibly be imaginable, we try and make [them] before the season starts just so we have it just in case something happens, because making graphics from scratch is going to take a long time and we might not have enough time.
“Even a starting lineup graphic — if you see the same starting lineup graphic 162 times, by the fifth time, no one’s paying attention to it. So again, our creative team has done a great job, we have 5 or 6 different versions of that, and we’ll make special versions for special weekends. Visually, the information is the same, still the nine players plus our starting pitcher — it’s exactly the same information, the same experience, but it’s packaged differently that at least catches your eye for an extra second instead of just zipping right past it because you already know what it is…
“Don’t let consistency be the enemy of creativity, he said. “Just because you have a plan in place and your brand is set and you know what content is going out; like, celebrate wins in different ways, use content in different ways, post content in different places and make the experience unique and keep people guessing — because as soon as they know what to expect from you, you’re done.”
Galia and his team know the Pirates will have their opportunities to capitalize on during the season, so they have a balance of proactive planning and extemporaneous creativity to make the most of special moments. Any baseball fan, heck any sports fan, was well-aware of some special times for the Pirates during the 2024 season, as rookie starting pitcher sensation Paul Skenes made his much-hyped debut. Skenes is one of many prospects to have made anticipated debuts for Pittsburgh the last couple of years. Galia knows each has a story to tell and can move the needle in varying ways. These are thoughtful, strategic conversations and plans that come together — again, with a healthy combo of preactive and reactive, so that no opportunity gets missed.
“We had so many guys debut and it was like, Okay, well, when Paul debuts or when Jared [Jones] debuts, or when person X debuts, where do they fall into kind of the zeitgeist of our players and who have been called up in the past?” Galia explained. “So you then try and figure out like, well then do we need to crank it up a notch and do even more or do we crank it down a notch and do a little bit, like just keep it kind of normal?…
“You kind of talk about it and make sure that you have a general plan and then, you know, three months later when it finally happens, it’s like, Oh, well, I came up with three other things, let’s do these instead. So it kind of works in both ways…You plan for what you can and then you react to everything else.”
A lot of this is about storytelling and brand building, creative execution and insight. And while certain key principles remain the same over time, constant change and adaptation is just as consistent a part of the game. Just consider in Galia’s career how many platforms have come and gone, product features that have arisen, and new opportunities and challenges to evolve the definition of good, effective, successful content.
Defining success is paramount for those working in social media. The reports and rankings, perhaps too often, showcase overall stats like engagement, reach, and views. The reality is more nuanced — you can feed the feeds to prioritize engagement, and most pros keep a close eye on what each platform is pushing in their recommendation engines at any given time, but achieving success is less about engagement bait and more about adapting your great content and brand activations to favor the forms that the fans and apps expect and want.
“If your plan is to do the same thing on every platform, you’re going to be okay on one of those platforms, but you’re going to fail on the other ones. Like, when you’re creating content, you’re creating these strategies to engage with your fans, but you also want to create content that the platforms value as well,” said Galia.
He continued: “If you’re not bringing in what the platforms value into your strategy, you’re going to miss the mark in some form or fashion… it’s a battle for every four seconds. You want to give someone what they’re looking for on the platform that they’re on…
“Keep your business goals in mind and what you’re trying to achieve, but put it in the packages and in the places that people are going to see it more clearly. So no matter what the goal is, you’re still not necessarily leaning into, like, ‘whatever Instagram’s goal is, is now my goal.’ It’s like now I know what Instagram’s goal is, so I can kind of tweak our strategy to make sure that more people see what my goal and our goals as an organization are.”
Toward the end of the interview with Galia, he recounted some of the more ‘viral’ posts from his time behind social media accounts in Pittsburgh and Arizona, specifically some that came together quickly. To the casual observer, such spur-of-the-moment success may feel like dumb luck with a dash of creative artistry — and there can be elements of that, sure. But it’s kind of kike the anecdote about famed artist Pablo Picasso being asked to draw a quick sketch, which took him minutes, but the price he charged was $1M francs. “The lady was shocked: ‘How can you ask for so much? It took you five minutes to draw this!’ ‘No,’ Picasso replied, ‘It took me 40 years to draw this in five minutes.'”
Where Galia has arrived after over a decade in sports and social is not too different from Picasso, in a sense. He and his team make thousands of micro-decisions every week, but they’re not made in a vacuum. Galia is informed by thinking about audiences, markets, goals, platforms, mediums, markets, strategies — those executions and ideas that take form in seconds in the hyper-paced nature of sports and social media are only possible because of years of experience and robust preparation.
In MLB, where Galia currently works, every swing, every pitch, every game is an opportunity to learn and get better. The same is true for the pros off the field — get better and get smarter with every post, every day. That’s the foundation for a Hall-of-Fame career.
